In 2017 my Website was migrated to the clouds and reduced in size.
Hence some links below are broken.
One thing to try if a “www” link is broken is to substitute “faculty” for “www”
For example a broken link
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
can be changed to corrected link
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
However in some cases files had to be removed to reduce the size of my Website
Contact me at 
rjensen@trinity.edu if you really need to file that is missing

 

The 21st Century Pedagogy Alternatives and Tricks/Tools of the Trade

Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Please do what you can to lend financial support to Wikipedia --- Keep Knowledge Open Sourced, Interactive, and Free ---
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/WMFJA010/en/US?utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=20101125JA006&utm_source=20101124_JA011A_US&country_code=US
Wikipedia is about the power of people like us to do extraordinary things. People like us write Wikipedia, one word at a time. People like us fund it, one donation at a time. It's proof of our collective potential to change the world.

The crucial role of passion in teaching and learning

Technology, Disability Studies, and Supports for People with Disabilities (including the learning challenged, deaf, blind, etc.)

How can you best publish books, including multimedia and user interactive books, on the Web?
Note that interactive books may have quizzes and examinations where answers are sent back for grading.

HASTAC: The Pedagogy Project (technology in education and learning) --- https://www.hastac.org/pedagogy-project

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

First Consider Learning on Your Own

Over 1 Million Free Syllabi

Wikipedia Versus YouTube

Study Skills Tip Sheets & Advice

Prevention of Plagiarism and Other Forms of Cheating

Financial Literacy Should Be Required on Campus

History and Future of Course Authoring and Distribution Technologies
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

(This includes modules on Blackboard, Moodle, and various competitors)

Amazon Launches Kindle Textbook Creator

Interactive Homework with Google Docs and Other Student-Friendly Features of Google Apps

Collaboration

Organizing your papers and citations from the Web
Sharing and remotely accessing your bookmarks

Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases  ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#KnowledgeBases

Google+ = Google Plus = Google Failure

Ideas for Teaching and Testing (including the "flipped classroom" or "flipped teaching"

Learning Customization Even in Large Classes 

Synchronous Partnering Course Modules in Universities in Different Nations

Bob Jensen's threads on Online Education Effectiveness and Testing ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus

Social Networking for Education:  The Beautiful and the Ugly
(including Google Plus and Orcut for Social Networking and some education uses of Twitter)
Updates will be at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

New and Old Tools (including tools for large classes, screen capture, video capture, panoramic capture, etc.)

A Simple App to Teach Regression

Integrating Wikipedia in Your Courses: Tips and Tricks 

3-D (3D) Printing

Is the Lecture Hall Obsolete?: Thought Leaders Debate the Question ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/is-the-lecture-hall-obsolete.html
 

A study says smooth-talking professors can lull students into thinking they've learned more than they actually have -- potentially at the expense of active learning.---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/09/09/study-how-smooth-talking-professors-can-lull-students-thinking-theyve-learned-more?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=f6c035d588-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-f6c035d588-197565045&mc_cid=f6c035d588&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Active Learning Works But Student’s Don’t Like It ---
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/09/03/1821936116

For Motivated Students Studies Show Pedagogy Alternatives Don't Differ Significantly
The No-Significant-Differences Phenomenon ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#AssessmentIssues

Chatterbots (Chatbots)

Podcasts

Audio Books

Concept Maps (Concept Maps)

My Cool Camcorder Sunglasses

Video Capture, Editing, Compression, Playback
(With Links to UserView for Viewing and Capturing Remotely Located Computer Screens and Audio)

Google Glass and Other Capturing Devices

Inside the Flipped Classroom 

Flipped (Interactive) Video and Screencasts

Video Conferencing

Hollywood Movies and Other Videos Featuring Accountants

Tardy Students 

Manage All Your Media in Windows 7 From online streaming to all-new library controls, here's how to get more out of Windows 7's new multimedia features (This tutorial includes how to edit video in Windows 7)

Virtual World Research

Open Sharing and Adaptive Hypermedia

Using MindMaps To Teach, Learn, & Much More (video), Simoleon Sense, March 27, 2009 --- http://www.simoleonsense.com/

History of Spreadsheets in Education

Bye Bye Blackboard

Variable Speed Video and the BYU Noteworthy Success

The Future of Textbooks  

Devices and Systems for Mobile Learning

Distance Education Magazines and Journals  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm#Resources 

Resources for Faculty --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 

The Latest Experiments in Student Recruitment by Colleges

PowerPoint and Other Teaching Helpers (Socratic Dialogue Gives Way to PowerPoint)

How to Add Audio to PowerPoint Presentations

Finding, Capturing, Storing and Sending Open Courseware
(Including MIT's search engine for searching for topics within a video lecture and alternatives for making and capturing streaming media)

Future Lab (in the U.K.):
Developing innovative learning resources and practices that support new approaches to education for the 21st century.

Just-In-Time Teaching

Instant Messaging

College Credit Over the Phone

Absent Student Shadows in Class:  Virtual Students in the Classroom

Classroom, Building, and Campus Design (including LCD versus DLP) 

In a Nutshell:  Authoring Design and Software for the Web --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetoolsa.htm 

Innovative Cell Phone Technology

Response Pads and Clickers 

Tablet Computing 

Creating Educational Cartoons  

Myths About Education Technologies

Ideas for Modifying Traditional Classroom Materials Into Online Learning Materials
(Including Updates on MIT's Open Knowledge Initiative called OKI)

Edutainment, Learning Games, and Gamification (including Dominos and Jeopardy and Monopoly and Fiction Writing)

xTREME Accounting Games from PwC

Using the Monopoly Board Game for Education Edutainment

Second Life and Other Virtual Worlds

Test Drive Running a University

Virtual Reality 

Humor in Online Teaching

Example From a Texas A&M Professor Providing Distance Education in Mexico

Ideas for Teaching Online (including Distance Education via Centra Symposium and Webex)

Tools for Learning in the Boondocks

Technology, Disability Studies, and Supports for People with Disabilities (including the learning challenged)

How To and How Not To Deliver Distance Education 
War stories from teachers in the first accredited online MBA program.

Cognitive Processes and Artificial Intelligence

Real Aud Audit Simulation

Interactive Network Simulation Learning Example

Advantages and Disadvantages of Education Technologies

Chris Dede's Vignettes

An Example of a Low Budget and Very Remarkable Online Course

Knowledge Portals and Vortals
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/portals.htm 

Web Page Design:  Ah, What Rotten Webs We Weave 

Resources --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources 

Classroom Use of Laptops and iPods 

Wikis Made Simple -- Very Simple

The Magic of DVR Recording 

The Best Ways to Digitize Old Photos, Tapes and Discs So Your Memories Live On

RU THR? OMW ---The University of Florida Experiment With Text Messaging

Statistical Survey Sampling and Analysis

Critical Thinking:  Why Its So Hard to Teach

Case Research and Writing  (Cases)

AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY ---
https://ajet.org.au/index.php/AJET


How to Look Better on Zoom (and Other Video-Calling Apps) ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/673264/how-to-look-better-on-zoom-and-other-video-calling-apps/


Remotely Hands-On:  Teaching lab sciences and the fine arts during COVID-19 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/14/teaching-lab-sciences-and-fine-arts-during-covid-19?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=e230e94718-DNU_2019_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-e230e94718-197565045&mc_cid=e230e94718&mc_eid=1e78f7c952


How to Use Microsoft’s “Windows File Recovery” on Windows 10 ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/680458/how-to-use-microsofts-windows-file-recovery-on-windows-10/


Graphing Lessons

Kids Zone:  Create a Graph ---
https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createAgraph/

Beautiful, Editable PowerPoint Graphics & Shapes (Free Library) ---
https://www.pptpop.com/powerpoint-graphics/

How to Make a Chart or Graph in Excel ---
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-build-excel-graph

Mathematics and Graphing Calculators Go Beyond What Most of Us Think of as "Calculators" --- 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphing_calculator 

This is relatively high level, but academics love Wofram Alpha (especially for graphing functions) ---
https://www.wolframalpha.com/


Innovative Ways to Teach Accounting Ethics ---
https://www.cgma.org/resources/reports/innovative-ways-to-teach-accounting-ethics.html?utm_source=mnl:academicadviser&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=16Mar2021&SubscriberID=119191126&SendID=350833


Bob Jensen's threads on PowerPoint (with warnings) --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#PowerPointHelpers

Bob Jensen's Updates on Education Technologies ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Hasselback Accounting Faculty Directory --- http://www.hasselback.org/

Free course materials, tutorials, and videos --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

AACSB Innovation Resource Center --- http://www.aacsb.edu/resources/innovation/default.asp

More than 100 colleges have set up channels on YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583 (or many more by now)
Search for words like “accounting”

"Top 10 YouTube Videos Posted by Colleges, and What They Mean," by Rachel Wiseman, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 5, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/top-10-youtube-videos-posted-by-colleges-and-what-they-mean/32070?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

More than 400 colleges and universities have set up channels on YouTube as part of the YouTube EDU section of the popular video site, but university officials admit they are still experimenting with the service and learning what types of videos resonate with off-campus audiences.

With data provided by YouTube, The Chronicle has determined the 10 most popular videos on YouTube EDU of the 2010-11 academic year (from June 2010 to June 2011). Some college officials stress that popularity is not always their main goal—because many colleges upload lectures and study materials designed for those enrolled in the courses. Still, the list gives a sense of the variety of videos colleges post and their impact.

Star-studded commencement speeches seem to be the best way for colleges to draw viewers. Four graduation videos made it onto the top-10 list, and three of the four featured high-profile celebrity speakers: Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Conan O’Brien. According to YouTube officials, searches on the site for the phrase “commencement speech” have increased eightfold since 2008.

But the biggest hit of the year focused on a graduating student rather than a star speaker. UC Berkeley’s video, “Paralyzed student, Austin Whitney, walks at graduation,” topped the list, with over 471,000 views. The clip shows Mr. Whitney, a graduating senior who was paralyzed from the waist down before entering college, walking to receive his diploma, aided by a mechanized exoskeleton that UC Berkeley engineers designed for him.

Robotics videos were also crowd pleasers this year. The University of Pennsylvania’s baseball-pitching machine earned it a spot in the top 10, and the University of Chicago made it on the list twice for gadget-themed clips. The first, the “Universal Gripper,” displays a device researchers developed that can grip and move nearly any object regardless of shape or size. The other video investigates how the mechanized book-retrieval system in the university’s newly constructed library works. Jeremy Manier, the university’s news director, attributed the library video’s success to the fact that it could engage several Web communities: those concerned with libraries and the future of print; architecture enthusiasts; and techies. “It tells a good story and it’s got robots,” he said, adding jocularly that “robots rule the Internet.”

No traditional lectures made the list. The closest thing to a lecture is an MIT physics “module”—a 20-minute explanatory video by Walter H.G. Lewin, a professor of physics at the institute. It explains the physics behind a familiar dilemma: Which will make you more wet, walking or running in the rain?

Other academic lectures have proven quite popular, though: A Harvard University lecture series on the philosophy of justice has accumulated more than 1.6 million views since it was uploaded in September 2009.

Although other individual lectures may not receive a high number of hits, a growing number of colleges are posting them. Some universities, such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT, have begun posting all of the recorded lectures from selected courses, allowing viewers from around the world to tune in and see what goes on in their classrooms. By broadcasting their lectures, they “broaden the window of access” to their resources, said Ben Hubbard, the manager of UC Berkeley’s YouTube EDU channel. Through feedback from students and spikes in viewership during midterms and exams, Mr. Hubbard has inferred that the channel is actually being used as a study tool. However, he said, “We know that we haven’t had just students logging in 120 million times. We know we’re serving the public.”

It can be difficult to determine the factors that lead a college video to go viral, and many college-news offices and technology departments are still experimenting with ways to take full advantage of their presence on YouTube. Angela Y. Lin, EDU’s manager at YouTube, says the service provides “resources for all of our partners regarding how to optimize their channels,” including statistics on user views, as well as suggestions such as adding metadata, creating playlists, and tagging keywords.

But the success of a video is ultimately determined by the whims of The Crowd. “There is a certain mystery or alchemy about what captures the public’s minds,” said Dan Mogulof, a UC Berkeley spokesman. “There are common themes and variables that can increase the chance of something becoming popular, but it’s not a simple formula.”

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on prestigious universities that open share course videos and other course materials for free ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

"YouTube Creates New Section to Highlight College Content," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 27, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3684&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

There are now nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of which are in very basic accounting.
But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
There are nearly 70 videos on XBRL

YouTube Education Channels --- http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

"YouTube Begins Streaming Commencement Speeches Live," by Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 10, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/youtube-begins-streaming-commencement-speeches-live/31693?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

YouTube is Going Live --- http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/04/youtube-is-going-live.html

SUNY Albany Guide to Web Resources --- http://libguides.library.albany.edu/content.php?pid=130754&sid=1121460

TeacherTube (a video server for teachers) --- http://www1.teachertube.com/

An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert. Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of work that they are now sharing with us

 

"YouTube Better at Funny Cat Videos Than Educational Content, Professors Say," by Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 26, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/YouTube-Better-at-Funny-Cat/25768/#lastComment 

While many students turn to YouTube when looking for help with their homework, it can be hard to find good-quality educational clips there, according to two professors who did a preliminary analysis of several video search engines.

The two researchers, Jeffrey R. Bell, a professor of biological sciences at California State University at Chico, and Jim Bidlack, a biology prfessor at University of Central Oklahoma, entered scientific terms into several video search engines and analyzed the top 20 results from each one to compare their relevance and educational usefulness. Students were also shown some of the resulting videos and asked to rate their effectiveness at explaining the concept involved.

The professors found that YouTube favored videos made by students as class projects, perhaps because those videos attracted more comments than professionally made ones, said Mr. Bell in an interview. Google Video returned the most high-quality videos in the top 20 search results, the professors said. (Google owns YouTube but also operates Google Video, which includes videos across the Web rather than just those on YouTube, which hosts videos from users.

"You go into YouTube and you put in "mitosis," you're going to get 3,000 videos back," said Mr. Bell. "But no one looks at all of that. You're only going to look at the top 10, so the ranking algorithm is really important."

The professors presented their findings during a poster session at last week's Emerging Technologies for Online Learning symposium, run jointly by the Sloan Consortium, a nonprofit group to support teaching with technology, and two providers of educational software and resources. The professors say they plan to expand their study and hope to publish the results.

Jensen Comment
I posted the following comment at the Chronicle of Higher Education:

What the authors are indirectly concluding is that some of the top researchers in our most prestigious universities are lousy teachers.

The videos that I've watched to date are only the top researchers from Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT. I thought they had a lot to say although they were not always the most dynamic speakers. Some were pretty good.

What's lacking is the music and the graphics arts and the comedy found on Comedy Central. Take your pick.

YouTube Education Channels --- http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert. Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of work that they are now sharing with us.

MIT Media Lab --- http://www.media.mit.edu/ 

Thomas B. Fordham Foundation (education research) --- http://www.edexcellence.net/

Online Instructional Resources: Faculty Development Programs at Michigan State University --- http://fod.msu.edu/OIR/index.asp

Teaching Time Savers --- http://www.maa.org/features/TeachingTimeSavers.html

Edutools --- http://ocep.edutools.info/index.jsp?pj=1

WCET’s EduTools provides independent reviews, side-by-side comparisons, and consulting services to assist decision-making in the e-learning community

Course Management System – Compare reviews of the CMS products most commonly used in higher education and also used by many K-12 virtual schools
Online Course Evaluation Project – Compare reviews of online college, Advanced Placement®, and high school courses as conducted by the Monterey Institute of Technology and Education• WCALO Reviews of AP® Courses
View the results of research projects • Learning object repository software Student services products e-Learning Policies ePortfolios

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring and management software ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/

A Course in Game Theory ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/a-course-in-game-theory-martin-j-osborne/

Business Technology from Business Week Magazine --- http://bx.businessweek.com/business-technology/

The Journal of Accountancy has a great monthly technology section (with particular focus on things you never, ever thought you could do with MS Office, particularly Excel) --- http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/
The Q&A modules are particularly informative and should be centralized in one place in addition to monthly editions.

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting software --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#AccountingSoftware

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Education Tutorials

Free Images from the U.S. Government --- http://rastervector.com/resources/free/free.html

Free Federal Resources in Various Disciplines --- http://www.free.ed.gov/

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

The Master List of Free Online College Courses --- http://universitiesandcolleges.org/

Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
The Master List of Free Online College Courses ---
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/

Bob Jensen's threads for online worldwide education and training alternatives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering ---
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Doing-Science-Engineering-Learning/dp/1732265178/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=richard+w.+hamming&qid=1593986045&sr=8-1/marginalrevol-20
Chapter 30 Download (You and Your Research) ---
https://d37ugbyn3rpeym.cloudfront.net/stripe-press/TAODSAE_zine_press.pdf

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software ---
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578675862/

Bob Jensen's threads for online worldwide education and training alternatives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm


"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Technology is changing the way students learn. Is it changing the way colleges teach?

Not enough, says George Siemens, associate director of research and development at the University of Manitoba’s Learning Technologies Centre.

While colleges and universities have been “fairly aggressive” in adapting their curricula to the changing world, Mr. Siemens told The Chronicle, “What we haven’t done very well in the last few decades is altering our pedagogy.”

To help get colleges thinking about how they might adapt their teaching styles to the new ways students absorb and process information, Mr. Siemens and Peter Tittenberger, director of the center, have created a Web-based guide, called the Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning.

Taking their own advice, they have outfitted the handbook with a wiki function that will allow readers to contribute their own additions.

In the its introduction, the handbook declares the old pedagogical model—where the students draw their information primarily from textbooks, newspapers, and their professors—dead. “Our learning and information acquisition is a mash-up,” the authors write. “We take pieces, add pieces, dialogue, reframe, rethink, connect, and ultimately, we end up with some type of pattern that symbolizes what’s happening ‘out there’ and what it means to us.” Students are forced to develop new ways of making sense of this flood of information fragments.

But Mr. Siemens said that colleges had been slow to appreciate this fact. “I don’t see a lot of research coming out on what universities might look like in the future,” he said. “If how we interact with information and with each other fundamentally changes, it would suggest that the institution also needs to change.”

Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning ---
http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wikis/etl/index.php/Handbook_of_Emerging_Technologies_for_Learning

Preface

This Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning (HETL) has been designed as a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities.

Introduction

How is education to fulfill its societal role of clarifying confusion when tools of control over information creation and dissemination rest in the hands of learners[3], contributing to the growing complexity and confusion of information abundance?

Change Pressures and Trends

Global, political, social, technological, and educational change pressures are disrupting the traditional role (and possibly design) of universities. Higher education faces a "re-balancing" in response to growing points of tension along the following fault lines...

What we know about learning

Over the last century, educator’s understanding of the process and act of learning has advanced considerably.

Technology, Teaching, and Learning

Technology is concerned with "designing aids and tools to perfect the mind". As a means of extending the sometimes limited reach of humanity, technology has been prominent in communication and learning. Technology has also played a role in classrooms through the use of movies, recorded video lectures, and overhead projectors. Emerging technology use is growing in communication and in creating, sharing, and interacting around content.

Media and technology

A transition from epistemology (knowledge) to ontology (being) suggests media and technology need to be employed to serve in the development of learners capable of participating in complex environments.

Change cycles and future patterns

It is not uncommon for theorists and thinkers to declare some variation of the theme "change is the only constant". Surprisingly, in an era where change is prominent, change itself has not been developed as a field of study. Why do systems change? Why do entire societies move from one governing philosophy to another? How does change occur within universities?

New Learners? New Educators? New Skills?

New literacies (based on abundance of information and the significant changes brought about technology) are needed. Rather than conceiving literacy as a singular concept, a multi-literacy view is warranted.

Tools

Each tool possesses multiple affordances. Blogs, for example, can be used for personal reflection and interaction. Wikis are well suited for collaborative work and brainstorming. Social networks tools are effective for the formation of learning and social networks. Matching affordances of a particular tool with learning activities is an important design and teaching activity

Research

Evaluating the effectiveness of technology use in teaching and learning brings to mind Albert Einstein’s statement: "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted". When we begin to consider the impact and effectiveness of technology in the teaching and learning process, obvious questions arise: "How do we measure effectiveness? Is it time spent in a classroom? Is it a function of test scores? Is it about learning? Or understanding?"

Conclusion

Through a process of active experimentation, the academy’s role in society will emerge as a prominent sensemaking and knowledge expansion institution, reflecting of the needs of learners and society while maintaining its role as a transformative agent in pursuit of humanity’s highest ideals.

 

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

 

Ideas for Teaching Online --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Ideas
Also see the helpers for teaching in general at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Finance Test Questions --- http://financetestquestions.wikispaces.com/

In a previous edition of Tidbits, I provided a summary of resources for learning how and being inspired to teach online --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Ideas 

I forgot to (and have since added) helpers for assessment (e.g. testing) online --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus
Also see the helpers for assessment in general at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Also I forgot to add some special considerations for detection and prevention of online cheating ---
Also see helpers for detection and prevention of cheating in general at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm

The Bea Sanders/AICPA Innovation in Teaching Award  --- Click Here  http://ceae.aicpa.org/Resources/Scholarships+and+Awards/The+Bea+Sanders+AICPA+Innovation+in+Teaching+Award.htm

Computer Grading of Essay Questions --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Essays

Remote (online) Testing of Students --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus

Accounting Education Software --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#software

Software for administering online examinations and quizzes ---

Onsite Versus Online Education (including controls for online examinations and assignments) ---  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnsiteVersusOnline

Some universities, especially those with distance education programs, have online examination software. This varies greatly in cost and quality. You can read more about such software at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Examinations

How students can find internships
Helpers for managing student interns
Intern Toolkit --- http://www.interntoolkit.com/

Drama Simulations --- http://www.cob.tamucc.edu/ATABestPrac2K/drama-simulations.htm
(Including the use of Lego constructions in cost accounting classes.)

Bob Jensen's threads on classrooms and electronic classrooms are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Classrooms 

Bob Jensen's Education Technology Threads are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

A tools PowerPoint file is included at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/


 

The American Accounting Association has a page on tools and cases --- http://aaahq.org/facdev/teaching/teaching_tools.htm

Also see the AAA’s wider set of helpers on teaching at http://aaahq.org/facdev/teach.cfm

 

Introductory Quotation

The movie Dead Poets Society showed examples of why students recalled so much of their learning. There were changes in location, circumstances, use of emotions, movement, and novel classroom positions. We know that learners remember much more when the learning is connected to a field trip, music, a disaster, a guest speaker, or a novel learning location. Follow up with a discussion, journal writing, a project, or peer teaching.

E. Jensen (1998, p. 110)
Teaching with the brain in mind

From U.K.'s Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol
Social Science Information Gateway
http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/

Browse by Subject Map of the SOSIG sections
 
Anthropology

Business and Management

Economics

Education

Environmental Science

European Studies

Geography

Government Policy
 
Law

Philosophy

Politics

Psychology

Research Tools and Methods

Social Welfare

Sociology

Statistics

Women's Studies
 

The Crucial Role of Passion in Teaching and Learning

April 7, 2012 message from XXXXX

I am currently attending Perkins School of Theology pursuing a Masters of Divinity in preparation for entering the ministry. Perkins is the seminary located at Southern Methodist University. While SMU's main campus is in Dallas, the class I am taking is taught (live) at a satellite campus in Houston. Last Monday, one of the faculty visited the Houston extension to see if the satellite was delivering the same quality of education received at the main Dallas campus.

One of the topics that came up was on-line education. Another Methodist seminary (Asbury) offers on-line courses but Perkins does not. The agency which accredits most main-line seminaries requires for any degree at least 24 hours of credit be earned at the main campus of the seminary (I have already completed 33 hours in Dallas).

The unanimous recommendation by myself and the other students was that Perkins does not offer on-line courses. (The faculty member was surprised by this.) But our reasoning is that ministry is a face-to-face profession. Personal interaction is a critical skill that cannot be simulated by a computer. Another factor is that the way most main-line churches are organized, the clergy are a small group that rely on each other for a great deal of support. The students attending Perkins now will be working with each other professionally for the next 30 years. And, with pastors, there is more emotional investment and a higher priority on personal relationships that might be found in such professions as accounting.

As I said, this recommendation was unanimous among those of us who spoke to the faculty member (there were about a dozen of us or about a third of those who attend the Houston satellite campus). All of us are second-career students. I would guess the average age was about 35 with ages ranging from the upper 20's to about 60. Three of us actually have experience in on-line education (myself as a technician, one as a corporate instructor, one as a course manager for a public university). To be fair, I do know of at least one Houston extension student that does advocate for on-line courses but she was not present at the interview. However, the purpose of the interview was not to discuss on-line education - it was just one of the topics that came up and I know it is something you are interested in.

I guess what I wanted to let you know is that on-line education may not be the "wave of the future" that some pundits say that it is. Since for-profit schools are generally on-line universities, I am wondering if it is the next bubble that will eventually burst.

XXXXX

 

April 8, 2012 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi XXXXX,

Good to hear from you.

Online education learning, like onsite education learning, depends on many, many variables. The most important variables as a rule, aside from student motivation to learn, are the skills and passion of the teacher.

The best teacher I know is Amy Dunbar at the University of Connecticut. She's won all-university teaching awards at UTSA, the University of Iowa, and UCON. She wins these awards whether teaching onsite or online. She says online education has some key advantages to students, and if done optimally, online learning may be easier for students and harder for teachers ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/Dunbar2002.htm 

Some things that are surprising is how shy or easily intimidated students who rarely speak up in class or in face-to-face teams will assert themselves in chat rooms or other online communications, including social networking.

There are of course dark sides of both online learning and education technology in general, and these might lend support to the negativism of your friends toward online courses ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm 

If a teacher is not passionate about teaching an online course, the online course is probably doomed from the start. If the teacher is passionate about an online course then some wonderful things might happen for students that cannot happen in a college that only has onsite courses.

Respectfully,
Bob Jensen


Joe Hoyle's presentation on teaching philosophies ---
https://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2019/10/what-are-your-teaching-philosophies.html


‘Super Courses’ Authors discuss their new book on how courses reflect the future of teaching and learning ---
Authors discuss what makes a 'super course' (insidehighered.com)
Jensen Comment
For good students eager to learn it's not clear that super courses sacrificing some content for motivation components is such a great thing. What those students often want most from those teachers is to distill complicated and vast subject matter into its most essential components. That does not necessarily entail spoon feeding. Great teachers have a way of making students learn a lot on their own (think case method teaching). But they filter out the content that students must learn. In some instances they may be teaching super courses without knowing they meet many of the parameters of super courses.


Personality, Presence, Preparation, Passion
"The 4 Properties of Powerful Teachers," by Rob Jenkins, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 16, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-4-Properties-of-Powerful/228483?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=f7a573e655c64862a148087230fab166&elq=9c0601c2effb449cb3594293542b4633&elqaid=8350&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2716

Jensen Comment
Viewing my own past over 22 years of college and 40 years of interacting with faculty colleagues it seems impossible to put a fence arround the best personality traits of great teachers. Nearly all of them in my estimation were self confident but many were also humble about it. Many were extroverted, but this is not a necessary condition. What is a mystery to me is how a few great teachers were lousy faculty colleagues but  were highly respected by their students. I recall one who never took an interest in any of his colleagues and remained aloof and distant even to members in his department. To us he almost seemed autistic. But with students he was caring, confident, and highly respected as an advisor and a teacher.

Most great teachers I knew were passionate about their discipline, but not all were what I would describe as passionate teachers. I mean think of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. Based upon his record and his player's testimonials he's one of the greatest and most powerful football coaches of all time. But if you listen to him talk his presentations are better than prescription sleeping pills if you need help falling asleep. He's the perfect example of an introverted mumbling accountant low on testosterone rather than a NFL football coach.

But Belichick is arguably the most prepared coach in the history of the NFL.

In my viewpoint powerful teacher does not necessarily equate to great teacher. The first ingredient of a great teacher is expertise at the level of course being taught. I grant you that teaching at the introductory level certainly requires less expertise and more power, although expertise helps when introductory students ask tough questions. Certainly introductory teachers should have sufficient expertise to admit they are not experts on some issues. At advanced levels expertise trumps almost every other ingredient of a great teacher. However masterful experts who are unprepared for class or learning tutorials often blow it and lose the respect of ttheir students.


Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence --- https://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/


"Teaching Mistakes -- Do Any Of These Apply to YOU?" by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Blog, August 26, 2013 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2013/08/teaching-mistakes-do-any-of-these-apply.html

Jensen Comment
To these I might add:
"Are there some technology tools mentioned on the AECM that you have overlooked?"

Hundreds of these tools are mentioned at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Can you help students learn your most technical material with Camtasia videos that you prepare for them?
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Video

Can you do more for learning disabled?
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
For example, have you considered making instant messaging available to them?

Can you better engage your students with edutainment?
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

Can your students learn more from the various free accounting and finance modules learning modules at the Khan Academy?
https://www.khanacademy.org/

Have you reviewed the teaching ideas and resources in Issues in Accounting Education from the AAA over the past few years?
http://aaahq.org/pubs/electpubs.htm


Some  Jensen History
On August 2, 2010 in San Francisco I was invited to make a short speech at the Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Section Breakfast. Afterwards a couple of you questioned some of the dates I gave to events in my life. The events I mentioned were true, but the dates were way off --- something I can only attribute to old age and extemporaneous speaking.

For some unknown reason I decided to divert from my prepared remarks while approaching the podium on August 2. I had not planned to talk about the "game changer" in my professional life, but suddenly I was talking about the big game changer in my life. Between 1966 and 1990 I was a lousy teacher focused only on three performance scores for my work --- the number of accountics research working papers (over 200 by 1990), the number of invited out-of-town research presentations, and the number of refereed publications (about 50 by 1990) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Published

My research rather than my teaching paid off handsomely when I became the Nicolas M. Salgo Professor of Accounting at the University of Maine in 1968, received a Guggenheim Fellowship for two think tank years (1971/72 and 1973/74) at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford University), became the the KPMG Professor of Accounting at Florida State University in 1978, and ultimately became the Jesse H. Jones Professor of Business at Trinity University in 1982. My purpose here is not to brag. My purpose is to point out that research and publication outweighed every other criterion to my "success" prior to 1990 and made me what I think was overpaid between 1966 and 1990.

It was in the April 1990 (corrected date) when the game changer took place in my life. I was invited, along with about 40 other accounting professors in the State of Texas, by Prentice-Hall to attend an expense-paid seminar in Dallas on "How to Improve Your Teaching." The presentations on how to improve my teaching were uninspiring for nearly a day and a half until the very last presentation of the seminar --- the game changer in my life that instantly changed my entire focus from accountics research game playing to teaching, learning, and technology.

The game changer in my life was a presentation by Darrell Ward.---
http://www.einstruction.com/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.display&menu=news&content=showArticle&id=202 
Darrell resigned from the Computer Science Department at the University of North Texas  in the late 1980s to form HyperGraphics Corporation, HyperGraphics first built upon the old HyperCard seminal slide presentation software for the Apple II computers and added an entire non-linear navigation system and course management system for learning and assessment of learning. I don't think the Apple II version was all that successful, but when Darrill developed Hypergraphics for the DOS-based PC, HyperGraphics had considerable success.

I think my mouth was open during Darrell's entire presentation. Afterwards I went down and asked how I could buy the DOS-based HyperGraphics software. Darrill said that I could buy the stack of floppy disks and an instruction manual for $850 on the spot. I took out a check (my wife only allows me to carry one check) from my bill fold and wrote out a check for $850.

During the flight home from Dallas it then dawned on me that I did not own a PC. So instead of taking a taxi home from the San Antonio Airport, I took cab to a store called CompuAdd. There I paid over $2,000 for my first PC and projection panel. Until then I was always a snobby main frame guy (having taught FORTRAN, COBAL, and SPSS for the main frame) who, like IBM, thought that the the PC was simply a child's toy. After arriving home from the CompuAdd store I had to explain to my wife how I spent $3,000 on my way home from Dallas. Since I used my only check to buy the HyperGraphics software, I had to use a Visa card to buy the PC and an overhead panel.

In the summer of 1990 (corrected date) I worked about 15 hours a day programming my first course (a managerial accounting course) in HyperGraphics. In September of 1990 I unveiled my course to some of my Trinity University colleagues in a totally dark room using one of those terrible projection panels sitting on top of an overhead projector. The early panels converted all the color pictures to gray scale and were dim to read. But I could still demo what I thought was really cool --- nonlinear navigation for asynchronous learning and graphics/equation building in stages for student learning of complex details asynchronously. My colleagues departed shaking their heads and whispering that Jensen must be nuts.

It was October 4-5, 1990 (corrected date) when I made my first away-from-home dog and pony show on featuring HyperGraphics technology --- at the University of Wisconsin. HyperGraphics software pretty much died after Windows replaced the DOS operating system in PCs. I then shifted my managerial accounting and accounting theory courses to ToolBooks for the PC. My out-of-town dog and pony shows really commenced to roll when my university hosts invested in those old three-barrel color projectors that predated LCD projectors. I eventually made hundreds of presentations of HyperGraphics and then ToolBooks on college campuses in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Holland, and the United Kingdom (where I lugged my full PC and LCD projector between five campuses as the European Accounting Association Visiting Professor). Many of my campus visits and topics are listed at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Presentations

Today I would probably rely more on video for asynchronous learning ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

You can read about the history of HyperGraphics, ToolBook, Authorware, and the many other course authoring and management software systems (most of which died either early or prolonged deaths) at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

The important game changer for me in April 1990 is that I belatedly commenced to think about how students learn and more importantly how I could become a better teacher (or rather learning manager)  by helping students study complicated material on their own asynchronously with the ability to keep replaying at their own learning paces. I even wrote an early 1994 book on learning technology with the aid of Petrea Sandlin as my editor ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245cont.htm

My thoughts about how students learn are summarized in two evolving papers at:

Evolving Papers on Learning

My evolving education technology threads are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

My life seems to have taken on more meaning since I focused more on my students and how they learn.


October 19, 2010 message from Jagdish Gangolly

Over the years I have been frustrated with the lack of software support for collaborative research, especially for writing papers. Very often my coauthors are far from Albany (and out of the country), and we need a way to maintain version control for papers, annotation of document changes, facilities for rollback, and management of bibliographies with minimum effort.

At long last, I (and my collaborators) seem to have found the solution from a very unlikely source: the Eclipse IDE used widely for programming. In fact I had used it in my teaching of Java language in the past. In conjunction with texlipse (which works within Eclipse), it provides a superior authoring environment in addition to being able to use the same environment for programming of necessary. Best of all. it is FREE, so no tithing the Church of Bill.

It works exactly like any commercial database system with good access controls. It also is platform agnostic, and works on windows, linux/unix/mac as well as most IBM mid-range and mainframes.

I wonder if any one on AECM has worked with it.

 Jagdish Gangolly ( gangolly@albany.edu )
Department of Informatics College of Computing & Information State University of New York at Albany
7A, Harriman Campus Road, Suite 220 Albany, NY 12206
Phone: (518) 956-8251, Fax: (518) 956-824
7

October 20, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Thank you Jagdish,

I will add your Tidbit to my threads on much simpler ways to collaborate such a Google Docs that Amy Dunbar and Rick Lillie passionately recommend for student collaboration projects.

 

August 15, 2010 message from Bob Jensen

Hi Rick,

 In my reply I should’ve added some things about technology-experimenting accounting professors who pull off their experiments with an exceptional degree of passion. In addition to Amy Dunbar and Rick Lillie, I should’ve mentioned Steve Hornik ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
I can’t imagine how Steve pulls these innovations off with class sizes in the hundreds.

I’m certain there are others that are passionate in their own ways, and some of these passionate and innovative accounting educators are identified in the TLC Section Page at http://aaahq.org/TeachCurr/index.html

I also should’ve elaborated a bit about the passions of Amy Dunbar and Rick Lillie:
May 31, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

http://users.business.uconn.edu/adunbar/videos/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html 

If anyone wants the “quiz” that the students worked, send me an email (not AECM), and I will send you the file.

Amy

Amy Dunbar
University of Connecticut School of Business
Department of Accounting
2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041 Storrs, CT 06269-1041  

amy.dunbar@business.uconn.ed 

May 31, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie [rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]

Hi Amy,

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses.  It's free, includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for students to collaborate on team projects.  It also makes it easy to submit the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype).  To use these tools, they need a headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com) is a free, hosted video messaging service.  You can record up to a 10 minute video clip that can be shared by URL link.  TokBox also includes a video chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference.  This feature works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com)  includes chat, audio and video-conferencing.  The chat feature works probably better than what you have been using.  With a headset/microphone, you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call.  Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great  screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype.  Following is an example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper.  One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space through an email link.  Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group video conference call.  This enables students to brainstorm and get a project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students use the audio conference call feature to talk with each  other.  While all are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and views it on his/her computer screen.  One or more students act as the editor.  All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document in .pdf format to his/her hard drive.  The student then submits the document for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get things done.  Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can  do for free.  Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively inexpensive.  The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and online classes.  It works great.  The approach changes the nature of how students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA.  92407-2397
Email:  rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone:  (909) 537-5726Skype (Username):  ricklillie

On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:
“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)

Jensen Comment
I’m certain that you will miss your beloved TokBox software now that it, like Google Wave, has been discarded on the trash pile of abandoned technology.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How to author books and other materials for online delivery
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How Scholars Search the Web ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

 Bob Jensen

From: AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU] On Behalf Of Rick Lillie
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 9:18 PM
To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
Subject: Re: An Example of how I combine technologies to create a fully online teaching-learning experience

 Hi Bob,

Thank you for great feedback about the interactive Class Assignments Schedule (CAS) format that I developed for my third course in Intermediate Accounting.  I agree with your comments.  I am revising the CAS for my FQ 2010 course, so your comments and suggestions arrive at the right moment.  Below are comments for several issues that you raised.  Hopefully, I can explain why I did, what I did.

For AECM readers, below is the link to the interactive Class Assignments Schedule that you reviewed.

Link:  http://www.drlillie.com/KIA3/2010/UCLA/CAS/CASSQ10.htm

 When exploring linked features on the CAS, it works best to "right-click" on a link and then click the "open in a new window" option.  This makes it easier to navigate CAS features.

ABOUT THE VOICETHREAD STUDENT COMMENTARIES

 Both CalState San Bernardino and UCLA Extension use Blackboard.  The LMS includes a discussion board feature that works well for certain information sharing activities.  However, this past year, I became dissatisfied with using the "finger tapping" discussion board for student discussions.

 What I tend to find is that the first few students who post discussion comments and responses post original thoughts.  After the first postings, things get repetitive.  Unfortunately, Blackboard (and most LMS systems) does not make it possible to keep postings private until after a deadline has passed.  The LMS structure almost by default encourages plagiarism.

 VoiceThread includes an option that allows postings to be kept private until I am ready to make them public for all class members to view.  This greatly reduces the chances of plagiarism occurring.

 VoiceThread allows three ways to post comments (i.e., text, audio, or video).  For the first VoiceThread assignment, students can use any of the three formats to post comments.  For subsequent VoiceThead assignments, students must post video comments.  This helps students improve their oral speaking/conversation presentation skills.  A student can see how he/she comes across to others.  A student can hear his(her) own explanation.

 I tell students to explain in terms a client will understand.  Save the "technical jargon" for colleagues who need to be impressed.  VoiceThread makes it possible for a student to see how well he(she) met this standard.

 Once the posting deadline passes, I make all postings public to all class members.  I use Zoomerang (online survey system) to allow students to anonymously rate each other's commentaries.  I use the overall ratings and a simple grading rubric as the basis for awarding individual grades.  Often a student wants to talk about his(her) presentation.  We use Skype for a 1:1 video conference call.

 EARLY COURSE FEATURES

 I will add the "start-up" professionalization topics that you recommended.  I talk about these throughout the course, but have not specifically included them on the Class Assignments Schedule.  I set up other pages in Blackboard for these items.  I'll see I can add them to the Class Assignments Schedule.

 During FQ 2009, AAA allowed me to include Sir David Tweedie's speech from the 2009 AAA Annual Meeting.  I replaced Sir Tweedie's speech with the Paul Volker video.  I viewed the Partnoy video.  I agree this would be a far better opening video.  The "financial transparency" issue sets a good opening tone for the overall course.  The way the CAS is currently designed, I use Warren Buffett materials to focus on "financial transparency."  But, this is done through the closing topic.

 My syllabus (which is different from the CAS) includes discussion of academic ethics, integrity, plagiarism, and cheating.  However, my comments are not as dynamic as yours.  I will revise wording in my syllabus.

I agree with your comment about introducing XBRL.  I already decided to introduce XBRL throughout the course through short, web research exercises.  This should make the coverage relevant, practical, and less technical.

GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT COURSE DESIGN

 I agree with your comments about demanding almost too much from students.  I am cutting back supplemental readings to no more than one or two per topic.  I refer to the readings as "Connect to Practice."  Readings will come from practitioner publications like the Journal of Accountancy or The CPA Journal.  I appreciate your references to Joe Hoyle's teaching advice.

 IN CLOSING

Thank you for great advice and outstanding ideas.  Once I revise the interactive Class Assignments Schedule for FQ 2010, I will email you the hyperlink to the revised web page.  I think you will see significant improvements.

Again, thank you for your comments at the TLC Breakfast meeting.  I really appreciated you doing this.

Best wishes,

Rick Lillie
Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA.  92407-2397

Email:  rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone:  (909) 537-5726
Skype (Username):  ricklilli
e

 On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)

 


"Wordle Revisited," by Erin E. Templeton, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 6, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/wordle-revisited/38293?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

ProfHacker first wrote about Wordle back in October 2009, when Julie Meloni called it the gateway drug to textual analysis.” George Williams followed her post with another in November of 2009 that further considered ways to[Use] Wordle in the classroom.”

Inspired by a Twitter conversation last week with Caleb McDaniel (@wcaleb), I decided to revisit it here.

I recently used Wordle in an assignment for my January Intercession class (on F. Scott Fitzgerald) and found it very useful for introducing students to close-reading and the basics of textual analysis. As an English professor, textual analysis is one of the most fundamental skills that I teach, and as a result, it can feel like the bane of my existence. The source of my frustration (and that of my students) is trying to get from summary and/or description to analysis. Students are often very good at describing what is happening in a text, but it can be very hard for them to break out of this habit and think about language in other ways.

Enter Wordle.

To me, there are two things that make Wordle invaluable:

In my class, I first demonstrated how to use Wordle with the novel we were reading (This Side of Paradise), which had the added benefit of being published in 1921, so it is no-longer copyright protected so I could use passages from Project Gutenberg’s edition of the novel rather than having to transcribe them manually. We created a few word clouds together as a class to make sure everyone knew how to do it, and then I asked the students how looking at these passages through the Wordle lens might change their understanding. What did they notice seeing the words rearranged, and in some cases resized (the size of words in the Wordle is directly proportionate to the number of times that the word appears in the initial text block)? By deconstructing and defamiliarizing the passage, Wordle magically freed students from the summary trap and helped them to think about the text analytically beyond the constraints of plot. Word clouds do not have plots, at least not in the linear convention sense that allows easy summary, so analysis was suddenly less confusing.

Finally, I asked students to create a Wordle on their own and post a screenshot of it to the class blog. They could choose any episode from This Side of Paradise that we had not already examined together in class. Once they had their Wordle, they were asked to answer a few questions: “Does this graphic visualization of the text highlight certain themes or issues in the episode? Does it emphasize particular themes or ideas? Do you notice things about the episode that you had previously discounted in your earlier reading?”

Posting the Wordles to the website proved to be a bit tricky for some, but that difficulty stemmed from the screenshot rather than Wordle itself.

My class created some very interesting Wordles, and more to the point, using this tool helped to make the task of literary analysis less daunting, which is often no easy feat! I was left wondering why I don’t use it more often in my classes and am currently trying to figure out ways to incorporate it into other assignments.

Continued in article

 

 


Video Conferencing

Zoom.us -- An Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing Posting the AAA Commons by Rick Lillie

Zoom.us -- An Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing...
blog entry posted September 1, 2012 by Rick Lillie, last edited Yesterday , tagged research, teaching, technology, technology tools
103 Views, 3 Comments
title:
Zoom.us -- An Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing Service (It's free!)
intro text:
Recently, I read about Zoom.us a new free, cloud-based, video-conferencing service.  Yesterday, three of us used zoom.us to work on a research project.  We are located throughout the U.S.  We logged into the video conference call and worked for more than an hour.  The audio and video were crystal clear.  We shared desktops to work on documents together.  Wow!  The virtual work session was very productive and enjoyable.

I use Skype to work with colleagues and to offer virtual office hours for my students.  Skype offers a free 1:1 video-conference call with desktop sharing.  To include more than two people in a Skype video call, you need to subscribe to Skype's premium service.  Skype's fee is very reasonable; however, it's difficult to beat "free."

Both Zoom.us and Skype have features that meet specific needs.  Therefore, both services are valuable to the teaching-learning experience.  The quality of the zoom.us video-conference call was exceptional.  Zoom.us versus Skype is not an either/or situation.  Using one service or the other is a judgment call regarding features that best fit the need as hand.

Getting started with zoom.us is quick and easy to do.  Their support page explanations are easy to follow.  The service works with Google and Facebook, iPad, iPhone, Windows and Mac.  When I set up zoom.us, I had to download a small file to my computer that includes the zoom.us interface.  The download was quick.  No problem.

Below is a screenshot from the support page indicating key features of the zoom.us interface screen.  Individual members participating in a video call are shown at the top of the screen.  When a member speaks, the border of the member's screen turns "green."  The speaker's screen displays in the "big screen" section of the interface window.  This process works as the conversation switches among participants.  Wow!  This is amazing and allows each speaker to be the center of attention.

Check out zoom.us.  I think you'll like this new video-conference service.

Best wishes,

Rick Lillie (
CSU San Bernardino)

UPDATED INFORMATION:  DOWNLOADING ZOOM.US TO YOUR DESKTOP -- IMPORTANT

I talked with the developers of zoom.us this afternoon.  They explained the simple way to download the small zoom.us file to your computer's desktop.
See the picture below.
  • Log into http://zoom.us/
  • Click the "Start Video Meeting" button.
  • Follow-up screen should start the download process. (Allow this to happen.)
  • zoom.us file should download and the "z icon" should display on your desktop.
Unless you change the "settings" in zoom.us, you will need to double-click on the zoom.us icon on your desktop to start the program.  Once the icon displays at the bottom of your monitor screen, click the icon to open the zoom.us screen.  Click the Start Video Meeting button.  When the screen displays, click the Invite option.  Enter the email addresses for participants you wish to invite into the video conference call.  Send the email message.  Stay logged into zoom.us.  Watch participants join the video conference call.
I think you will be amazed by the clarity and crispness of the audio and video call.
Enjoy!
Rick Lillie
(CSU San Bernardino)

How to Look Better on Zoom (and Other Video-Calling Apps) ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/673264/how-to-look-better-on-zoom-and-other-video-calling-apps/


Facebook Messenger --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Messenger

MIT:  Forget Zoom—children are using Facebook Messenger Kids to deal with coronavirus isolation ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/30/975013/coronavirus-zoom-facebook-messenger-kids-isolation-friends/


"Skype 5 beta is horrible," by Dennis Howlett, AccMan, January 4, 2011 --- Click Here
http://accmanpro.com/2011/01/04/skype-5-beta-is-horrible/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+flacknhack/jRao+%28Dennis+Howlett:+AccMan%29

I am not alone.
The
howls of protest on the Skype forums are both impassioned and detailed in their condemnation of the new UI/UX.

January 4, 2010 reply from Robert Bowers (tax accountant)

This Skype thread interests me.

I have been cutting costs w/ a vengeance for sev yrs

Sev yrs ago I went from Verizon tel (120) + full Comcast cable (130) + net = about 250/mo

I talked Com into giving me a promo rate of 62, went to Vonage @ 25, total 87 … not bad

Then Com went back to 130, so I talked Verizon into 70 for all 3. But this expires in June.

I have looked at Vonage, Magic Jack, not Skype – all these alt phones don’t seem to support Faxes,

and to be honest it seems Verizon still beats all these for clarity

This wouldn’t bother me, as I send email attachments to all but one – guess who – the IRS

As far as cable, I just went w/ Netflix – unlimited movies for $8/mo

Now if I could find a TV provider of all the news (incl CNBC), I would be happy

When you go to alternative providers there is always a tradeoff – you can’t get something for nothing.

January 4, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie

While there are some features in Skype v5.0.0.156 that I do not care about, overall I really like the new Skype version. I'm not a Facebook person. I prefer that links to Facebook and other social media be kept optional for users who want such features.

We all have our biases, which is clear from the Howlett article, forum comments and my comments in this email message. I'm a "PC" person. I'm not an "Apple" person. I'm probably in the minority, but I don't care for the iPad. I'll stick with my ThinkPad Tablet computer. It's capabilities go far beyond what the iPad can do.

I use Skype to offer virtual office hours for my students. This makes it possible to extend the benefits of traditional office hours to students who are unable to come to my office during set times. Students really like using Skype to work together.

Skype features like desktop sharing make it easy to work one-on-one with students when they need help with assignments. The instant messaging and file sharing features are exceptional, especially with improvements added in v5. With v5, you can send a message or file to someone even though the other party is not online at the moment. Skype now temporarily stores the message or file until the other party is available and then downloads it. This improvement takes peer-to-peer to the next performance level.

I have used Skype's new multi-party video conferencing. It worked fine. Several study groups used multi-party video conferencing during Fall Quarter 2010 and liked its performance. I see a real future for multi-party video conferencing. My concern is that it will become a fee-based service that students will not be able to afford.

I combine the free features of Skype with features of other free Web 2.0 technologies to teach my students how to use technology to create, share, and communicate. For example, when we combine Skype with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, students learn to do what you can do in WebEx or Adobe Connect. This combination is free. The alternatives are extremely expensive.

Skype's interface changed with v5. Without a doubt, it will change again. Skype listens to feedback. Technology evolves.

Skype includes a bundle of features that makes it a powerful communicative, collaborative Web 2.0 technology tool. It includes far more useful features in one tool than I find in other similar tools. This is what makes Skype really useful and easy to use.

Skype changes itself about every 15 minutes. If you don't like the current version, be patient or find a better alternative. If you truly find a better alternative, please share it.

Happy New Year! May we all prosper in 2011.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
Email: rlillie@csusb.edu \
Telephone: (909) 537-5726
Skype (Username): ricklillie

From: AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jensen, Robert
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 3:17 PM
To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
Subject: FW: An Example of how I combine technologies to create a fully online teaching-learning experience

Hi Rick,

I will expand well beyond your direct question to me in the interest of all AECM readers.

Probably the most unique aspect of your course is the use of student voice threads. I really don’t have much to say about these since I’ve never seen them used and have not read testimonials about how it well they work. Like most education technology, I suspect that this technology mostly depends on context and how it is used for grading purposes. Like Joe Hoyle, I think how you test is how students really learn. The voice thread idea might counter this somewhat, but much depends upon the role of voice threads in the grading formula.

I think all AECM readers should watch your tutorial on how to use the voice threading system.

You are a bit like Amy Dunbar in that when you try something new it will probably work for you because of your passion for making it a success. Less passionate accounting educators should be warned that what works fantastically for Rick Lillie and Amy Dunbar will not necessarily work for them without the accompanying passion.

My first reaction to your syllabus is that you demand almost too much from your students --- especially in terms of the volume of reading and video watching. For the readings assigned as “peruse readings” perhaps you need guidelines about what you expect from a “peruse” cruse. Some students will spend a great deal of time and take copious notes if they think any assigned material will be on an exam or quiz. Perhaps you should let students see “possible quiz questions” in advance for each “peruse” cruise. But then reserve the right to ask a general question not given in advance to scare students who may decentralize (among themselves) the answering of possible quiz questions.

Early in the course (read that the first or second class) display the tables and graphs that show the following:
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

2009 Best Places to Start/Intern According to Bloomberg/Business Week
Also see the Internship and Table links .
The Top five rankings contain all Big Four accountancy firms.
Somehow Proctor and Gamble slipped into Rank 4 above PwC
The accountancy firms of Grant Thornton and RMS McGladrey make the top 40 at ranks 32 and 33 respectively.

Best Places to Intern
I'm waiting for Francine to throw cold water on the "ever before" claim
Especially note the KPMG Experience Abroad module below
"Best Places to Intern:  Bloomberg BusinessWeek's 2009 list shows employers are hiring more interns to fill entry-level positions than ever before,"  by Lindsey Gerdes, Business Week, December 10, 2009 ---  

 Early on invite some of your most gifted graduate students in to talk about their intern experiences --- hopefully there will be Big Four interns and non-Big Four interns for these presentations.

In lieu of having live presentations, former intern videos might be displayed for the class.

Perhaps XBRL can be delayed a bit. That’s a bit technical and dull for openers.

You should explain why global work opportunities are opening up somewhat because of IFRS (avoid the convergence debate at this point).

I would also dwell on the growing opportunities for accounting majors --- including working for the FBI and working on your own or within a company as a forensic accountant. Explain the typical duties of both types of professionals. Explain how advantages arise for graduates fluent in more than one language. Also explain the difference between education and training so that your students try to stop hating humanities and science requirements.

Also explain why working for government (e.g., the IRS) can lead to great career opportunities later in life such that you’ve given hope to graduates who do not make it into or do not want to make it into the Big Four to start with at the time of graduation. Graduates who do not get Big Four offers are not doomed for life.

I would also devote some class time to the shortage of doctoral graduates in accounting and opportunities for accounting doctoral graduates (e.g., mention Texas A&M, USC, and Stanford starting salaries, research stipends, teaching loads, and research expense report. But be fair and also mention tenure track hurdles. A good reference is the following:

"So you want to get a Ph.D.?" by David Wood, BYU ---
http://www.byuaccounting.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=So_you_want_to_get_a_Ph.D.%3F

Do You Want to Teach? ---
http://financialexecutives.blogspot.com/2009/05/do-you-want-to-teach.html

Then explain why it is probably best to obtain 1-5 years of experience as a practicing accountant before returning to a doctoral program.

Drop the VARK Stuff
I’m not into learning styles since I think top students adapt to whatever pedagogy is used by the instructor in every course taken at a university. I would instead explain why self-learning may be superior for nearly all students without going into details and conjectures at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

And remember what Joe Hoyle alleges --- students learn what you test them on such that, good or bad, examinations and quizzes are the focal point of student attention. You need to spell you your testing and grading guidelines very clearly.

Early on, especially in the syllabus, I would explain the nuances of academic ethics, integrity, plagiarism, and cheating that you will not tolerate in the course. Explain the difference between learning collaboration/cooperating versus cheating and free riding.

Probably the most unique aspect of your course is the use of student voice threads. I really don’t have much to say about this since I’ve never seen this used and have not read testimonials about how it well it works. Like most education technology, I suspect that it mostly depends on context and how it is used for grading purposes. Like Joe Hoyle, I think how you test is how students really learn. The voice thread idea might counter this somewhat, but much depends upon the role of voice threads in the grading formula.

One thing the AECM can provide are alternate ideas to replace the financial system collapse as the first topic of voice threading. For example, it might be better to focus on the Partnoy video than the Volcker video:
Watch the video! (a bit slow loading)
"Bring Transparency to Off-Balance Sheet Accounting," by Frank Partnoy, Roosevelt Institute, March 2010 ---
http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/policy-and-ideas/ideas-database/bring-transparency-balance-sheet-accounting
Watch the video!

Abusive off-balance sheet accounting was a major cause of the financial crisis. These abuses triggered a daisy chain of dysfunctional decision-making by removing transparency from investors, markets, and regulators.  Off-balance sheet accounting facilitating the spread of the bad loans, securitizations, and derivative transactions that brought the financial system to the brink of collapse.

As in the 1920s, the balance sheets of major corporations recently failed to provide a clear picture of the financial health of those entities.  Banks in particular have become predisposed to narrow the size of their balance sheets, because investors and regulators use the balance sheet as an anchor in their assessment of risk.  Banks use financial engineering to make it appear that they are better capitalized and less risky than they really are.  Most people and businesses include all of their assets and liabilities on their balance sheets.  But large financial institutions do not.

Click here to read the full chapter.---
http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/sites/all/files/Off-Balance Sheet Transactions.pdf

Frank Partnoy is the George E. Barnett Professor of Law and Finance and is the director of the Center on Corporate and Securities Law at the University of San Diego.  He worked as a derivatives structurer at Morgan Stanley and CS First Boston during the mid-1990s and wrote F.I.A.S.C.O.: Blook in the Water on Wall Street, a best-selling book about his experiences there.  His other books include Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets and The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals.

Lynn Turner has the unique perspective of having been the Chief Accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a member of boards of public companies, a trustee of a mutual fund and a public pension fund, a professor of accounting, a partner in one of the major international auditing firms, the managing director of a research firm and a chief financial officers and an executive in industry.  In 2007, Treasury Secretary Paulson appointed him to the Treasury Committee on the Auditing Profession.  He currently serves as a senior advisor to LECG, an international forensics and economic consulting firm.

The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Roosevelt Institute, its officers, or its directors. 

My point is that I think there are a lot of better accounting things to start this course with than the Volcker finance video.

As I mentioned in my TLC breakfast speech, I think Rick Lillie is one of the brightest resources in accounting education’s stable of accounting educators. He brings a passion for technology experimentation into learning and is willing to share his experiences with the education world. All accounting educators should track his main blog at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
The postings are not frequent (i.e.., not daily) but they are highly informative about new advances in education technology.

Robert E. (Bob) Jensen

Trinity University Accounting Professor (Emeritus)
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Tel. 603-823-8482
www.trinity.edu/rjensen

 

From: Rick Lillie [mailto:rlillie@csusb.edu]
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 8:36 PM
To: Jensen, Robert
Subject: FW: An Example of how I combine technologies to create a fully online teaching-learning experience

 Hi Bob,

 I have deactivated several links on the example Class Assignments Schedule.  As I wrote to you earlier today, I deactivated some links in order to protect student privacy.  It is OK now to share my comments and example Class Assignments Schedule on your website and AECM.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Have a great weekend,

Rick Lillie

From: Rick Lillie [mailto:rlillie@csusb.edu]
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 1:55 PM
To: Jensen, Robert
Subject: An Example of how I combine technologies to create a fully online teaching-learning experience

Dear Bob,

You blew me away at the TLC breakfast, when during your presentation, you mentioned me and my work. Thank you.  I am most grateful for the kind comments.

 I read your comments today about the game-changing experience that moved you toward teaching with technology.  I really enjoyed your presentation at the TLC breakfast.  I wish there had been more time, but that's how speeches go.

 Like your experience, several events happening since "2000," have done much the same thing for me.  I would like to share an example of how I use technology to create course materials and share them with my students.  I do not think I have shared this with you before.  I would appreciate your feedback comments.

The approaches I am developing may be used in face-2-face, blended, and fully online formats.  Click the link below to access what I call an interactive class assignments schedule.  I have taken the traditional assignments schedule included in a course syllabus and converted it into a Web 2.0 interactive teaching-learning experience.

I use the interactive class assignments schedule format with the third course in Intermediate Accounting that I teach for both CSUSB and UCLA Extension.  The CSUSB section is taught in a blended format.  The UCLA Extension class includes students from around the world and is fully online.

Link to Class Assignment Schedule:  http://www.drlillie.com/KIA3/2010/UCLA/CAS/CASSQ10.htm

The page design is simple.  It is a data table.  Each row presents a study week during the course.  The study process moves left-to-right across the row.  I treat the study week as beginning on Monday and ending the following Saturday evening at 11 PM (PST/PDT).

The second column of the table includes study content.  The third column includes practice.  The fourth column includes assessment.

Each week begins with an embedded video where I talk with students about the study week.  I create an interactive mind map to guide students through the chapter topic.  I use VoiceThread to create short lecture/discussion segments that are linked to subtopics of the mind map diagram.  Click on the "V" icon on the mind map to view a streaming video lecture segment.

Homework is completed through WileyPlus, an online homework system that supports the Kieso textbook.  I talked with Jerry Weygandt about how I select exercises for homework assignments.

Homework assignments are at the concept-technique level.  Weekly quiz questions are open-book, research-based and go deeper into concepts and critical thinking.  Each Sunday morning, I post links to suggested solutions and support explanations for quiz questions.

The interactive class assignments schedule is asynchronous and combines features of several Web 2.0 technology tools.  When a student needs "live" contact, we use Skype.  This works great.

Student feedback has been excellent.  During Spring Quarter 2010, UCLA Extension students rated the course 8.5 out of 9.0.  It was a great class.  Everyone enjoyed the give-and-take during the term.

 I would really appreciate your feedback comments about the interactive class assignments schedule.  This is one example of what I am doing.  I am working on a paper that describes how to use technology to create "teaching presence" in the teaching-learning experience.

If you would be interested, perhaps we could use Skype to talk about the class assignments schedule.

Best wishes,

Rick Lillie
Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA.  92407-2397

Email:  rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone:  (909) 537-5726
Skype (Username):  ricklillie

 On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:
“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)


The iPad Decision
Some CPAs swear by the iPad, calling it an indispensable business tool. Other CPAs believe Apple's tablet is about as useful as a legless table. This article examines the iPad's strengths and weaknesses, introduces the top apps and accessories, and gives guidelines for deciding if the iPad is right for you and your business.
http://email.aicpa.org/cgi-bin15/DM/t/eit20bAne80GTt0Bpwt0Ea

iPad App Video (free) :  Personalized Feedback With ScreenChomp ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igp7rHZRg4M&feature=youtu.be
Thank you Richard Campbell for the heads up

iPad 3 Video --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8ecN36Ffpc

"The New iPad: It’s in the Apps," by David Pogue, The New York Times, March 7, 2012 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/the-new-ipad-its-in-the-apps/

At one of Apple’s trademark press events here,  Tim Cook, the chief executive, took to the stage to unveil this year’s iPad — and a few other surprises.

I’m calling it “this year’s iPad” because it has no other distinguishing name. Apple says the name is not “iPad 3,” even though the previous model was called the iPad 2. And it’s not “iPad HD,” even though its new retina screen has higher resolution than a high-definition TV screen.

I played with it a little Wednesday and I will be doing an extensive review later. For now, here are a few first impressions.

In addition to the retina display, it has:
• a faster processor chip
• a better camera (a five-megapixel)
• 1080p hi-definition video recording (with stabilization)
• voice dictation (speak-to-type — not, however, the whole Siri voice-command feature)
• Personal Hotspot (pay your carrier an extra monthly fee; the iPad broadcasts its Internet signal to nearby laptops and other gadgets over Wi-Fi, wherever you are, even in a car)
• 4G LTE, which means super-high Internet speeds in cities where Verizon Wireless and AT&T have installed 4G networks.

The prices, storage and battery life are identical to the previous iPads’. Which is impressive — 4G is famous as a battery hog. That’s why this new iPad is a tiny bit thicker and heavier than the last one; it needs a beefier battery.

That wasn’t the only news during the unveiling. Apple also revealed that its $100 Apple TV would get a minor upgrade on March 16. It will be able to play movies in 1080p high definition, and it will have a new icon-based software design.

Oh — and movies you buy from Apple’s online store are now available in an online iCloud locker, available for viewing on any Apple gadget, just as music and TV shows are.

To me, though, the most interesting developments were the new apps that Apple has developed for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

GarageBand, for example, has been blessed with several new music-making features. One of them lets up to four people play different instruments simultaneously. Somehow, their four touchscreen devices stay synchronized over Wi-Fi, and they make a master, perfectly synced four-track recording, ready for mixing, editing (there’s a new note-by-note editing mode) and posting online.

My favorite, if Apple’s demo was any indication, will be iPhoto for iOS. (Like GarageBand, it’s a $5 download. GarageBand is a free upgrade if you bought an earlier iOS version..)

In some ways, it goes beyond iPhoto for the Mac, in that its editing tools can do more than affect an entire photo in one swoop. It offers brushes that let you dab with your fingers to brighten, darken, saturate, desaturate or otherwise enhance individual parts of a photo. That’s something you can do in Photoshop, but it’s never been possible in iPhoto. Multitouch is used cleverly; for example, with two fingers you can rotate a photo, zoom in and out, adjust the shadowy “vignette” framing, and so on.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I sure would've liked USB and VGA ports.

Humorous iPad Demo --- http://biggeekdad.com/2012/02/ipad-magic-demonstration/
Amazing things you never thought of trying with your iPad.


"Colleges Take Varied Approaches to iPad Experiments, With Mixed Results," by Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 19, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/colleges-take-varied-approaches-to-ipad-experiments-with-mixed-results/33749?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


Styluses for the iPad

"The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Moving Finger versus Stylus
"The iPad Isn't Ready for Working by Hand," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, April 7, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_ipad_isnt_ready_for_working_by_hand.php

Last week's release of Paper for iPad was a huge boon to the cottage industry of third-party iPad styluses. It was hardly the first app for drawing or writing directly on the screen of an iOS device, but it struck a chord. It was just the right blend of skeuomorphic real-world design and familiar iOS gestures. I had never even considered a stylus before, but this seemed like my chance.

I travel the Internet in fairly Apple-obsessed early-adopter circles, so I went with the stylus I'd seen recommended most often: the Cosmonaut by Studio Neat. Studio Neat made the Glif camera mount, one of the most celebrated iPhone peripherals around, so it seemed like a safe bet.

The Cosmonaut arrived in short order in spartan, Space Race packaging. It's fairly wide to hold like a pen. It's black, grippy and dense, the exact same length as an iPhone. The business end exhibits the capacitive properties the touch screen requires: a soft touch that gives way gradually to pressure, just like a fingertip, but more precise.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Video Tutorial
"Windows on an Ipad," MIT's Technology Review, January 30, 2012 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=796&nlid=nldly&nld=2012-01-31

"Working In Word, Excel, PowerPoint on an iPad," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577154840906816210.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_RightMostPopular

Although Apple's popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn't a big hit with folks who'd like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents.

While Microsoft has released a number of apps for the iPad, it hasn't yet released an iPad version of Office. There are a number of valuable apps that can create or edit Office documents, such as Quickoffice Pro, Documents To Go and the iPad version of Apple's own iWork suite. But their fidelity with Office documents created on a Windows PC or a Mac isn't perfect.

This week, Onlive Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., is releasing an app that brings the full, genuine Windows versions of the key Office productivity apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—to the iPad. And it's free. These are the real programs. They look and work just like they do on a real Windows PC. They let you create or edit genuine Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

I've been testing a pre-release version of this new app, called OnLive Desktop, which the company says will be available in the next few days in Apple's app store. More information is at desktop.onlive.com.

My verdict is that it works, but with some caveats, limitations and rough edges. Some of these downsides are inherent in the product, while others have to do with the mismatch between the iPad's touch interface and the fact that Office for Windows was primarily designed for a physical keyboard and mouse.

Creating or editing long documents on a tablet with a virtual on-screen keyboard is a chore, no matter what Office-type app you choose. So, although it isn't a requirement, I strongly recommend that users of OnLive Desktop employ one of the many add-on wireless keyboards for the iPad.

OnLive Desktop is a cloud-based app. That means it doesn't actually install Office on your iPad. It acts as a gateway to a remote server where Windows 7, and the three Office apps, are actually running. You create an account, sign in, and Windows pops up on your iPad, with icons allowing you to launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint. (There are also a few other, minor Windows programs included, like Notepad, Calculator and Paint.)

In my tests, the Office apps launched and worked smoothly and quickly, without any noticeable lag, despite the fact that they were operating remotely. Although this worked better for me on my fast home Internet connection, it also worked pretty well on a much slower hotel connection.

Like Office itself, the documents you create or modify don't live on the iPad. Instead, they go to a cloud-based repository, a sort of virtual hard disk. When you sign into OnLive Desktop, you see your documents in the standard Windows documents folder, which is actually on the remote server. The company says that this document storage won't be available until a few days after the app becomes available.

To get files into and out of OnLive Desktop, you log into a Web site on your PC or Mac, where you see all the documents you've saved to your cloud repository. You can use this Web site to upload and download files to your OnLive Desktop account. Any changes made will be automatically synced, the company says, though I wasn't able to test that capability in my pre-release version.

Because it's a cloud-based service, OnLive Desktop won't work offline, such as in planes without Wi-Fi. And it can be finicky about network speeds. It requires a wireless network with at least 1 megabit per second of download speed, and works best with at least 1.5 to 2.0 megabits. Many hotels have trouble delivering those speeds, and, in my tests, the app refused to start in a hotel twice, claiming insufficient network speed when the hotel Wi-Fi was overloaded.

The free version of the app has some other limitations. You get just 2 gigabytes of file storage, there's no Web browser or email program like Outlook included, and you can't install additional software. If many users are trying to log onto the OnLive Desktop servers at once, you may have to wait your turn to use Office.

In the coming weeks, the company plans to launch a Pro version, which will cost $10 a month. It will offer 50 GB of cloud document storage, "priority" access to the servers, a Web browser, and the ability to install some added programs. It will also allow you to collaborate on documents with other users, or even to chat with, and present material to, groups of other OnLive Desktop users.

The company also plans to offer OnLive Desktop on Android tablets, PCs and Macs, and iPhones.

In my tests, I was able to create documents on an iPad in each of the three cloud-based Office programs. I was able to download them to a computer, and alter them on both the iPad and computer. I was also able to upload files from the computer for use in OnLive Desktop.

OnLive Desktop can't use the iPad's built-in virtual keyboard, but it can use the virtual keyboard built into Windows 7 and Windows' limited touch features and handwriting recognition. As noted above, I recommend using a wireless physical keyboard. But even these aren't a perfect solution, because the ones that work with the iPad can't send common Windows keyboard commands to OnLive Desktop, so you wind up moving between the keyboard and the touch screen, which can be frustrating. And you can't use a mouse.

Another drawback is that OnLive Desktop is entirely isolated from the rest of the iPad. Unlike Office-compatible apps that install directly on the tablet, this cloud-based service can't, for instance, be used to open Office documents you receive via email on the iPad. And, at least at first, the only way you can get files into and out of OnLive Desktop is through its Web-accessible cloud-storage service. The free version has no email capability, and the app doesn't support common file-transfer services like Dropbox or SugarSync. The company says it hopes to add those.

OnLive Desktop competes not only with the iPad's Office clones, but with iPad apps that let you remotely access and control your own PCs and Macs, and thus use Office and other computer software on those.

Continued in article


The power in Excel mapping ---
https://www.intheblack.com/articles/2018/02/13/power-excel-mapping

New features have transformed Excel into a business intelligence tool with some surprising and very powerful applications.

An apple grower in New Zealand has a warehouse stocked with different types of apples stored in crates on shelves.

It would be useful for him to know the location not just of the type of apples and where they are in the warehouse, but also how old they are.

With this information, he could better manage his inventory and improve the speed at which the apples could leave the warehouse and more stock could be added.

New features in Excel

One low-cost solution to this, perhaps surprisingly, lies in Microsoft Excel. It’s not found in the tried and tested spreadsheet which most businesses have used for a decade or more, but in one of the newer features which has transformed Excel from a data entry tool to one offering self-serve business intelligence.

The apple warehouse example was one of the business cases which came across the desk of Excel expert Mynda Treacy, who operates the training site My Online Training Hub.

Treacy, who has the status of a “Most Valuable Professional” (MVP) accredited by Microsoft, is in the business of helping her clients solve data and business intelligence issues with Excel.

When the New Zealand apple grower got in touch, she recognised the problem could be addressed with a new feature called 3D Maps, which is now fully integrated in Excel 2016 as part of the Office 365 suite. 

3D Maps was previously called Power Maps and was available under particular licences as part of Excel 2013, but is now simply a tab which can be accessed on the Excel programs downloaded by hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses as part of their Office subscription.

“It was super easy and very intuitive,” says Treacy. “You just drag and drop from a data spreadsheet onto 3D Maps.”

3D in Excel

Data on the grower’s apples was taken from the spreadsheet and dragged onto 3D Maps, which created a three-dimensional representation of the warehouse with apples marked by location, type and age. 

An added benefit was that the representation was in 3D, giving the location of the apples by height, tracking their position on stacked shelves.

Continued in article


Video Messaging and Self-Testing

September 27, 2011 message from Amy Dunbar

Has anyone used Google docs to create self-tests?  I have been creating self-tests in Flash, but I just discovered that I can create a “form” in Google docs that results in a self-test.  I can edit the form after I have created it, but if I delete a question it still stays in the Excel doc that records the student answers. I’m not sure what I am doing wrong. 

I am trying to get undergrads to engage in class, and I thought the Google self-tests might be one way. One thing I know for sure is that the way I am using Powerpoint doesn’t work. For example, I developed slides to illustrate a problem step by step.  Then I ask a similar question, and it’s like I’m speaking a different language. My students just tune out when the slides start going.

If the Google self-test works like I think it could, I could post a link to a self-test in a web page or slide, have the students work the question in class and submit the answer, and then bring up the answers in the Excel sheet to see in real time if students are understanding the concept.  I think clickers would do the same thing, but I should have adopted those at the beginning of the semester.

I’m open to any other suggestions you might have.

Amy

September 27, 2011 reply from Rick Lillie

Hi Amy,

Have you considered using VoiceThread as an alternative to the PowerPoint slides? You can still use PowerPoint slides or your own slides and mark them up as you talk about each slide. Rather than audio narration, you can use video narration that displays in a separate side window to the presentation screen.

This approach works much the same way as if you projected an image onto a whiteboard in the classroom and then talked to students while marking up the image. I use this technique in fully online classes. Students really like this approach. It might get you a better result than what you describe in your AECM post.

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets to create an online scantron type answer sheet for quizzes. The underlying spreadsheet format is set up in the spreadsheet. The form is tied to the spreadsheet. You can select a theme to make the form look more appealing to students.

You should be able to modify the spreadsheet and then resave or recreate the form. Changes should then be reflected in the online form.

I hope this helps.

Rick Lillie
CalState San Bernardino

September 27, 2011 reply from Ruth Bender

Hi Amy

I don’t use it myself, but you might like to read this page and the comments below it.  @russeltarr has tweeted about it a few times.

http://classtools.net/twitter/tweet.php?message=How%2520to%2520create%2520self-grading%2520quizzes%2520using%2520Google%2520Forms&url=http://www.robinstechtips.com/?p=394

Regards

Ruth
Dr Ruth Bender
Cranfield School of Management
UK

September 27, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar

WOW!  That was a great talk with Rick Lillie.  I am going to check out eyejot (http://www.eyejot.com/)

and voicethread. (http://voicethread.com/).  Also Rick suggested the following book:

http://www.amazon.com/-Learning-Science-Instruction-Guidelines-Multimedia/dp/0470874309/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317147358&sr=1-1#_

Rick also said he posts on a teaching/learning blog on the AAA Commons.

Amy

Bob Jensen's links to Tools of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


The iPad Decision
Some CPAs swear by the iPad, calling it an indispensable business tool. Other CPAs believe Apple's tablet is about as useful as a legless table. This article examines the iPad's strengths and weaknesses, introduces the top apps and accessories, and gives guidelines for deciding if the iPad is right for you and your business.
http://email.aicpa.org/cgi-bin15/DM/t/eit20bAne80GTt0Bpwt0Ea

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

 

Hewlett Packard TouchPad a Poor Alternative to iPad at this Point in Time
TouchPad Visual Overview --- http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/tablets/231000659
TouchPad Overview Video--- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_bE8TzgQOc&feature=pyv

"TouchPad Needs More Apps, Reboot to Rival iPad," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304450604576415863218975194.html

A small army of multitouch tablet computers has been launched this year to take on Apple's iPad, which has managed to sell 25 million units and attract 90,000 tablet-specific apps in just about 15 months, and is already in its second generation, the iPad 2. So far, none of these contenders has gained any significant traction with consumers or app developers.

Now, the world's largest PC maker, Hewlett-Packard, is entering the fray. On Friday, it will start selling the TouchPad, a 10-inch tablet with a slick, distinctive software interface. The TouchPad starts at $500, the same entry price as the iPad 2.

Clever Interface

I like the interface a lot. Instead of a screen full of app icons, the main screen of the TouchPad's operating system, called webOS, presents running apps as "cards"—large, live rectangles that you scroll through in a horizontal row.

When you tap a card, it fills the screen and is ready to use. To minimize it, you just swipe up on the bezel surrounding the screen. A second swipe takes you to a screen from which you can launch or download a new app. To get rid of a card, you just flick it upward, and it disappears. Multiple cards can run in the background.

And these cards are clever. For instance, the contacts and photo cards combine both local and online content, from sources like Google and Facebook; and cards with related functions, like an email message and an attachment you've opened, are stacked atop one another.

You can make Skype video and audio calls directly from the messaging apps. And if you buy a forthcoming H-P webOS smartphone, you can link it to the tablet wirelessly, and send and receive voice calls and text messages from the tablet, or transfer a Web page from the phone by tapping the phone on the tablet.

Hardware and Battery

But the tablet's hardware is bulbous and heavy compared with the iPad 2 or the svelte Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, an Android tablet. Worse, it's missing some key features common on the other tablets, like a rear camera or even a camera app for taking videos and still pictures. It has a front camera that can be used only for video chats.

I found the TouchPad's battery life was only 60% that of the iPad 2. In my standard tablet battery test, where I set the screen brightness to 75%, keep the Wi-Fi connection active and play local videos back to back, the TouchPad lasted just 6 hours and 5 minutes, compared with 10 hours and 9 minutes for the iPad 2. H-P claims 9 hours of continuous video playback, but that's with Wi-Fi turned off. In mixed use, battery life was decent. Apps

When H-P bought webOS a year ago this week as part of its purchase of the system's inventor, Palm, one hope was that the giant company's clout would attract lots of apps to the platform. But the TouchPad will launch with just 300 tablet-optimized apps and only 6,200 webOS apps overall, most written for phones and only 70% of which can run on the tablet, in a small, phone-size window that can't be expanded. That compares with 425,000 total apps for the iPad and 200,000 for Android tablets, nearly all of which can run on tablets even if they aren't optimized for the tablet.

This first TouchPad has no app, such as Netflix, for streaming TV shows or movies (though its Web browser, unlike the iPad's, can run Adobe Flash and can stream videos via the Web). Its version of the QuickOffice productivity suite, unlike the same product on the iPad, can't edit documents, but merely displays them. My test unit lacked stores for directly downloading TV shows, movies and music. H-P says a music store will be available at launch and a video download store "shortly" after launch. Glitches

I also ran into plenty of bugs in my tests, even though H-P said I was testing a production unit. For instance, on various occasions, the email app failed to display the contents of messages, the photos app failed to display pictures, and the game "Angry Birds" crashed repeatedly. All of these problems required a reboot of the device to resolve.

. . .

Bottom line

H-P stresses that webOS is a platform and that the TouchPad is just one iteration of it. The company plans to add the operating system to numerous devices, including laptops, and hopes that this scale will attract many more apps. And it pledges continuous updates to fix the current shortcomings.

But, at least for now, I can't recommend the TouchPad over the iPad 2.

Jensen Comment
All the competitors to iPad have the advantage of being able to play Adobe Flash.


Question
How can you best publish books, including multimedia and user interactive books, on the Web?
Note that interactive books may have quizzes and examinations where answers are sent back for grading.

Answer
There is no optimal software for all authors, because different alternatives have different features that will appeal to authors in varying degrees. Below are a few of the leading alternatives.

You can read more about the terminology and history of both course authoring software and course (learning) management software at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

How Web Pages Work --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


"Make Your Own E-Books with Pandoc, by Lincoln Mullen, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 20, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/make-your-own-e-books-with-pandoc/39067?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"2 New Platforms Offer Alternative to Apple’s Textbook-Authoring Software," by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 17. 2012 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/2-new-platforms-offer-alternative-to-apples-textbook-authoring-software/35495?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on E-Books are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Ebooks.htm

 


 

Author it in MS Word and save as an HTML file

Advantages

Disadvantages

Author it in MS Word and save as a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file

Advantages

You can see how this format is used in the many free electronic textbooks now available in most academic disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Disadvantages

From the Scout Report on March 16, 2012

PDF to HTML Converter --- http://www.pdftohtml.net/ 

If you're looking for a way to convert pdf files to html, this helpful application can do just that. Visitors just need to click the browse button here to locate the pdf that they wish to transfer. After doing this, they will supply their own email, and seconds later, they will have the converted file. This version is compatible with all operating systems.


 

Author it directly into HTML files using such authoring software as FrontPage or Dreamweaver

Advantages

Disadvantages

Author it in Toolbook that automatically saves files in HTML/DHTML files

Advantages

Disadvantages

A cheap alternative for penetrating a firewall is to attach an answer file to an email message that penetrates campus firewalls. This can even be done via instant messaging with live graders responding to each answer in real time. But there are huge security risks to opening email attachments. Students can innocently or knowingly attach bad things to attached messages that will destroy your computer. Graders can reduce the risk by telling students that they will only open attached TXT files such as those generated in Wordpad.

Another alternative is to run your own server that will allow student returned answer files to penetrate the firewall (firewalls can be adjusted for degrees of security). If done right this is enormously expensive. First you must hire technicians to maintain the system. Second you much install back up systems such as RAID.

Another alternative is to hire a commercial online testing service our course management service, including Blackboard, that allows student returned answer files to penetrate its firewalls. Such services off campus, including Blackboard, will even serve up your entire book, although it is possible to have them only serve up the examinations and receive returned student answer files. Some testing services have course management systems and will serve up and manage entire courses and tutorials.
Examples such as eCollege are reviewed at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

Other examples of testing services are provided at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardized_test

At this point you may want to read about SCORM standards --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORM

March 23, 2008 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@rio.edu]

Bob:
In respect to sending exam scores and exam answers as email attachments - it really isn't effective in just about any content authoring tool that offers it - Camtasia, Toolbook or Captivate because of security issues. Before the email goes out it goes to the email client and the student can edit the exam score if they wished. Because of security issues the "owner" of the system should be the only one to control outgoing messages.
 

Author it as an interactive video (probably a flash video) file.

Advantages

Disadvantages

Invent with Python (make your own computer games) --- http://inventwithpython.com/

How Web Pages Work --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm

May 20, 2010 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Respondus is a very powerful test generator and most publishers provide test banks in that format.
http://www.screencast.com/t/NTdlNzAw

Richard J. Campbell
School of Business
218 N. College Ave.
University of Rio Grande
Rio Grande, OH 45674
Voice:740-245-7288

http://faculty.rio.edu/campbell

Dell Sells 64-bit Windows 7 Computers But the Sales Division is Still Relying on 32-Bit Windows XP Computers
Maybe that tells us something about backwards compatibility problems of 64-bit Windows 7 computers

I sure would like to know if and why some 64-bit Windows 7 computers can run the videos such as the videos at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/ 
Most such computers, however, cannot run the above samples of part of my life's work.

My experience also tells me that there's something to being able to store your life's work in hard copy on library shelves.

When I recently bought a 64-bit Dell Studio 17 Laptop, Dell assigned me to a good guy named Charlie Mullins in the Sales Division. Charlie not only held my hand so to speak and tracked  my order before my new computer was built, he continues to hold my hand figuratively-speaking throughout my three-year onsite service warranty that I paid extra for when I bought my computer.

When I have a hardware problem, I must pass through Charlie to get access to a Dell hardware technician who then walks me through some tests to determine if I really have a hardware problem. On this Charlie is very efficient and merely forwards my phone call to the hardware specialist. I am having troubles with a flaky on-off switch, and the hardware technician spent an hour with me yesterday on the phone guiding me through a series of tests. He even remotely took charge operating my new computer. It turns out that I really do need a new switch and possibly a new motherboard such at a hardware technician will soon visit my house. Since I live in the far-away New Hampshire mountains some Dell technician may have to travel all the way from Boston, thereby giving me his entire day and maybe more just to replace a switch (I think the motherboard is fine).

I also have a problem in that a huge part of my life's work producing educational media files will run perfectly on my old Dell 32-bit XP laptop, but my life's work will not run on my new Dell 64-bit laptop due to what a popup claims are missing codecs. It turns out that this is a huge problem for Microsoft to the extent that the 64-bit Windows Media Player in Windows 7 is not the default WMP player you see on your screen. Microsoft embeds a 32-bit WMP player in Windows 7 that is the default player in your new 64-bit Windows 7 machine. The reason is the shortage of 64-bit codecs for the world of media playback. But if you choose to do so, a few techies in the world know how to change to a 64-bit WMP:
WMP 64-bit switch --- http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/10/25/how-to-set-64-bit-windows-media-player-12-wmp12-as-default-player/

Things get more complicated when I have a software problem under warranty on my new computer. Dell only offers a warranty on applications that are built into the Windows 7 operating system and not other software that Dell installs such as MS Office software. Both the 32-bit and 64-bit WMP applications are buried in the operating system, so I argued with Charlie Mullins that my WMP problem is under warranty. He's now writing up a proposal pleading with Level 2 technicians at Dell to talk to me.

I turns out that I do not have to go through Charlie to reach Level 1 technicians at Dell. I first did so with my codec problems. Two Level 1 technicians concluded that my codec problem cannot be solved. I will have to keep keep my old XP computer running for the rest of my life if I want to replay my life's work. And so will any other accounting educator and researcher who wants to view the videos of my professional career.

This just does not seem right, so I want access to Level 2 experts at Dell. However, to do so I have to describe my problem to Charlie Mullins who then must write up a formal proposal on my behalf to try to convince Level 2 experts to consider my problem. Two Level 1 technicians at Dell who declared my problem unsolvable privately admitted they did not understand problems of missing codecs and how to resolve the problems of not having codecs present in the Windows 7 operating system that were and still are present in the old Windows XP operating system.

When sending Charlie an email describing my problem I asked him to try to run any one of these sample accounting theory wmv video files on an XP machine and a Windows 7 machine ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/
In my case all the wmv videos run perfectly on my old Windows XP machine and not on my new 64-bit machine. By the way, many people have by now contacted me claiming they cannot run my accounting education and research videos on their 64-bit computers, although a few have mysteriously managed to get them to run on their 64-bit computers. In most cases they don't fully understand why they work on their 64-bit Windows operating machines.

By the way, the Quicktime player from Apple never would play my wmv files. Nor will any other video player such as VLC that I installed play my life's work on a 64-bit machine even though these players work fine on my 32-bit machine.

Charlie wrote back and informed me that he cannot try to run my sample videos linked above on a 64-bit computer, because nobody in his Sales Division at Dell has a 64-bit computer even though virtually all the computers sold by this division are now 64-bit computers. I'm not sure Charlie was supposed to let this out, but to me this tells me something about Dell still having worries about leaving the 32-bit architecture.

One sign of getting too old is when years of a professor's work can no longer be used under current versions of hardware and software. It's a little like having a double tree for horses on a wagon in the era of tractors or an old threshing machine in the era of harvesting combines.


The real definitive sign is when your wife wants you evaluated on the PBS "Antiques Road Show."

My experience also tells me that there's something to being able to store your life's work in hard copy on library shelves.

I sure would like to know if and why some 64-bit Windows 7 computers can run the videos such as the videos at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/ 

 

A Bit of History
This reminds me of when Apple used to come out with new versions of the Mac operating system that were not backwards compatible. I recall sharing a cab in Manhattan with the University of Waterloo's Efrim Boritz years ago. Efrim grumbled that Apple had destroyed years of his work by not making the new version of the Mac operating system sufficiently compatible with an updated version.

For years one huge advantage of Microsoft was insistance on making new versions of DOS compatible with older versions which led to millions of lines of code that would've been unnecessary if new versions of DOS were not backwards compatible.

That does not seem to be the case today.

Boo on TechSmith! Boo on Microsoft! Boo on Apple!

They are sometimes uncaringly destroying years of our work with new upgrades.


"Pandoc Converts All Your (Text) Documents." by Lincoln Mullen, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/pandoc-converts-all-your-text-documents/38700?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

For the past few months we ProfHackers have been running an occasional series about using the command line. I got us started with a couple posts explaining why you might want to use the command line and how to get started using it. Konrad followed with a posts about the uniq command and the sort command for working with text and data files. Amy added a post about how the command line let her hack the NOOK Color, and I wrote about using pdftk to manipulate PDFs.

Taking up the command line is easier if you have a specific problem you’re trying to solve. For me, the problem was that I wanted to do all of my writing in a plain text format, like Markdown or LaTeX. But I need to be able to share my writing in a variety of formats: HTML for the web, PDF for printed documents or academic writing, and occasionally RTF or Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.

The best way I’ve found to move between these formats is Pandoc. Pandoc is a command line tool written by a philosophy professor, John MacFarlane. Its general use is to take a document in one format and convert it to another. You can get an idea of the wide variety of formats Pandoc can translate by looking at an enlargement of the header diagram.

Here’s an example of how this works. Suppose that you have a Markdown document like the one we created for the post on Markdown. (View pandoc-example.markdown on GitHub.) You can convert this to a number of text formats with a simple terminal command:

Markdown to HTML (HTML output on GitHub):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.html

Markdown to LaTeX (LaTeX output on GitHub):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.tex

Markdown to DOCX:

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.docx

Markdown to PDF (download PDF):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.pdf

That command calls pandoc, tells it which file to convert (pandoc-example.markdown) and tells it which file to export (e.g., pandoc-example.html). Pandoc figures out what types of files these are from the extension, or you can pass it additional arguments. For some of the formats, you can convert the other way. For example, you could convert LaTex to Markdown or to a Word DOCX, or HTML to Markdown or LaTeX.  To convert to PDF, though, you’ll need to have LaTeX installed on your system.

Continued in article

From the Scout Report on March 16, 2012

PDF to HTML Converter --- http://www.pdftohtml.net/ 

If you're looking for a way to convert pdf files to html, this helpful application can do just that. Visitors just need to click the browse button here to locate the pdf that they wish to transfer. After doing this, they will supply their own email, and seconds later, they will have the converted file. This version is compatible with all operating systems.

 


 

 

Author it in simulation/game authoring software, including Second Choice virtual learning

Advantages

Disadvantages

Author it in some of the other surviving course (learning) management software described at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Advantages

Disadvantages

You can read more about the terminology and history of both course authoring software and course (learning) management software at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

How Web Pages Work --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

 

Toolbook, unlike Authorware, Still Lives
ToolBook --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ToolBook

September 25, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the update. At one time ToolBook was my main man, but those days are long gone. ToolBook has morphed through many changes in ownership and codes, but it does somehow manage a Darwinian evolution. It evolved from early versions that required authors to be techies in coding in OpenScript to later versions that feature over a dozen templates for relatively simple course authoring --- almost plug and play.

It seems to have caught on with training programs in some deep pockets corporations, including Big Four accounting firms. Some of the sample courses look great --- http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/resources/toolbook/learn_showcase.html?src=tbhome
However, there are no samples from universities as far as I can tell.
Is there a reason?

I do not see signs that the latest ToolBook upgrades have cracked into the academic market.

Are there any universities that have ToolBooks to demo?

Are there any college online education or training programs built on ToolBook?

Is there special academic pricing for Version 10?
Apparently not. The single-user price is $2,800 although pricing is complicated for company licenses.

ToolBook's Homepage --- http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/products/content-creation/tb_index.html

ToolBook 10:
Revolutionize the way you create e-Learning content ToolBook empowers subject matter experts and learning professionals to rapidly create interactive learning content, quizzes, assessments, and software simulations. With the convenience of on-demand and mobile access, your employees will learn more, faster—and deliver better business results.

Learning content that you create in ToolBook is distributed as HTML and delivered through almost any Learning Management System (LMS) available, including the SumTotal LMS, other SCORM/AICC-compliant LMS, or standalone systems.

Thousands of corporations use ToolBook today to deliver high-value learning. ToolBook users span multiple industries—including healthcare, manufacturing, finance, retail, government, education and more—and easily deploy across major operating systems, Web browsers, and mobile devices.

September 25, 2009 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Bob:
I'll be developing in Toolbook, and will share some of my output, but I am very busy until the end of the year at least.

They have become more aggressive in pricing - A single license is now in the $2,800 range, and I am not aware of any academic pricing. I usually shy away from academic licenses, since I sell my output in the commercial market, and most academic licenses prohibit that. Most content authoring tools like Toolbook do not have royalty sharing arrangements. You are paying big bucks for the product, why pay more?

Jeff Rhodes at www.plattecanyon.com  is the smartest, most productive multimedia programmer in the world (IMHO) created a very profitable private corporation around Toolbook and multimedia development.

Richard


"Microsoft Office Simplified For the Web," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704575304575296681972150418.html 
Word, Excel, PowerPoing

I am writing this in Microsoft Word, hardly an unusual way to author a document. But I'm not using Word as you know it—part of the large, complex Microsoft Office suite installed on your computer's hard drive. Instead, I am using a new, streamlined version of Word that for the first time resides on remote servers you reach through the Internet.

This new version of Word is used inside a Web browser. It works on both Windows PCs and Macs, and via the newer versions of the major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. It's free and it doesn't require you to have regular Office on your computer.

Word isn't the only Office component that's now available in a free online version. Microsoft has created similar simplified versions of Excel, PowerPoint and its OneNote note-taking program as part of the free online suite called Office Web Apps, which is available at office.live.com. To use the new online Office, you'll need a free account for the company's broader Windows Live online service.

WSJ's Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg takes a look at the new free, online version of Microsoft Office, called Office Web Apps. It's a stripped down version of the familiar desktop edition of Office, and runs on both PCs and Macs. Walt says it may be all you'll ever need in an Office suite. Microsoft is also releasing a new version of its traditional desktop Office for Windows next week, called Office 2010. But in my view, the online edition is the most interesting new development for consumers in this round of updates. It's part of the broader trend toward cloud computing—doing tasks online rather than with desktop programs. And it's meant to help the software giant compete with rival online office suites from competitors like Google and Zoho.

I've been testing Office Web Apps on both Windows and Mac computers, and in all four major browsers, and I like it. It has some downsides and is still a work in progress. It lacks many of the more sophisticated features of the local, desktop version of Office. In fact, Microsoft—apparently trying to protect its profitable desktop suite—refers to Office Web Apps as a "companion" to desktop Office, for "light" work.

Mossberg Mailbox Mossberg on buying an iPad for children But these are capable, if simpler, programs that look and feel like their desktop counterparts and they will likely meet the needs of many consumers who produce basic documents, even if they don't own desktop Office. Also, the new Web Apps are connected to a generous 25 gigabytes of free online storage for your documents, via a companion Microsoft online storage system called SkyDrive.

Another big benefit: Microsoft boasts its Office Web Apps produce documents that use the same file formats as the desktop programs and thus, look fully accurate when opened in desktop Office. The company calls this "fidelity." In my tests, this claim held true, at least on my Windows PC. (A revised version of Microsoft Office for the Mac, tuned to work with Web Apps, is in the works.)

The new version of the desktop Office suite also has many new features, but a lot of these are for power users or corporate users, and, overall, it isn't nearly as big a change as its predecessor, Office 2007. Among the new desktop features consumers will notice and use are the extension of the consolidated top tool bar called the "Ribbon," introduced in the 2007 version in most Office programs, to Outlook; a new unified view for printing, sharing and previewing documents, called "Backstage"; and richer graphics. You can also now customize the Ribbon.

In my tests of the streamlined Office Web Apps, I was able to use a variety of fonts and styles, insert and resize photos, and create tables. And I was able to view my documents, though not edit them, on an iPhone and iPad. This also works with other mobile devices.

One glitch I ran into in the Word Web App was that, if you use a tab to start a paragraph, it changes the left margin of each subsequent line. Microsoft says this is a bug and it is working to fix it.

Another downside for some users may be that the Web Apps only directly open documents from, and save them to, your online SkyDrive storage, not your hard disk. So you have to upload files from your hard disk to SkyDrive to edit them in the Web Apps. And, like most cloud-based programs, they can only be used when you're online.

There are numerous things you may be used to doing in desktop Office that can't be done in the online version. For instance, you can't drag photos by the corners to resize them, embed videos, create slide transitions or add new spreadsheet charts.

You can, with one click, open a Web version of your document in the full desktop program, to take advantage of richer editing. However, this only works with certain combinations of browsers and desktop Office versions.

Two of the Web apps, Excel and OneNote, allow multiple users to log on and work on the same document together. The others don't yet. In fact, in my tests, I couldn't open a Word document locally until I had closed it online, and vice versa. Microsoft says it is working on expanding simultaneous use to all the apps.

Office Web Apps are a good start for Microsoft at bringing its productivity expertise to the Web, and may be all many consumers need for creating simple documents.


Greg Smith, chief information officer at George Fox, said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask and print, and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on their notebooks. "That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent device," he said.
"Classroom iPad Programs Get Mixed Response," by Travis Kaya, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Classroom-iPad-Programs-Get/27046/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

A few weeks after a handful of colleges gave away iPads to determine the tablet's place in the classroom, students and faculty seem confident that the device has some future in academe.

But they're still not exactly sure where that might be.

At those early-adopter schools, iPads are competing with MacBooks as the students' go-to gadget for note taking and Web surfing. Zach Kramberg, a first-year student at George Fox University, which allowed incoming students to choose between a complimentary iPad or MacBook this fall, said the tablet has become an important tool for recording and organizing lecture notes. He also takes the device with him to the university's dimly lit chapel so he can follow along with an app called iBible. "The iPad's very easy to use once you figure them out," he said.

Still, Mr. Kramberg said the majority of students rely on bound Bibles in chapel and stick to pen and paper or MacBooks in the classroom.

Greg Smith, chief information officer at George Fox, said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask and print, and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on their notebooks. "That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent device," he said.

Mr. Smith said that the 67 students—10 percent of the freshman class—that opted for iPads over MacBooks are really excited about the technology but have not been "pushing the capabilities" of the device.

Caitlin Corning, a history professor at George Fox, said it's been hard to meld iPads into the curriculum because only a small subset of her students has the device. Ms. Corning used the iPad as a portable teaching tool during a student art trip to Europe this summer, flashing Van Gogh works on the screen when they were in the places he painted them. Translating that portable-classroom experience into her classroom back in Oregon, however, has not been easy. "It's still a work in progress," she said. "It's a little complex because only some of the freshmen have iPads."

Faculty members at Seton Hill University, which gave iPads to all full-time students, are working with the developers of an e-book app called Inkling to come up with new ways to integrate the iPad into classroom instruction. The textbook software—one of many in development—allows students to access interactive graphics and add notes as they read along. Faculty members can access the students' marginalia to see whether they understand the text. They can also remotely receive and answer questions from students in real time.

Catherine Giunta, an associate professor of business at Seton Hill, said the technology has changed the way students interact with their textbooks and how she interacts with her students. While reviewing the margin notes of a student in her marketing class, Ms. Giunta was able to pinpoint and correct a student's apparent misunderstanding of a concept that was going to be covered in class the next day. "The misunderstanding may not have been apparent until [the student] did a written report," Ms. Giunta said. "I could really give her individualized instruction and guidance."

As students and faculty members around the country feel around for new ways to integrate the iPad into academic life, a handful of programs are taking a more formal approach to finding its place in the classroom. Students in the Digital Cultures and Creativity program at the University of Maryland at College Park will turn a critical eye on the iPad as a study tool while integrating it into their curriculum. "I think [students are] taking a sort of wait-and-see approach," said Matthew Kirschenbaum, the program director and an associate professor of English.

Similarly, the faculty at Indiana University has formed a 24-member focus group to evaluate iPad-driven teaching strategies. The groups have started meeting this month to assess how their iPad experiments are going, with a preliminary report due in January. "It's meant to be a supportive, collaborative, formalized conversation," said Stacy Morrone, Indiana's associate dean of learning technologies. "We don't expect that everything will go perfectly."

Although not entirely related to the substance of the iPad educational debate, a pilot program at Long Island University was thrust into the spotlight over the weekend in an animated e-mail exchange between a college journalist and Apple's founder Steve Jobs. As Gawker reports it, complaints about a few unreturned media inquiries from a deadline-stressed reporter led to a curt "leave us alone" response from the Apple chief executive.

In the e-mail chain, Mr. Jobs said, "Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade."

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm


First Consider Learning On Your Own

Video:  Scenarios of Higher Education for Year 2020 (and beyond)---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gU3FjxY2uQ
The above great video, among other things, discusses how "badges" of academic education and training accomplishment may become more important in the job market than tradition transcript credits awarded by colleges. Universities may teach the courses (such as free MOOCs) whereas private sector companies may award the "badges" or "credits" or "certificates." The new term for such awards is a "microcredential."

Credential (Certificate, Badge, License, and Apprenticeship) Count Approaches 1 Million ---
Click Here
For example, credentials for computer programming skills are becoming more popular. Some certificates supplement college diplomas, whereas others are earned by students who did not enroll in college.

The Most Effective Memory Methods are Difficult—and That's Why They Work ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2018/12/13/quartz-69gtthe-most-effective-memory-methods-are-difficultand-thats-why-they-work

Video Crash Course: Navigating Digital Information Educational Technology ---
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtN07XYqqWSKpPrtNDiCHTzU 

Volunteering & Internships Abroad Guide for Students ---
https://edubirdie.com/blog/volunteering-internships-abroad

How to Learn Accounting On Your Own

How to Sign Up for a MOOC

Hi Paul,

Various options are linked at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Although not MOOC complete courses, there are over 2,000  free learning modules at Kahn Academy, including some advanced-learning accounting modules:
Khan Academy Home Page --- http://www.khanacademy.org/
This site lists the course categories but there are more courses than fit undert these categories.  It's best to search for a topic of interest.

Digital Nation --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Nation
Literacy Resources from the Verizon Foundation
What Happened to Thinkfinity.org?
https://www.mymove.com/broadband/provider/verizon-fios/

STEM Resource Guide for Kids ---
https://www.computerscience.org/resources/stem-for-kids/

The Open Syllabus Project Visualizes the 1,000,000+ Books Most Frequently Assigned in College Courses ---
https://www.openculture.com/2021/02/the-open-syllabus-project-visualizes-the-1000000-books-frequently-assigned-in-college-courses.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

 


The YouTube Revolution in Knowledge Transfer ---
https://medium.com/@samo.burja/the-youtube-revolution-in-knowledge-transfer-cb701f82096a

Growing up as an aspiring javelin thrower in Kenya, the young Julius Yego was unable to find a coach: in a country where runners command the most prestige, mentorship was practically nonexistent. Determined to succeed, he instead watched YouTube recordings of Norwegian Olympic javelin thrower Andreas Thorkildsen, taking detailed notes and attempting to imitate the fine details of his movements. Yego went on to win gold in the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, silver in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and holds the 3rd-longest javelin throw on world record. He acquired a coach only six months before he competed in the 2012 London Olympics — over a decade after he started practicing.

Yego’s rise was enabled by YouTube. Yet since its founding, popular consensus has been that the video service is making people dumber. Indeed, modern video media may shorten attention spans and distract from longer-form means of communication, such as written articles or books. But critically overlooked is its unlocking a form of mass-scale tacit knowledge transmission which is historically unprecedented, facilitating the preservation and spread of knowledge that might otherwise have been lost.

Tacit knowledge is knowledge that can’t properly be transmitted via verbal or written instruction, like the ability to create great art or assess a startup. This tacit knowledge is a form of intellectual dark matter, pervading society in a million ways, some of them trivial, some of them vital. Examples include woodworking, metalworking, housekeeping, cooking, dancing, amateur public speaking, assembly line oversight, rapid problem-solving, and heart surgery.

Before video became available at scale, tacit knowledge had to be transmitted in person, so that the learner could closely observe the knowledge in action and learn in real time — skilled metalworking, for example, is impossible to teach from a textbook. Because of this intensely local nature, it presents a uniquely strong succession problem: if a master woodworker fails to transmit his tacit knowledge to the few apprentices in his shop, the knowledge is lost forever, even if he’s written books about it. Further, tacit knowledge serves as an obstacle to centralization, as its local transmission provides an advantage for decentralized players that can’t be replicated by a central authority. The center cannot appropriate what it cannot access: there will never be a state monopoly on plumbing or dentistry, for example.

Some will object that tacit knowledge acquisition must be possible without close observation of a skilled practitioner; otherwise we would never see skilled autodidacts. It’s true that some are able to acquire tacit knowledge by directly interacting with the object of mastery and figuring out things on their own, but this is very difficult. True autodidacts who can invent their own techniques are rare, but many can learn by watching and imitating.

The scarcity of people who can truly learn from what they’re given is why the massive open online courses of the early 2010s didn’t work out, with 95% of enrolled students failing to complete even a single course, and year-on-year student retention rates below 10%. Learners who wish to acquire tacit knowledge, but who are unable to figure things out on their own, are therefore limited by their access to personal observation of skilled people.

Massively available video recordings of practitioners in action change this entirely. Through these videos, learners can now partially replicate the master-apprentice relationship, opening up skill domains and economic niches that were previously cordoned off by personal access. These new points of access range from the specialized trades, where electricians illustrate how to use multimeters and how to assess breaker boxes, to less specialized domestic activities, where a novice can learn basic knife-handling techniques from an expert. YouTube reports that searches in the “how-to” category has grown 70% year-on-year.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Two days ago a replacement gasket for an Amana lower freezer door arrived (from Amazon). When I commenced to take the old gasket off I discovered that replacing the old gasket was going to be a bit trickier than I realized for a very old refrigerator that came with our house when we purchased the house 15 years ago. I had no original refrigerator manual and most likely would have to spend hours locating the manual if I had one in the first place. So I went to YouTube and in seconds found dozens of helper videos for replacing Amana freezer door gaskets. I watched one of these videos and discovered how to take out 32 panel screws to remove the inner door panel and how to heat my new gasket in a clothes dryer to get it to shape properly for replacement.

The training needed to do the job took me less than ten minutes on YouTube. Millions of similar training videos are available for fixing almost anything imaginable and addressing a myriad of health issues should the need ever arise.

My point here is that YouTube makes it easy to find just-in-time training modules in a matter of seconds.

For education modules my first approach is usually to look in Wikipedia. However, some educational modules are better in video. This morning Tyler Hall made reference to the well-known Monte Hall game theory problem ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/09/the-intuitive-monty-hall-problem.html

Over the years I've occasionally written tidbits about the Monte Hall problem. But it helps to renew my old memory on this and other technical education issues that come up every day. First thing I went to Wikipedia ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

Then for added kicks I went to a sampling of the many YouTube modules on the Monte Hall problem (search for Monte Hall) at www.youtube.com

My point here is that YouTube is truly amazing for training and education needs. It's better than Wikipedia in terms of coverage of topics like freezer door gasket replacements or replacing the starter cord on Toro lawn mower (which was also a problem for me this summer).

Of course YouTube now has amazing free education channels maintained by top educators (think complete course modules for many disciplines)---
https://www.youtube.com/edu

My point here is that YouTube is evolving to a point where it's easy to lose sight of the many wonderful ways you can learn from YouTube. It's not the YouTube you forgot to follow closely over the last 10 years even though you used it for specific needs quite often.

Some of the most wonderful things in life really are free. Activists seeking to break up giant tech companies like Amazon and Google should keep one thing in mind. Those tech companies can bring us a lot of wonderful things for free or with ease because of the ability to cover losses in one area with profits in another area. What would happen to the many wonderful free videos we get on YouTube or the free or very cheap books that can be downloaded from Amazon if we tear those companies apart?

Sure we can take all the videos about repairing freezer gaskets (so I would have to phone for a maintenance technician) and videos of the Monte Hall problem away from the public. And sure we can restore some shopping in malls (think bookstores) by banning online shopping from Amazon. And we make it a lot more expensive to file tax returns by removing all the tax helper videos from YouTube.

But in this regard I would like you to watch Milton Friedman's lesson on "spoons" ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/spoons-are-in-aisle-9.html
Chopsticks would be even better


Scenarios of Higher Education for Year 2020 ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gU3FjxY2uQ
The above great video, among other things, discusses how "badges" of academic education and training accomplishment may become more important in the job market than tradition transcript credits awarded by colleges. Universities may teach the courses (such as free MOOCs) whereas private sector companies may award the "badges" or "credits" or "certificates." The new term for such awards is a "microcredential."

Competency-Based Learning --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#ConceptKnowledge

2U is a For-Profit Education Technology Company --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2U_(company)
About 2U ---https://2u.com/about/

Masters Certificates (Badges) Up; Masters Degrees Down:  What a Tech Company’s Big Shift Portends for the Future of the Master’s Degree ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/What-a-Tech-Company-s-Big/246889?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&cid=at

2U is a For-Profit Education Technology Company --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2U_(company)
Abiyt 2U ---https://2u.com/about/

LSE Bucks the Trend Toward Badges With a Three-Year Online Undergraduate Program
London School of Economics and its partner company (2U) will create its first fully online data science (undergraduate) degree. Program, priced at $20,000 for a three year degree
---
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/08/06/london-school-economics-start-2us-first-undergraduate-degree?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=6cd3965160-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-6cd3965160-197565045&mc_cid=6cd3965160&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

California Community Colleges: Online Student Readiness Tutorials ---
https://apps.3cmediasolutions.org/oei/students.html

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education --
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of Our Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

 

 


NCES: Distance Learning Dataset Training ---
https://nces.ed.gov/training/datauser/
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

The Dartmouth (Student) E-Guide to Academic Success (free book) ---
https://sites.dartmouth.edu/learning/free-study-skills-e-book/


YouTube --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
YouTube Home --- https://www.youtube.com/
YouTube Education --- https://www.youtube.com/edu 

From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on July 20, 2015

YouTube advertisers increase 40% in year ---
Top brands eager to reach millennial consumers have boosted the number of advertisers on Google Inc.’s video site by 40% in the past year, the Financial Times reports. YouTube also said advertisers from the top 100 brands based on a ranking by Interbrand were spending 60% more than last year.

Jensen Comment
This reveals the changing times in free communication, marketing, entertainment, education, and training --- yes free education and training. YouTube is playing a huge role in education and training as major universities and training companies now have YouTube channels for a vast amount of training and education videos.

See YouTube Education ---
https://www.youtube.com/edu
Especially note the featured channels

But featured channels are almost a miniscule part of what you can learn on YouTube. For example, you can learn how to operate or trouble shoot almost any device in the market by searching YouTube in a clever way. You can learn how to do virtually anything in Excel via YouTube. You can learn how to analyze financial statements and prepare tax returns on YouTube. In fact there is very little that you cannot learn from YouTube.

My problem with YouTube learning is that it is less efficient than first trying other sources, especially Wikipedia. You can efficiently scan millions of Wikipedia modules with word searches and in many instances their table of contents. For example, compare searches of the "Capital Asset Pricing Model" in Wikipedia versus YouTube. Learning about the CAPM from YouTube takes much more time than learning about this model from Wikipedia.

And Wikipedia does not advertise --- yet!

Wikipedia --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page


"Economics Study Guide and Resources for Students"
https://www.sefcu.com/Article-0002/

 


The Big List of 500+ Free Online Courses from Top Universities (New Additions) --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/new_additions_to_our_list_of_530_free_online_courses_from_top_universities_.html


Most MOOC, EdX, MITx, and Harvardx courses sign ups are only available on designated schedules. The best approach is to go to an elite university Website and look for links to free online courses.

The MITx link is at
http://www.mitx.org/

The EdX link is at
https://www.edx.org/

Note the Great Graphic
"Major Players in the MOOC Universe," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Major-Players-in-the-MOOC/138817/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en


There are many more alternatives linked at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

 

"10 Top Education Companies of 2013," Center for Digital Education, February 14, 2013 ---
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/10-Education-Companies-2013.html

From the Scout Report on March 22, 2013

Massive open online courses move ahead amid support and controversy

Colleges Assess Cost of Free Online-Only Courses
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/education/colleges-assess-cost-of-free-online-only-courses.html?ref=technology&_r=0

The Professors Who Make the MOOCs
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Professors-Behind-the-MOOC/137905/#id=overview

Google Will Fund Cornell MOOC
http://www.cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2013/03/05/google-will-fund-cornell-mooc

California’s Move Toward MOOCs Sends Shock Waves, but Key Questions
Remain Unanswered
http://chronicle.com/article/California-Considers-a-Bold/137903/

UW-Madison to offer free public online courses starting in fall
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/uwmadison-to-offer-free-public-online-courses-starting-in-fall-198rsr2-192186161.html

Who Owns a MOOC?
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/19/u-california-faculty-union-says-moocs-undermine-professors-intellectual-property


"The Idea Makers:  Tech Innovators for 2013," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 29, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Idea-Makers-Tech/138823/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

 


June 19, 2010 message from Tom Hood [tom@MACPA.ORG]

Greetings Colleagues,

I have two sons home for the summer asking if I know of any great resources to help them get ahead of Intermediate Accounting as they approach the fall semester. I figured I would go to the best source I know of to help them out – these two listservs.

So can you direct me to any on-line and other resources that may get them studying for Intermediate Accounting I and Intermediate Accounting II?

Also, what advice would you give them on how to approach these courses (one is in I and the older in II)?

I will also be sharing this on our student site…

On another note – we are working in an International Pavilion on CPA Island in Second Life and our Accounting Eductaion Pavilion (see details at www.cpaisland.com  and www.slacpa.org  ). We continue to offer free kiosks with links to your colleges and universities and free areas to meet as classes. We have an interne working this summer who can give you a demo and show you around – just send an e-mail to my attention ad mention the CPA Island.

Thanks,

Warmest regards,

Tom

Tom Hood, CPA.CITP CEO & Executive Director Maryland Association of CPAs Business Learning Institute
www.macpa.org
www.bizlearning.net 

 

June 20, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Tom,

First of all consider video alternatives. More than 100 universities have set up channels on YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

Next take a topic list from a typical intermediate accounting textbook, some of which are free (not necessarily completely up to date for rapidly changing standards) at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Then search for the term "accounting" at http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400 
Scroll down to find videos that might be relevant to intermediate accounting topics. Some of these videos are more up to date than even the latest textbooks.
Some of these videos are from the top teachers or top CPA firm leaders (like Jim Turley's videos) in the world.
Also note that if you search out the instructor (usually found at her/his university) you will often find more course materials available for downloading. Also email messages to these instructors may result in more shared learning materials.

But more importantly, Tom, consider the goals of your two sons in studying for intermediate accounting. The overriding goal of an intermediate accounting student is to eventually pass the CPA examination. For studying intermediate accounting I would have your sons dig directly into a CPA examination review course and focus on the answers to CPA examination questions in the topical areas identified above in intermediate accounting textbooks. They have to pick and chose topics found in an intermediate accounting textbook, because many CPA examination questions come from other courses such as advanced accounting and governmental accounting and tax accounting and managerial accounting.

A free CPA examination review package, complete with practice questions, answers, and examinations, is available at
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
If you want more video review modules for the CPA examination, then a commercial package is probably better ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010303CPAExam

There are some topics that are probably not totally up to date in even the latest available intermediate accounting textbooks. One is IFRS although, unless your sons will be taking intermediate accounting from an IFRS nut, I would probably not worry too much about technical IFRS problems on the CPA examination in the near future. However, great free materials for learning IFRS are available at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#IFRSlearning

In a typical intermediate accounting two semester sequence, much of the first semester is spent reviewing basic accounting (especially in universities that receive a large number of community college transfer students). If your sons need video reviews of basic accounting, I highly recommend Susan Crosson's video lectures. The links are at the bottom of the page at http://www.youtube.com/SusanCrosson
Look for "Financial Videos Organized by Topic."

Members of the American Accounting Association, including student members, can find some instructional helper materials at the AAA Commons ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home
Click on the menu choice "Teaching" and then "Browse resources."

Implied in all the above recommendations is a learning pedagogy that pretty much entails memory aiding and abetting in a traditional manner (study the problems and then study the textbook answers). At the other extreme there is better and longer-lasting metacognitive learning such as the award-winning BAM pedagogy (for an intermediate accounting two-course sequence) invented by Catanach, Croll, and Grinacker --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
This pedagogy is more like the real world where your supervisor gives you a problem to solve and you go out and solve it any way you can. You can study BAM's problems, but there are no answers provided to study. Students have to teach themselves by seeking out the answers from anywhere in the world.

Although the BAM pedagogy would be much more time consuming for your sons, you can probably get the Hydromate Case and some of the instructional support materials from Tony Catanach --- anthony.catanach@villanova.edu
If Tony is not available, Noah Barsky can help --- noah.barsky@villanova.edu

By the way, at the University of Virginia, where the BAM pedagogy was born, the passage rate on the CPA examination rose dramatically after switching to the BAM pedagogy in intermediate accounting, This is not surprising since you remember best those things you had to learn on your own. Of course many students looking for an easy way out hate the BAM pedagogy.

Bob Jensen


"Score One for the Robo-Tutors," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, May 22, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/22/report-robots-stack-human-professors-teaching-intro-stats

Without diminishing learning outcomes, automated teaching software can reduce the amount of time professors spend with students and could substantially reduce the cost of instruction, according to new research.

In experiments at six public universities, students assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on “machine-guided learning” software -- with reduced face time with instructors -- did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family background of the students.

The study comes at a time when “smart” teaching software is being increasingly included in conversations about redrawing the economics of higher education. Recent investments by high-profile universities in “massively open online courses,” or MOOCs, has elevated the notion that technology has reached a tipping point: with the right design, an online education platform, under the direction of a single professor, might be capable of delivering meaningful education to hundreds of thousands of students at once.

The new research from the nonprofit organization Ithaka was seeking to prove the viability of a less expansive application of “machine-guided learning” than the new MOOCs are attempting -- though one that nevertheless could have real implications for the costs of higher education.

The study, called “Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities,” involved students taking introductory statistics courses at six (unnamed) public universities. A total of 605 students were randomly assigned to take the course in a “hybrid” format: they met in person with their instructors for one hour a week; otherwise, they worked through lessons and exercises using an artificially intelligent learning platform developed by learning scientists at Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative.

Researchers compared these students against their peers in the traditional-format courses, for which students met with a live instructor for three hours per week, using several measuring sticks: whether they passed the course, their performance on a standardized test (the Comprehensive Assessment of Statistics), and the final exam for the course, which was the same for both sections of the course at each of the universities.

The results will provoke science-fiction doomsayers, and perhaps some higher-ed traditionalists. “Our results indicate that hybrid-format students took about one-quarter less time to achieve essentially the same learning outcomes as traditional-format students,” report the Ithaka researchers.

The robotic software did have disadvantages, the researchers found. For one, students found it duller than listening to a live instructor. Some felt as though they had learned less, even if they scored just as well on tests. Engaging students, such as professors might by sprinkling their lectures with personal anecdotes and entertaining asides, remains one area where humans have the upper hand.

But on straight teaching the machines were judged to be as effective, and more efficient, than their personality-having counterparts.

It is not the first time the software used in the experiment, developed over the last five years or so by Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, has been proven capable of teaching students statistics in less time than a traditional course while maintaining learning outcomes. So far that research has failed to persuade many traditional institutions to deploy the software -- ostensibly for fear of shortchanging students and alienating faculty with what is liable to be seen as an attempt to use technology as a smokescreen for draconian personnel cuts.

But the authors of the new report, led by William G. Bowen, the former president of Princeton University, hope their study -- which is the largest and perhaps the most rigorous to date on the effectiveness of machine-guided learning -- will change minds.

“As several leaders of higher education made clear to us in preliminary conversations, absent real evidence about learning outcomes there is no possibility of persuading most traditional colleges and universities, and especially those regarded as thought leaders, to push hard for the introduction of [machine-guided] instruction” on their campuses.

Continued in article

Also see --- http://www.chegg.com/tutors

Bob Jensen's threads on the explosion of distance education and training ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DistanceEducation


"‘Free-Range Learners’: Study Opens Window Into How Students Hunt for Educational Content Online," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2012 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/free-range-learners-study-opens-window-into-how-students-hunt-for-educational-content-online/36137?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Milwaukee — Digital natives? The idea that students are superengaged finders of online learning materials once struck Glenda Morgan, e-learning strategist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as “a load of hooey.” Students, she figured, probably stick with the textbooks and other content they’re assigned in class.

Not quite. The preliminary results of a multiyear study of undergraduates’ online study habits, presented by Ms. Morgan at a conference on blended learning here this week, show that most students shop around for digital texts and videos beyond the boundaries of what professors assign them in class.

“It’s almost like they want to find the content by themselves,” Ms. Morgan said in an interview after her talk, which took place in a packed room at the 9th Annual Sloan Consortium Blended Learning Conference & Workshop.

It’s nothing new to hear that students supplement their studies with other universities’ online lecture videos. But Ms. Morgan’s research—backed by the National Science Foundation, based on 14 focus-group interviews at a range of colleges, and buttressed by a large online survey going on now—paints a broader picture of how they’re finding content, where they’re getting it, and why they’re using it.

Ms. Morgan borrows the phrase “free-range learning” to describe students’ behavior, and she finds that they generally shop around for content in places educators would endorse. Students seem most favorably inclined to materials from other universities. They mention lecture videos from Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology far more than the widely publicized Khan Academy, she says. If they’re on a pre-med or health-science track, they prefer recognized “brands” like the Mayo Clinic. Students often seek this outside content due to dissatisfaction with their own professors, Ms. Morgan says.

The study should be welcome news for government agencies, universities, and others in the business of publishing online libraries of educational content—although students tend to access these sources from the “side door,” like via a Google search for a very specific piece of information.

But the study also highlights the challenge facing professors and librarians. Students report relying on friends to get help and share resources, Ms. Morgan says, whereas their responses suggest “much less of a role” for “conventional authority figures.”

They “don’t want to ask librarians or tutors in the study center or stuff like that,” she says. “It’s more the informal networks that they’re using.”

Ms. Morgan confesses to some concerns about her own data. She wonders how much students are “telling me what I want to hear.” She also worries that she’s tapping into a disproportionate slice of successful students.

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on free courses, tutorials, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities and Kahn Academy ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


The MOOC Model Revisited
"Massive Open Online Courses: How: 'The Social” Alters the Relationship Between Learners and Facilitators'," by Bonnie Stewart, Inside Higher Ed, April 30, 2012 --- Click Here
 http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/massive-open-online-courses-how-%E2%80%9C-social%E2%80%9D-alters-relationship-between

We're getting close to the tail end of the 36-week-long experiment called #change11, or “the mother of all MOOCs.”

How can I tell?

First, I'm getting ready to facilitate my week, exploring Digital Identities. I'm second-last in the lineup, so the fact that I'm on deck means the whole undertaking is drawing to a close.

But it's also clear we're winding down because the #change11 conversation hubs have begun to resemble, uh, ghost-towns.  Once there were lively debates and intense exchanges. As the winter wore into the spring of the year, though, the tumbleweeds began to tickle.

Note to self: next time you facilitate a MOOC module, pick Week #2, not Week #35.

Any course that runs from September through May requires stamina. When that course is voluntary on the part of both learners and facilitators, and runs as a series of totally separate modules, the drop-off can be fairly significant. Erm, even my own participation as a student has crawled to a stop over the last month or two.

I find myself wondering if the other learners will be keener than I've been? Am I going to throw a MOOC and have nobody show up?

I suppose it doesn't matter. I'm a teacher at heart. I'll put the work into developing my one-week course whether there are going to be 3 students or 300. But as I'm preparing, I'm thinking about what it means to facilitate in a truly social, networked, voluntary environment like #change11.

Or the internet.

As the awareness of the MOOC experiment grows, the term is being increasingly applied to grand-scale enterprises like the Stanford AI course and MITx. While heady, this blurs some very important distinctions.

The MOOC model from which #change11 originates was built on the connectivist learning theory of George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Highly social in format, these courses tend to be experimental, non-linear, and deeply dialogic and participatory. Contributions from participants frequently direct the course of discussion, and the connections and ideas built between learners can be considered as valuable as the knowledge expounded by the facilitator.

On the other hand, the MOOC models offered by the big universities tend towards formalized curricula, content delivery, and verification of completed learning objectives.

Far more embedded in traditional paradigms of knowledge and teaching, these courses only harness the connectivity of social media insofar as they enable masses of people to link themselves to the prestige of a big-name institution. They offer discussion boards, but their purpose is content-focused, not connection-focused.

If I were teaching in an MITx-style course, I'd have a very different module ahead of me, one far more familiar to me as a higher ed instructor.

I've been teaching for eighteen years. I profess to be in favour of learner-centered classrooms. But until this MOOC module, every single course I've taught has on some level obliged the students to be there. I am accustomed to having the institutional powers of status, credentialism, and grading backing me in the classroom.

In the connectivist MOOC model, I don't.

There is no bonus for learners who participate in my week of #change11. They won't get a badge at the end, and there is no certification announcing they completed anything. There's nothing specific for them to complete, unless I design an exit goal as part of the week's activities. But that would be MY exit goal: not theirs. They don't get to put the word MIT on their CV. And while some weeks of the #change11 MOOC have allowed participants to connect with leaders in the learning and technologies field – Howard Rheingold, Pierre Levy – I'm among the less well-known of the 30-plus facilitators in the year's lineup. They won't even get the relational perk of engaging with somebody famous.

Continued in article

April 29, 2012 message from Mark Lewis
This is an interview with Sebastian Thrun, formerly of Stanford and still associated with Google. In my ideal world, every faculty member and a large fraction of the administration and staff would watch the last half of this video. The first half is worth watching if you have an interest in Google Glass, autonomous cars, or Google X projects in general. The second half talks about his views and what he is doing in education. He is the person who taught an AI course online that had 160,000 students enroll and had 23,000 students complete it. In this interview he describes how this impacted him so much that he left his tenured position at Stanford. The lack of personal contact he talks about in his classroom does not apply in most Trinity classrooms, however, a cost of $0 for something that many students find as more personal than a large lecture hall does have the potential to change the economics of higher education.

 
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12321
 
Mark

 

Bob Jensen's threads on these issues are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

Especially note
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MITx

 

 


"So you want to learn to program?" by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/01/16/so-you-want-to-learn-to-program/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
Having taught both Fortran and COBOL at one point in my career, I will pass on this opportunity to upgrade my programming skills. However, these sound like valuable free resources for the younger generation headed for college or that generation of unemployable history majors seeking new skills.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


"Meet Jeff Jonas, the Latest IBM Fellow With No College Degree," by David Strom, ReadWriteWeb, April 11, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/04/meet-jeff-jonas-the-latest-ibm.php

This week, IBM announced its next group of IBM Fellows, seven of its employees who share, according to the press release, "a commitment to tackling the world's biggest problems with ingenuity, invention and inspiration." The designation is a big deal for IBM, and over the years only 238 staff members have been so honored.

One of the more interesting choices this time is Jeff Jonas, a 47-year old chief scientist with the company who blogs here. Jonas never graduated from college with any degree but is clearly one of the smarter people you'll ever come across. He is also quite a character.

Unlike many of his fellow Fellows - who have resumes that you might have trouble parsing - Jonas has lived a very interesting life and worked on numerous problems that are easily understood by the rest of us.

Jonas came to IBM through a 2005 acquisition of Systems Research and Development, a company that he founded in 1985 to handle labor reporting, inventory management and other back-office systems consulting. One of his jobs was designing the casino security systems in Las Vegas, where he currently lives. He worked for the surveillance intelligence group of several casinos, and automated various manual processes, adding facial recognition software that was key to slowing down the MIT card counting group. "We built [another] system to immediately identify risk in real time so they could get these people out of the casino quickly." This software is still offered by IBM as its InfoSphere Identity Insight event processing and identity tracking technology.

Jonas is one of these people that look at the world with very careful thinking, always searching for actionable patterns. For example, he helped use his casino risk-management system to track down lost family members after the Katrina flooding of New Orleans. He and his team integrated data across 15 web sites - these web sites were being used by people who said they were seeking family members with those seeking them. I was impressed by how he structured his algorithm so it wasn't going to be used by bill collectors, for example.

He calls this perpetual analytics and sense-making to keep track of data changes and to help advise decision-makers in real time. "As information changes, you want to be able to reconsider earlier decisions. If you want to prevent really bad things from happening, you want to be able to monitor risks and trends while they are happening." You want to monitor the motion of the data, as it were.

His current internal IBM project is called G2. The idea is to "make sense of new observations as they happen, fast enough to do something about it, while the transaction is still happening." His work is looking at how to commingle diverse data and weave them together - especially when things are the same, such as people named Billy and William, who could be the same person. "If you can count things that are the same, you can analyze them better and understand how they are related. It is a bit of a breakthrough technology," he told me in an interview today. "I took what I developed for the casinos and made it more generalized and easier to use." He and IBM plan to offer G2 sometime soon for the paying business public.

Continued in article

Try learning on your own using the free courses, tutorials, lectures, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

 

 


"Top 10 YouTube Videos Posted by Colleges, and What They Mean," by Rachel Wiseman, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 5, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/top-10-youtube-videos-posted-by-colleges-and-what-they-mean/32070?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

More than 400 colleges and universities have set up channels on YouTube as part of the YouTube EDU section of the popular video site, but university officials admit they are still experimenting with the service and learning what types of videos resonate with off-campus audiences.

With data provided by YouTube, The Chronicle has determined the 10 most popular videos on YouTube EDU of the 2010-11 academic year (from June 2010 to June 2011). Some college officials stress that popularity is not always their main goal—because many colleges upload lectures and study materials designed for those enrolled in the courses. Still, the list gives a sense of the variety of videos colleges post and their impact.

Star-studded commencement speeches seem to be the best way for colleges to draw viewers. Four graduation videos made it onto the top-10 list, and three of the four featured high-profile celebrity speakers: Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Conan O’Brien. According to YouTube officials, searches on the site for the phrase “commencement speech” have increased eightfold since 2008.

But the biggest hit of the year focused on a graduating student rather than a star speaker. UC Berkeley’s video, “Paralyzed student, Austin Whitney, walks at graduation,” topped the list, with over 471,000 views. The clip shows Mr. Whitney, a graduating senior who was paralyzed from the waist down before entering college, walking to receive his diploma, aided by a mechanized exoskeleton that UC Berkeley engineers designed for him.

Robotics videos were also crowd pleasers this year. The University of Pennsylvania’s baseball-pitching machine earned it a spot in the top 10, and the University of Chicago made it on the list twice for gadget-themed clips. The first, the “Universal Gripper,” displays a device researchers developed that can grip and move nearly any object regardless of shape or size. The other video investigates how the mechanized book-retrieval system in the university’s newly constructed library works. Jeremy Manier, the university’s news director, attributed the library video’s success to the fact that it could engage several Web communities: those concerned with libraries and the future of print; architecture enthusiasts; and techies. “It tells a good story and it’s got robots,” he said, adding jocularly that “robots rule the Internet.”

No traditional lectures made the list. The closest thing to a lecture is an MIT physics “module”—a 20-minute explanatory video by Walter H.G. Lewin, a professor of physics at the institute. It explains the physics behind a familiar dilemma: Which will make you more wet, walking or running in the rain?

Other academic lectures have proven quite popular, though: A Harvard University lecture series on the philosophy of justice has accumulated more than 1.6 million views since it was uploaded in September 2009.

Although other individual lectures may not receive a high number of hits, a growing number of colleges are posting them. Some universities, such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT, have begun posting all of the recorded lectures from selected courses, allowing viewers from around the world to tune in and see what goes on in their classrooms. By broadcasting their lectures, they “broaden the window of access” to their resources, said Ben Hubbard, the manager of UC Berkeley’s YouTube EDU channel. Through feedback from students and spikes in viewership during midterms and exams, Mr. Hubbard has inferred that the channel is actually being used as a study tool. However, he said, “We know that we haven’t had just students logging in 120 million times. We know we’re serving the public.”

It can be difficult to determine the factors that lead a college video to go viral, and many college-news offices and technology departments are still experimenting with ways to take full advantage of their presence on YouTube. Angela Y. Lin, EDU’s manager at YouTube, says the service provides “resources for all of our partners regarding how to optimize their channels,” including statistics on user views, as well as suggestions such as adding metadata, creating playlists, and tagging keywords.

But the success of a video is ultimately determined by the whims of The Crowd. “There is a certain mystery or alchemy about what captures the public’s minds,” said Dan Mogulof, a UC Berkeley spokesman. “There are common themes and variables that can increase the chance of something becoming popular, but it’s not a simple formula.”

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on prestigious universities that open share course videos and other course materials for free ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


The Always-Popular Open Sharing Salmon Khan
"An Outsider Calls for a Teaching Revolution," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/An-Outsider-Calls-for-a/130923/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

In just a few short years, Salman Khan has built a free online educational institution from scratch that has nudged major universities to offer free self-guided courses and inspired many professors to change their teaching methods.

His creation is called Khan Academy, and its core is a library of thousands of 10-minute educational videos, most of them created by Mr. Khan himself. The format is simple but feels intimate: Mr. Khan's voice narrates as viewers watch him sketch out his thoughts on a digital whiteboard. He made the first videos for faraway cousins who asked for tutoring help. Encouraging feedback by others who watched the videos on YouTube led him to start the academy as a nonprofit.

More recently Mr. Khan has begun adding what amounts to a robot tutor to the site that can quiz visitors on their knowledge and point them to either remedial video lessons if they fail or more-advanced video lessons if they pass. The site issues badges and online "challenge patches" that students can put on their Web résumés.

He guesses that the demand for his service was one inspiration for his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to start MITx, its self-guided online courses that give students the option of taking automatically graded tests to earn a certificate.

Mr. Khan also works the speaking circuit, calling on professors to move away from a straight lecture model by assigning prerecorded lectures as homework and using class time for more interactive exercises, or by having students use self-paced computer systems like Khan Academy during class while professors are available to answer questions. "It has made universities—and I can cite examples of this—say, Why should we be giving 300-person lectures anymore?" he said in a recent interview with The Chronicle.

Mr. Khan, now 35, has no formal training in education, though he does have two undergraduate degrees and a master's from MIT, as well as an M.B.A. from Harvard. He spent most of his career as a hedge-fund analyst. Mr. Khan also has the personal endorsement of Bill Gates, as well as major financial support from Mr. Gates's foundation. That outside-the-academy status makes some traditional academics cool on his project.

"Sometimes I get a little frustrated when people say, Oh, they're taking a Silicon Valley approach to education. I'm like, Yes, that's exactly right. Silicon Valley is where the most creativity, the most open-ended, the most pushing the envelope is happening," he says. "And Silicon Valley recognizes more than any part of the world that we're having trouble finding students capable of doing that."

 

Khan Academy Home Page --- http://www.khanacademy.org/
This site lists the course categories (none for accounting)

Thousands of Free Educational Videos from Salman Khan
"Salman Khan: The Messiah of Math:  Can an ex-hedge fund guy and his nonprofit Khan Academy make American school kids competitive again?" by Bryant Urstadt, Business Week, May 19, 2011 ---
 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_22/b4230072816925.htm?link_position=link3

In August 2004, Salman Khan agreed to help his niece, Nadia, with her math homework. Nadia was headed into seventh grade in New Orleans, where Khan had grown up, but she hadn't been placed in her private school's advanced math track, which to a motivated parent these days is a little bit like hearing your child has just been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. In particular, Nadia was having trouble with unit conversion, turning gallons into liters and ounces into grams.

Math was something Khan, then 28, understood. It was one of his majors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with computer science and electrical engineering. He had gone on to get a master's in computer science and electrical engineering, also at MIT, and then an MBA from Harvard. He was working in Boston at the time for Daniel Wohl, who ran a hedge fund called Wohl Capital Management. Khan, an analyst, was the only employee.

Being a bit of a geek, Khan put Yahoo!'s (YHOO) Messenger to work to help Nadia, using the Doodle function to let him illustrate concepts for his niece as they spoke on the phone. Then he wrote some code that generated problems she could do on a website. With Khan's help, Nadia made it into the fast track, and her younger brothers Arman and Ali signed on for Khan's tutoring as well. Then they brought in some of their friends. Khan built his site out a little more, grouping the concepts into "modules" and creating a database that would keep track of how many problems the kids had tried and how they had fared, so he'd know how each of his charges was progressing.

Messenger didn't make sense with multiple viewers, so he started creating videos that he could upload to YouTube. This required a Wacom tablet with an electronic pen, which cost about $80. The videos were each about 10 minutes long and contained two elements: his blackboard-style diagrams—Khan happens to be an excellent sketcher—and his voice-over explaining things like greatest common divisors and equivalent fractions. He posted the first video on Nov. 16, 2006; in it, he explained the basics of least common multiples. Soon other students, not all children, were checking out his videos, then watching them all, then sending him notes telling him that he had saved their math careers, too.

Less than five years later, Khan's sideline has turned into more than just his profession. He's now a quasi-religious figure in a country desperate for a math Moses. His free website, dubbed the Khan Academy, may well be the most popular educational site in the world. Last month about 2 million students visited. MIT's OpenCourseWare site, by comparison, has been around since 2001 and averages 1 million visits each month. He has posted more than 2,300 videos, beginning with simple addition and going all the way to subjects such as Green's theorem, normally found in a college calculus syllabus. He's adding videos on accounting, the credit crisis, the French Revolution, and the SAT and GMAT, among other things. He masters the subjects himself and then teaches them. As of the end of April, he claims to have served up more than 54 million individual lessons.

His program has also spread from the homes of online learners to classrooms around the world, to the point that, in at least a few classrooms, it has supplanted textbooks. (Students often write Khan that they aced a course without opening their texts, though Khan doesn't post these notes on his site.) Dan Meyer, a high school math teacher and Stanford University PhD candidate in education, puts it this way: "If you're teaching math in this country right now, then there's pretty much no way you haven't heard of Salman Khan."

Continued in article

"Video: Salman Khan @ Google 'Free World Class Virtual School(s)'," Simoleon Sense, March 28, 2011 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-salman-khan-google-free-world-class-virtual-schools/

Salman Khan is the founder and faculty of Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ a not-for-profit educational organization. With the stated mission “of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere”, the Academy supplies a free online collection of over 2,000 videos on mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and economics.

In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin in mathematics using Yahoo!’s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought his tutorial, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube. Their popularity there and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job in finance in 2009 and focus on the Academy full-time.

Khan Academy’s channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy has 45+ million views so far and it’s one of YouTube’s most successful academic partners.

In September 2010, Google announced they would be providing the Khan Academy with $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate their core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages, as part of Project 10^100, http://www.project10tothe100.com/.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing tutorials and videos ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


"Treating Higher Ed's 'Cost Disease' With Supersize Online Courses," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Treating-Higher-Eds-Cost/130934/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Oh my God, she's trying to replace me with a computer.

That's what some professors think when they hear Candace Thille pitch the online education experiment she directs, the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University.

They're wrong. But what her project does replace is the traditional system of building and delivering introductory college courses.

Professors should move away from designing foundational courses in statistics, biology, or other core subjects on the basis of "intuition," she argues. Instead, she wants faculty to work with her team to put out the education equivalent of Super Bowl ads: expensively built online course materials, cheaply available to the masses.

"We're seeing failure rates in these large introductory courses that are not acceptable to anybody," Ms. Thille says. "There has to be a better way to get more students—irrespective of where they start—to be able to successfully complete."

Her approach brings together faculty subject experts, learning researchers, and software engineers to build open online courses grounded in the science of how people learn. The resulting systems provide immediate feedback to students and tailor content to their skills. As students work through online modules outside class, the software builds profiles on them, just as Netflix does for customers. Faculty consult that data to figure out how to spend in-person class time.

When Ms. Thille began this work, in 2002, the idea was to design free online courses that would give independent novices a shot at mastering what students learn in traditional classes. But two things changed. One, her studies found that the online system benefits on-campus students, allowing them to learn better and faster than their peers when the digital environment is combined with some face-to-face instruction.

And two, colleges sank into "fiscal famine," as one chancellor put it. Technological solutions like Ms. Thille's promise one treatment for higher education's "cost disease"—the notion, articulated by William G. Bowen and William J. Baumol, that the expense of labor-heavy endeavors like classroom teaching inevitably rises faster than inflation.

For years, educational-technology innovations led to more costs per student, says Mr. Bowen, president emeritus of Prince­ton University. But today we may have reached a point at which interactive online systems could "change that equation," he argues, by enabling students to learn just as much with less "capital and labor."

"What you've got right now is a powerful intersection between technological change and economics," Mr. Bowen tells The Chronicle.

Ms. Thille is, he adds, "a real evangelist in the best sense of the word."

Nowadays rival universities want to hire her. Venture capitalists want to market her courses. The Obama administration wants her advice. And so many foundations want to support her work that she must turn away some would-be backers.

But the big question is this: Can Ms. Thille get a critical mass of people to buy in to her idea? Can she expand the Online Learning Initiative from a tiny darling of ed-tech evangelists to something that truly changes education? A Background in Business

Ms. Thille brings an unusual biography to the task. The 53-year-old Californian spent 18 years in the private sector, culminating in a plum job as a partner in a management-consulting company in San Francisco. She earned a master's degree but not a doctorate, a gap she's now plugging by studying toward a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.

She has never taught a college course.

Ms. Thille wasn't even sure she'd make it through her own bachelor's program, so precarious were her finances at the time. Her family had plunged from upper middle class to struggling after her father quit his job at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. But with jobs and scholarships, she managed to earn a degree in sociology from Berkeley.

After college, Ms. Thille followed her fiancé to Pittsburgh. The engagement didn't last, but her connection to the city did. She worked as education coordinator for a rape-crisis center, training police and hospital employees.

She eventually wound up back in California at the consultancy, training executives and helping businesses run meetings effectively. There she took on her first online-learning project: building a hybrid course to teach executives how to mentor subordinates.

Ms. Thille doesn't play up this corporate-heavy résumé as she travels the country making the case for why professors should change how they teach. On a recent Tuesday morning, The Chronicle tagged along as that mission brought Ms. Thille to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was meeting with folks from the university and two nearby community colleges to prepare for the development of a new pre-calculus course.

It's one piece of a quiet but sweeping push to develop, deploy, and test Open Learning Initiative courses at public institutions around the country, led by an alphabet soup of education groups.

The failure rate in such precalculus courses can be so bad that as many as 50 percent of students need to take the class a second time. Ms. Thille and her colleagues hope to improve on that record while developing materials of such quality that they're used by perhaps 100,000 students each year. Facing Skepticism

But first the collaborators must learn how to build a course as a team. As Ms. Thille fires up her PowerPoint, she faces a dozen or so administrators and professors in Chicago. The faculty members segregate themselves into clusters—community-college people mostly in one group, university folks mostly in another. Some professors are learning about the initiative in detail for the first time. There is little visible excitement as they plunge into the project, eating muffins at uncomfortable desks in a classroom on the sixth floor of the Soviet-looking science-and-engineering building.

By contrast, Ms. Thille whirls with enthusiasm. She describes Online Learning Initiative features like software that mimics human tutors: making comments when students go awry, keeping quiet when they perform well, and answering questions about what to do next. She discusses the "dashboard" that tells professors how well students grasp each learning objective. Throughout, she gives an impression of hyper-competence, like a pupil who sits in the front row and knows the answer to every question.

But her remarks can sometimes veer into a disorienting brew of jargon, giving the impression that she is talking about lab subjects rather than college kids. Once she mentions "dosing" students with a learning activity. And early on in the workshop, she faces a feisty challenge from Chad Taylor, an assistant professor at Harper College. He worries about what happens when students must face free-form questions, which the computer doesn't baby them through.

"I will self-disclose myself as a skeptic of these programs," he says. Software is "very good at prompting the students to go step by step, and 'do this' and 'do that,' and all these bells and whistles with hints. But the problem is, in my classroom they're not prompted step by step."

Around the country, there's more skepticism where that came from, Ms. Thille confides over a dinner of tuna tacos later that day. One chief obstacle is the "not-invented-here problem." Professors are wary of adopting courses they did not create. The Online Learning Initiative's team-based model represents a cultural shift for a professoriate that derives status, and pride, from individual contributions.

Then there's privacy. The beauty of OLI is that developers can improve classes by studying data from thousands of students. But some academics worry that colleges could use that same data to evaluate professors—and fire those whose students fail to measure up.

Ms. Thille tells a personal story that illustrates who could benefit if she prevails. Years ago she adopted a teenager, Cece. The daughter of a drug user who died of AIDS, Cece was 28 days' truant from high school when she went to live with Ms. Thille. She was so undereducated, even the simple fractions of measuring cups eluded her. Her math teacher told Ms. Thille that with 40 kids in class, she needed to focus on the ones who were going to "make it."

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
In a way we already have something like this operating in colleges and universities that adopt the Brigham Young University variable speed video disks designed for learning the two basic accounting courses without meeting in classrooms or having the usual online instruction. Applications vary of course, and some colleges may have recitation sections where students meet to get help and take examinations ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

Although BYU uses this no-class video pedagogy, it must be recognized that most of the BYU students learning accounting on their own in this manner are both exceptionally motivated and exceptionally intelligent. For schools that adopt the pedagogies of Me. Thile or BYU, the students must be like BYU accounting students or the pedagogy must be modified for more hand holding and kick-butt features that could be done in various ways online or onsite.

Perhaps Ms. Thille is being somewhat naive about turf wars in universities. Certain disciplines are able to afford a core faculty for research and advanced-course teaching with miniscule classes because teaching large base courses in the general education core justifies not having to shrink those departments with almost no majors.

Where Ms. Thille's pedagogy might be more useful is in specialty courses where its expensive to hire faculty to teach one or two courses. For example, it's almost always difficult for accounting departments to hire top faculty for governmental accounting courses and the super-technical ERP courses in AIS.

Bob Jensen's threads on courses without instructors ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#NoInstructors
Of course Ms. Thille is not exactly advocating a pedagogy without instructors. There are instructors in her proposed model.

Bob Jensen's threads on competency-based learning and assessment ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#ECA

 

 


Bob Jensen's threads on online training and education alternatives are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm


"What Can We (live teachers) Add?" by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Financial Accounting Blog, July 22, 2010 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-do-we-add.html

Over the last few years, my wife and I have become big fans of the video classes produced by The Teaching Company. Two or three times per week, we will watch a 30 or 45-minute video lecture on art or literature or history or religion prepared by a college teacher. I am amazed by how much I now know about topics that once were totally foreign to me.

In watching these videos, I am occasionally reminded of a question that comes up in colleges now and then: Do we need live instructors? Why don’t we find the very best college teachers and film their classes? Then, put those videos up on the Internet and everyone (or, at least, our students) can learn the material without the need of a classroom or a teacher.

Well, the easy answer to that query is that a college education has to be more than the conveyance of information to a passive student taking notes. So, doesn’t that automatically raise the next question that we need to address as teachers: What are we adding in our classes that goes beyond the conveyance of information to a passive student? If the answer is nothing, then maybe we should all be replaced by videos.

As you get ready for the fall semester, ponder how you are going to add value to your students. --“I’m going to tell them some interesting stories.” -- A video can tell them hundreds of interesting stories. --“I’m going to tell them about the history of my discipline.” -- A video can tell them about the history of your discipline. --“I’m going to walk them step-by-step through the essential core of the disciple.” - A video can walk students through the essential core of the discipline.

Those are all important to a class but they could just as easily be done by a person on video. What are you going to do this coming semester in your classes that a video could not do?

We live in a time when too many people believed that they could not be replaced until they were replaced. My assumption is that if you add real value to a process, you become essential. Otherwise, someone will eventually catch on that you can be replaced.

There are many, many ways that teachers add value to the students in their classes. How will you do that in the coming fall? What will you do that couldn’t be replaced by a video?

Jensen Comment
Believe it or not, I think the most important thing we can add is to be live role models day-to-day for our students. We can be role models regarding what it means to be professionally competent (without necessarily awing them in every class). We can be role models for such other things in life as empathy, caring, ethics, human frailty, and yes even fashion.

Fashion?
Professors who show up in class wearing T-shirts, jeans, and open toe sandals really turn me off. Perhaps that's because I'm an old farm boy who, at one time, was awed by male professionals who wore white shirts and neckties to work. Our most scruffy professors will spiff up when applying for a job or make a speech at a local Rotary Club luncheon. What makes our students less important day-to-day?

But the most important thing we add is to awe our students with both our professional competence combined with professional honesty in admitting things we cannot answer. Watching a talking head on television can be really educational, but having a live teacher fumble about out loud while trying to reason out a brilliant answer can be even more educational (even if it is more time consuming). Teachers demonstrate how real-world thinking takes us down blind alleys and stumbling blocks of dumb ideas. Students leave our courses with a better understanding of what a non-perfect world of reasoning is really like (as long as our stumbling really gets eventually us to the best answers).

The latest exchange of AECM messaging regarding the question raised by Tom Selling about sales discounts provides a perfect example of great teachers stumbling about trying to find the best answer. If Carla had been the first to respond it would've been disappointing to the AECM learning process.

What is sad in teaching, as illustrated  by many lurkers on the AECM, is the hesitancy of some teachers to be fearful of subjecting their incomplete or flawed reasoning to students and peers. The classic case is the teacher who delivers only canned lectures and cases in which he or she only delivers perfect reasoning that are much like prepared answers being read from a teleprompter. This can make students fearful that they can never be as smart as their teachers who always seem to know the best answers.

I love teachers who have the confidence to even provide answers they know are wrong and then testing how students discover the errors and are willing to point them out. This, by the way, is part of the BAM pedagogy ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
Probably the best teaching lies in asking the best questions without telling or even knowing the best answers.


Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM --- http://www.tiesteach.org/


The Open Syllabus Project Visualizes the 1,000,000+ Books Most Frequently Assigned in College Courses ---
https://www.openculture.com/2021/02/the-open-syllabus-project-visualizes-the-1000000-books-frequently-assigned-in-college-courses.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

 

How to Create a Syllabus --- www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-syllabus

Columbia University's Open Syllabus Project Gathers 1,000,000 Syllabi from Universities & Reveals the 100 Most Frequently-Taught Books ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/the-open-syllabus-project-gathers-1000000-syllabi-from-universities.html

These are 51/200 hits at at http://explorer.opensyllabusproject.org/  after filtering on "Business"

1 444 87.4
Corporate Finance
Ross, Stephen A.
2 348 74.5
Intermediate Accounting
Kieso, Donald E.
3 232 75.9
Investments
Bodie, Zvi
4 220 58.2
Managerial Accounting
Garrison, Ray H.
5 201 48.2
Fundamentals of Corporate Finance
Ross, Stephen A.
6 199 88.8
Marketing Management
Kotler, Philip
7 129 81.9
Principles of Corporate Finance
Brealey, Richard A.
8 127 74.8
Organizational Behavior
Robbins, Stephen P., 1943
9 126 34.5
Essentials of Investments
Bodie, Zvi
10 123 41.0
Fundamentals of Financial Management
Brigham, Eugene F., 1930
11 96 26.0
Accounting Information Systems
Romney, Marshall B.
12 96 92.2
Project Evaluation
Due, Jean M.
African Studies Review
13 94 49.8
Statistics for Management and Economics
Keller, Gerald
14 91 59.9
Real Estate
Case, Frederick E.
15 90 96.1
C : How to Program
Deitel, Harvey M., 1945
16 84 32.6
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
Malkiel, Burton Gordon
17 83 24.5
Cost Accounting : A Managerial Emphasis
Horngren, Charles T., 1926
18 77 100.0
The Elements of Style
Strunk, William, 1869-1946
19 77 27.1
Financial Management : Theory and Practice
Brigham, Eugene F., 1930
20 75 20.3
Fundamental Accounting Principles
Wild, John J.
21 68 31.8
International Marketing
Cateora, Philip R.
22 65 72.5
Management
Drucker, Peter F. (Peter Ferdinand), 1909-2005
23 65 60.4
Good to Great
Collins, James C. (James Charles), 1958
24 63 19.6
Corporate Finance
Berk, Jonathan B., 1962
25 59 24.1
Retailing Management
Levy, Michael
26 59 23.9
Fundamentals of Corporate Finance
Brealey, Richard A.
27 58 19.4
Financial Modeling
Benninga, Simon
28 58 72.7
Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives
Hull, John, 1946
29 57 15.5
A Framework for Marketing Management
Kotler, Philip
30 56 67.1
Principles of Marketing
Kotler, Philip
31 54 17.3
Financial Accounting
Libby, Robert
32 54 13.1
Marketing Management
Winer, Russell S.
33 47 29.9
Global Business Today
Hill, Charles W. L.
34 44 18.9
International Financial Management
Eun, Cheol S.
35 43 19.2
Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management
Reilly, Frank K.
36 43 15.0
Analysis for Financial Management
Higgins, Robert C.
37 43 38.9
International Business : Competing in the Global Marketplace
Hill, Charles W. L.
38 40 67.6
Leading Change
Kotter, John P., 1947
39 40 12.7
Personal Financial Planning
Gitman, Lawrence J.
40 38 26.9
Marketing : An Introduction
Armstrong, Gary
41 38 9.7
Intermediate Financial Management
Brigham, Eugene F., 1930
42 37 23.4
Asset Pricing
Cochrane, John H. (John Howland)
43 36 84.3
Getting to Yes
Fisher, Roger, 1922-2012
44 36 44.3
The Basic Practice of Statistics
Moore, David S.
45 35 10.3
Federal Tax Research
Raabe, William A.
46 35 24.8
Pocket Guide to APA Style
Perrin, Robert, 1950
47 35 6.1
Marketing : The Core
Kerin, Roger A.
48 35 12.4
Foundations of Financial Management
Block, Stanley B.
49 34 30.6
On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B
Kerr, Steven
The Academy of Management Executive (1993-2005)
50 34 41.5
Contemporary Strategy Analysis
Grant, Robert M., 1948
51 34 5.0
Spreadsheet Modeling in Corporate Finance
Holden, Craig W.

Continued up to 200 at http://explorer.opensyllabusproject.org/  after filtering on "Business"

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

 

 

 


Wikipedia Versus YouTube

YouTube --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
YouTube Home --- https://www.youtube.com/
YouTube Education --- https://www.youtube.com/edu 

From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on July 20, 2015

YouTube advertisers increase 40% in year ---
Top brands eager to reach millennial consumers have boosted the number of advertisers on Google Inc.’s video site by 40% in the past year, the Financial Times reports. YouTube also said advertisers from the top 100 brands based on a ranking by Interbrand were spending 60% more than last year.

Jensen Comment
This reveals the changing times in free communication, marketing, entertainment, education, and training --- yes free education and training. YouTube is playing a huge role in education and training as major universities and training companies now have YouTube channels for a vast amount of training and education videos.

See YouTube Education ---
https://www.youtube.com/edu
Especially note the featured channels

But featured channels are almost a miniscule part of what you can learn on YouTube. For example, you can learn how to operate or trouble shoot almost any device in the market by searching YouTube in a clever way. You can learn how to do virtually anything in Excel via YouTube. You can learn how to analyze financial statements and prepare tax returns on YouTube. In fact there is very little that you cannot learn from YouTube.

My problem with YouTube learning is that it is less efficient than first trying other sources, especially Wikipedia. You can efficiently scan millions of Wikipedia modules with word searches and in many instances their table of contents. For example, compare searches of the "Capital Asset Pricing Model" in Wikipedia versus YouTube. Learning about the CAPM from YouTube takes much more time than learning about this model from Wikipedia.

And Wikipedia does not advertise --- yet!

Wikipedia --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

 

 

 


How to Use Microsoft Word’s Learning Tools ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/425577/how-to-use-words-learning-tools/
Jensen Comment
These can especially help when reading articles and books

STEM Resource Guide for Kids ---
https://www.computerscience.org/resources/stem-for-kids/

 


How to Remember What You Read ---
https://fs.blog/2017/10/how-to-remember-what-you-read/

Jensen Comment
What I remember most about what I've read is what I've written down while reading. In virtually every book or journal article I've read (as opposed to skimmed) I take notes in the margins or at the end (inside the book covers) or on paper that I insert into my copy of the item.

Of course in my three blogs and in my huge Websites I've commented a lot about what've I've read. This is better, because I can use search engines (memory aids) to find my comments. Yes I even use Google, Yahoo, and Duck Duck to search for my own comments.


From Emory University
Study Skills Tip Sheets & Advice --- http://www.college.emory.edu/home/academic/learning/studyskillsconsultations/tips.html

Advice From Students

Study Skills Tip Sheets

Links to Academic Resources

Problem-Based Learning at the University of Delaware --- http://www.udel.edu/inst/


4 Ways Digital Tech Has Changed K-12 Learning ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/05/20/4-ways-digital-tech-has-changed-k12-learning.aspx

  1. Collaboration
  2. Information Gathering
  3. Remote Learning
  4. Teacher Prep

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology:  The Bright Side and the Dark Side  ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


Video Crash Course: Navigating Digital Information Educational Technology ---
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtN07XYqqWSKpPrtNDiCHTzU 


Prevention of Plagiarism and Other Forms of Cheating

Chronicle of Higher Education Faculty members are drastically underreporting academic-integrity violations ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/2280-why-we-don-t-report-all-of-the-cheating-we-detect?cid=VTEVPMSED1

. . .

If you’ve taught in higher education, you no doubt have discovered plagiarism on a written assignment or cheating on an exam. It’s also likely that your college or university requires you to report every one of those incidents — or maybe on your campus, that’s a request rather than a mandate.

Regardless, faculty members are drastically underreporting academic-integrity violations. Most of us just deal with these situations on our own, or perhaps by mentioning it to colleagues. At some level, we all realize that underreporting makes the problem seem less severe than it is and reduces an institution’s incentive to adopt stronger measures that would promote academic integrity.

I have heard many instructors say they are reluctant to report students who are first-time offenders. But of course, if nobody is reporting first-time offenders, then the institution can never identify repeat offenders.

A centralized reporting system is a prerequisite for the development of a culture of honest academic work. Decentralized policies on cheating tend to result in inconsistent standards, applied unfairly and without any oversight or training. Colleges and universities, then, have good reasons to adopt a centralized system for reporting and tracking academic misconduct.

But what are the incentives for faculty members to get on board with a centralized system? Clearly we want to support students and ensure the integrity of their work. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to simply expect us to comply with a centralized mandate, because there are a lot of good reasons why we wouldn’t.

Among the disincentives that make it more difficult for instructors to report misconduct at the institutional level:

·         We are anxious about the reporting process because it’s often difficult and time-consuming to prepare the appropriate evidence and document the cheating. Once you consider all the time, paperwork, and bureaucracy involved, it’s a tempting shortcut to handle a case on your own.

·         Some faculty members have little confidence that the process will treat students fairly.

·         Others worry that a centralized adjudication system would take authority out of faculty members’ hands. Those of us in favor of robust sanctions for a student’s cheating fear that the administration would not support our decision, while those of us who prefer light sanctions worry that the institution will impose greater penalties than we think a particular undergraduate may deserve.

·         And what about when students claim they are falsely accused? Such cases can cause a lot of complications for the faculty member who reported the misconduct — especially if you happen to be untenured and/or contingent. Besides hours of campus meetings and hearings, you might be on the receiving end of a lawsuit, and very few academics carry professional liability insurance.

The procedures for reporting a cheating incident are highly variable across academe. At one end of the spectrum is a simple web form that requires minimal documentation, and can be filled out in a few minutes. At the other end is a lengthy paper form that may take an instructor an hour or more to complete. Then there’s the documentation required to substantiate the misconduct — in a plagiarism case, that might be a comparative analysis of source material versus the student’s assignment.

In short, at some institutions, reporting a single incident involves a lot of faculty labor.

How institutions handle the cases that do get reported varies as well. In some places, a first offense merely gets recorded, and the only consequences come at the full discretion of the faculty member. At other institutions, every report results in an investigation, with a panel convened (typically including professors and students) to decide how the matter should be handled. Again, if every reported incident commits a faculty member to lots of paperwork and meetings, then clearly that will make it harder to ensure every incident gets reported.

Our academic culture generally rewards students who cheat. So what are we to do?

If faculty members are going to be expected to report every incident of misconduct, then we need a simple and easy mechanism of reporting, and access to clear procedures that are demonstrably fair to all parties involved. We also need the academic freedom to determine how grades are assigned in our own courses, and that includes how grades are assigned when academic misconduct takes place.

As instructors, it’s our job to create a classroom environment that supports student learning, and that means acknowledging the high frequency of cheating as we design our courses. Academic misconduct emerges out of an adversarial atmosphere, in which students feel compelled to circumvent the rules to boost their grades.

While we cannot unilaterally change the extrinsic pressures for high grades (such as admissions criteria of professional schools), we should recognize that many courses are designed to exacerbate the rewards for cheating as well as the perceived need for it. Students are more likely to cheat when they feel cornered and don’t have other options, and when an exam or a written assignment constitutes a large fraction of the total grade, then the perceived reward might trump the low risk of getting caught and reported.

Fortunately, it turns out that some highly effective teaching methods are also less conducive to cheating:

·         Create scaffolded writing assignments — that is, break down a big project into smaller, sequential steps. That way, you not only reduce the probability and rewards of plagiarism, you also teach more effectively.

·         De-emphasize a big, high-stakes exam in favor of more frequent, lower-stakes forms of evaluation. That reduces students’ focus on memorization and cramming, provides more frequent learning opportunities, and lessens the anxiety that a single grade on a big test will "ruin" their course grade.

All students — including the ones who never cheat — benefit from those kinds of course-design changes. Instead of investing heavily in vigilance, you can spend your time on teaching and provide more structure so that students with all levels of investment in the course have an opportunity to learn.

I suspect another reason a lot of us don’t report academic misconduct is that we are focused on student success: We want to spend our time on learning, not legerdemain. However, if we help our campuses in their efforts to detect more of the students who are engaged in skulduggery throughout their academic careers, that can contribute to a healthier academic climate for all.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Teachers should take steps in advance to gather evidence of cheating. For example, students should be filmed while taking examinations. It will help prevent cheating if students know they are being filmed. Other steps should be taken by reordering of questions on different colored exam booklets and having adjacent students taking different colored exams.

In large examination rooms more than one proctor should sit in the back to provide multiple witnesses.

Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism detection ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on controls for online cheating ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#OnlineCheating

Chegg Writing Plagiarism --- https://www.chegg.com/writing/plagiarism-checker/

Chegg Writing Grammar--- https://www.chegg.com/writing/grammar-check/

 


Financial Literacy Should Be Required Learning on Campus

"Teach Financial Literacy," by Steven Bahls, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/13/essay_on_responsibility_of_colleges_to_teach_financial_literacy

 As a college president, I ask students and graduates what are we doing correctly and what can we improve upon. The typical responses to how we can improve are not surprising — more parking and more financial aid (often in that order). Lately the most common answer from recent graduates as to how we can improve has been surprising — more education about financial literacy and the practical aspects of living in today’s world.

I hear the following comments with increasing frequency, particularly since the Great Recession of 2008:

Faculty and administrators at liberal arts colleges do not shy at complex thinking. We tend to scrutinize the details even as we comprehend the big picture. We look for connections among areas of thought, and revel in a multitude of perspectives. By the end of their four years on campus, our students have benefited from a well-rounded, richly layered education. I believe most even recognize what it means to be liberally educated. Having learned to "turn the crystal" as they develop their views and goals, they are confident and able to find success on many levels.

Why then do so many recent graduates seem unable to demonstrate sound decision-making in an area as fundamental as finances and entering the work world?

Is it possible that in our efforts to foster creative and critical problem solving, we neglect the basics of responsible day-to-day living and working? As we carefully engage students in discerning shades of gray, is it at the expense of black and white?

Two events have led me to ask these questions. First is the number of conversations like those described above, with graduates who confided to me their frustrating lack of “real-world” financial knowledge. The second is the fact of the high loan default rate among recent college graduates, which is 7 percent nationwide (Augustana’s rate is 4.2 percent). I know I am not alone in asking the question: What should we do?

Personal Prosperity and the Common Good

Jon Meacham, the former editor of Newsweek, addressed the 2011 Council of Independent College Presidents Institute. Meacham praised the role of liberal education, noting that "people who know about Shakespeare tend to create the Internet." But if appreciating Shakespeare and other skills common to a liberal education is viewed by most as "quaint and quirky," liberal education will not survive. Instead, he argues that liberal education must be "vital and relevant" by "training young minds to solve problems and to see what others have yet to see and to think energetically about creating jobs and wealth," which Meacham calls the "oxygen of democracy."

I'd go one step further than Meacham. Our graduates can’t create wealth and jobs if they don’t have the ability to balance a checkbook, or the skills to hold a job.

When asked to define "personal success," I think it is fair to suggest that most college freshmen would put "financial success" toward the top of their list. As they begin taking liberal arts courses, they connect their learning to other aspects of their lives, and many begin to think of a career as something more than just a paycheck. They develop meaningful working relationships with faculty members and other students, and may experience some peaks in their education — whether through an internship, international study, research with faculty or other achievements in their major studies. Their definition of success develops more facets.

At Augustana College, we have long promoted high-impact learning experiences as well as the close relationships that allow integrated and collaborative learning to flourish. Recently we have begun to take new steps toward teaching certain life skills fundamental to ensuring success of all kinds.

Leadership about financial literacy must come from the top. I remind our students that if they live like college graduates with good jobs while they are students, their debt levels will cause them to live like students when they graduate. Going out to a mid-priced restaurant twice a week for four years could easily cost $8,000. Putting those charges on a credit card and carrying the balance over four years tips the cost to well over $10,000.

Five years ago, before the severe economic downturn, we introduced a class on personal finance. Offered each spring and fall term, the class is packed with seniors and some juniors. Having read Plato and Neruda, spent hours upon hours working in our human cadaver or volcano lab, or climbed Machu Picchu, these students suspect they must improve their financial literacy before they graduate.

Their instructor, an alumnus retired banker, begins by teaching how to use financial templates. The students create a personal profile and then produce a cash flow statement for the previous year. After clarifying their own understanding of their financial history, which generally is filled with gaps until this class, they work with their instructor on the process of creating a budget for the next year. Taking into account three to four personal financial goals (e.g., paying for students loans, emergency funds, etc., and even retirement), the students lay their financial path for the future. At all times throughout the class they keep in mind their current net worth, and how that value should affect their financial decisions. The course is such a success that, given the financial illiteracy demonstrated by too many young alumni, we now are offering a free three-hour seminar as a "crash course" in personal finance for our graduating seniors.

Sharing Responsibility

Augustana is not the only liberal arts college to offer such a class, and there is more we all can do. Many liberal arts colleges are adding majors that address personal financial viability in a changing world and also attract prospective students in an increasingly competitive market.

Augustana’s newest majors — which extend from traditional majors — include graphic design, neuroscience, environmental studies, multimedia journalism and engineering physics, among others. While some of our faculty state concerns that our college’s liberal arts foundation might be shaken by the contemporary and perhaps more fiscal focus of these programs, most see the new majors as logical progressions of traditional fields and therefore deeply related to our college’s mission.

Continued in article

A Sad, Sad Case That Might Be Used When Teaching Personal Finance:  Another Joe Lewis Example
"Desperate times:  Ex-Celtic Williams, once a top scorer, is now looking for an assist," by Bob Hohler, Boston Globe, July 2, 2010 ---
http://www.boston.com/sports/basketball/celtics/articles/2010/07/02/desperate_times/

Every night at bedtime, former Celtic Ray Williams locks the doors of his home: a broken-down 1992 Buick, rusting on a back street where he ran out of everything.

The 10-year NBA veteran formerly known as “Sugar Ray’’ leans back in the driver’s seat, drapes his legs over the center console, and rests his head on a pillow of tattered towels. He tunes his boom box to gospel music, closes his eyes, and wonders.

Williams, a generation removed from staying in first-class hotels with Larry Bird and Co. in their drive to the 1985 NBA Finals, mostly wonders how much more he can bear. He is not new to poverty, illness, homelessness. Or quiet desperation.

In recent weeks, he has lived on bread and water.

“They say God won’t give you more than you can handle,’’ Williams said in his roadside sedan. “But this is wearing me out.’’

A former top-10 NBA draft pick who once scored 52 points in a game, Williams is a face of big-time basketball’s underclass. As the NBA employs players whose average annual salaries top $5 million, Williams is among scores of retired players for whom the good life vanished not long after the final whistle.

Dozens of NBA retirees, including Williams and his brother, Gus, a two-time All-Star, have sought bankruptcy protection.

“Ray is like many players who invested so much of their lives in basketball,’’ said Mike Glenn, who played 10 years in the NBA, including three with Williams and the New York Knicks. “When the dividends stopped coming, the problems started escalating. It’s a cold reality.’’

Williams, 55 and diabetic, wants the titans of today’s NBA to help take care of him and other retirees who have plenty of time to watch games but no televisions to do so. He needs food, shelter, cash for car repairs, and a job, and he believes the multibillion-dollar league and its players should treat him as if he were a teammate in distress.

One thing Williams especially wants them to know: Unlike many troubled ex-players, he has never fallen prey to drugs, alcohol, or gambling.

“When I played the game, they always talked about loyalty to the team,’’ Williams said. “Well, where’s the loyalty and compassion for ex-players who are hurting? We opened the door for these guys whose salaries are through the roof.’’

Unfortunately for Williams, the NBA-related organizations best suited to help him have closed their checkbooks to him. The NBA Legends Foundation, which awarded him grants totaling more than $10,000 in 1996 and 2004, denied his recent request for help. So did the NBA Retired Players Association, which in the past year gave him two grants totaling $2,000.

Continued in article

 

Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/BookBob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers

 


Amazon Launches Kindle Textbook Creator --- http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/cab/abn/y15/m01/i23/s02
Thank you Richard Campbell for the heads up.

Amazon launched a new service that helps educators and authors publish their own digital "textbooks" and other educational content that students can then access on Fire tablets, iPad, iPhone, Android smartphones and tablets, Mac, and PC.

"Educators and authors can use the public beta of Amazon's new Kindle Textbook Creator tool to easily turn PDFs of their textbooks and course materials into Kindle books," the company explained in its announcement. "Once the book is ready, authors can upload it to KDP in just a few simple steps to reach students worldwide."

Features include flashcards, highlighting, and note-taking.

Those who publish through the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) program can earn royalties of up to 70% and keep their rights and maintain control of their content. "They can also choose to enroll their books in KDP Select for additional royalty opportunities like Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, and access to marketing tools like Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions," Amazon said.

More information about the KDP program is available on the Amazon website.

Jensen Comment
It's relatively easy in my field to write chapter material relative to the end-of-chapter material on questions, problems, and cases to be accompanied by a separate answer book. Also in accounting and tax there's a constant stream of rules changes such that updating textbooks becomes a pain in the butt for an individual author. For popular accounting and tax textbooks such updating has become a factory operation by the big publishing firms along with production of all the supplementary videos, test banks, teaching notes, etc.

My point is that its harder to be a textbook author in some disciplines vis-a-vis others where the content needs changing annually or more often. Textbook authors often find their textbooks own them rather than vice versa.

Kindle Textbook Creater makes it relatively easy to change course handouts into a textbook. But consideration needs to be given to all those copyrighted notes now in your password-controlled Moodle or Blackboard servers that cannot be made available by to the general public.

Also consideration needs to be given to ethics and your employer's policies regarding sales of materials to your own students.

 


Interactive (online or offline) Homework and Other Student-Friendly Features of Google Apps

Google Docs has added an equation editor so students can actually complete math problems within a document, allowing students to not only write papers that include numbers and equations but also take notes from quantitative classes using Google Docs. Google has also added the ability to insert superscripts and subscripts, which can be useful for writing out chemical compounds or algebraic expressions.
"Google Docs Become More Student-Friendly," by Lena Rao, TechCrunch.com via The Washington Post, September 28, 2009 --- Click Here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092802665.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Google has been aggressively marketing Google Apps to schools, recently launching a centralized site designed to recruit universities and colleges. Now, Google is tweaking Google Docs, which is a part of Google Apps' productivity suite, by adding a few student-friendly features.

Google Docs has added an equation editor so students can actually complete math problems within a document, allowing students to not only write papers that include numbers and equations but also take notes from quantitative classes using Google Docs. Google has also added the ability to insert superscripts and subscripts, which can be useful for writing out chemical compounds or algebraic expressions.

Google is also trying to make Docs appealing to those humanities majors out there by letting users to select from various bulleting styles for creating outlines and giving students ability to print footnotes as endnotes for term papers. And a few weeks ago, Google launched a translation feature in Google Docs.

As we've written in the past, Google is wise to recruit educational institutions because that's where many people get trained, start relying on, and form brand allegiances to productivity apps. Drawing from Apple's strategy, Google knows that brand loyalty is definitely forged at these schools and is steadily developing its products to become more appealing to students. Rival Microsoft is also launching web-based versions of its Office products aimed at the student audience. And startup Zoho offers a free web-based productivity suite.

"Click here to find out more! Google Docs Can Now Be Exported Through Takeout," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, January 24, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_docs_data_can_now_be_exported_through_takeo.php

Google Docs can now be exported from the Google Takeout menu, thanks to Google's Data Liberation Front. Previously, users could export and import documents in various formats, but they are now available alongside data from all other Google services in Takeout.

Google Takeout was unveiled in summer 2011. It allows Google users to export all their Google data to disk or just data from individual services. It's all thanks to the Data Liberation Front team, which builds tools to give Google users control over their data.

Continued in article

 

Tax Professor Amy Dunbar Loves Google Docs

Collaboration --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Collaboration

Social Networking --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

Google Wave --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave

Google Docs --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs

May 31, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

http://users.business.uconn.edu/adunbar/videos/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html 

If anyone wants the “quiz” that the students worked, send me an email (not AECM), and I will send you the file.

Amy

Amy Dunbar University of Connecticut School of Business Department of Accounting 2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041 Storrs, CT 06269-1041

cell 860-208-2737
amy.dunbar@business.uconn.ed 

May 31, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie [rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]

Hi Amy,

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses.  It's free, includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for students to collaborate on team projects.  It also makes it easy to submit the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype).  To use these tools, they need a headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com) is a free, hosted video messaging service.  You can record up to a 10 minute video clip that can be shared by URL link.  TokBox also includes a video chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference.  This feature works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com)  includes chat, audio and video-conferencing.  The chat feature works probably better than what you have been using.  With a headset/microphone, you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call.  Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great  screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype.  Following is an example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper.  One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space through an email link.  Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group video conference call.  This enables students to brainstorm and get a project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students use the audio conference call feature to talk with each  other.  While all are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and views it on his/her computer screen.  One or more students act as the editor.  All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document in .pdf format to his/her hard drive.  The student then submits the document for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get things done.  Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can  do for free.  Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively inexpensive.  The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and online classes.  It works great.  The approach changes the nature of how students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA.  92407-2397
Email:  rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone:  (909) 537-5726Skype (Username):  ricklillie

On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)

January 25, 2012 update from Amy Dunbar

Hi Bob,

I’m now using Google Docs with my undergrad students, too. (I’m back in the classroom after 12 years online.)  No one needs instructions on how to use the tool anymore.  I particularly like the chat function in the spreadsheet.  Students generally use the Google chat feature instead of AIM. To make sure I have access to the spreadsheets, I set them up for each group and send the groups the link. Google is truly making learning collaborative. At the end of the semester, I delete them all and start over with the next class.

And a follow-up to Rick Lillie’s suggestion to read

Clark, R. C., and R. E. Mayer. 2011. E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning Third ed. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

After reading that book, I revised all my content modules in an effort to reduce cognitive overload.  Now I use dropdown windows to provide examples, problems, comments.  My Dunbar comments are coded a different color, so they can ignore them.  ;-)  When I mapped my quizzes back to the content modules, I discovered that a lot of my material was not on point for the quizzes, and thus wasn’t essential to what I thought they should know cold when the course was over.  That extra material is now in a drop-down window titled “more,” which students can read if they want to know more.  The content on each page is now fairly straightforward (she says hopefully).  Thank you, Rick, for suggesting that book.  It changed the way I create my content modules.

Amy
UConn

"Using Google Docs to Check In On Students’ Reading," by Brian Croxall, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 8 ,2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/using-google-docs-to-check-in-on-students-reading/38405?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Last semester I taught my favorite book, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. With nightly reading assignments that take three to four hours, I expect students to fall behind. So I wasn’t surprised when, a few days in, I asked if everyone had done all the reading and the majority of the class avoided looking at me. Such are the occupational hazards of teaching.

We’re only a few weeks into the semester, but experience shows that it’s never too early for students to get behind in their reading—even if you’re not teaching amazing post-print fiction. While students clearly have the right to choose what they will and will not read, when a significant portion of the class falls behind it can make it very difficult to lead a class discussion.

Last semester, I heard a strategy from my friend and colleague Alyssa Stalsberg-Canelli for dealing with exactly this problem: have the students write down the page number they’ve reached in their reading on a scrap of paper and pass it up to the front. Students can then tell you, more or less anonymously, how far they’ve come in their reading. Taking the class’s temperature in this manner allows you to adjust your strategy for leading the class and saves you from asking questions that no one will be able to answer, resulting in the not-so-golden silence.

For just one more turn of the screw, I decided to forego the pieces of paper and instead used Google Docs. (You want posts about Google Docs? We got ‘em!) First, I created a spreadsheet. As I’ve said before, I use spreadsheets for everything! Then I clicked the “Share” button in the upper right corner.

Continued in article

"Google Docs Can Now Be Exported Through Takeout," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, January 24, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_docs_data_can_now_be_exported_through_takeo.php

Bob Jensen's threads on Google Docs are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#GoogleApps

 

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How to author books and other materials for online delivery
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How Scholars Search the Web ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars


How Web Pages Work ---
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


"Mapping Novels with Google Earth," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 6, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/mapping-novels/32528?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
Various accounting student team projects come to mind using the above technology. One could be an accounting history project in which students map important events in early accounting history, some of which are mentioned at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory

Abacus Techniques by Totton Heffelfinger & Gary Flom.

Articles, Excerpts and Analysis

The Abacus vs.The Electric Calculator

In 1946, a contest held in Tokyo, pitted an abacus against an electric calculator; the abacus won, of course.
 

Feynman vs. The Abacus

Richard Feynman battles against the abacus; the result is not surprising (if you know Feynman).
 

Comparing the Chinese and the Mesoamerican Abacus

An analysis contributed by David B. Kelley.
 

The Roman Hand-Abacus

An analysis contributed by Steve Stephenson.
 

The Incan Khipu

String, and Knot, Theory of Inca Writing by John Noble Wilford.
Talking Knots of the Incas by Viviano and Davide Domenici.
 

Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge

An article about the dangers of forgetting knowledge learned from the past, by Eugene Linden.

All Things Abacus

Additional Abacus Resources

Purchase  or build an abacus  ·  An abacus for your Palm  ·  Books about the abacus  ·  Java applet source code  ·  The Mesoamerican abacus
 

Resources For Teachers

The abacus in the classroom  ·  Abacus lesson plan  ·  Math and science resources for teachers
 

Photos

High-resolution photos of my abacus collection.

Early History of Mathematics and Calculating in China
The best general source for ancient Chinese mathematics is Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3. In this volume you will learn, for example, that the Chinese proved the Pythagorean Theorem at the very latest by the Later Han dynasty (25-221 CE). The proof comes from an ancient text called The Arithmetical Classic of the Gnomon and the Circular Paths of Heaven. The book has been translated by Christopher Cullen in his Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient China: The Zhou Bi Suan Jing. Needham also discusses the abacus, or suanpan ("calculating plate").
Steve Field, Professor of Chinese, Trinity University, September 24, 2008
Jensen Comment
Later Han Dynasty --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later_Han_Dynasty_(Five_Dynasties)
Pythagorean Theorem Theorem --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_Theorem
Pythagorean Theorem (Gougu Theorem in China) History --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_Theorem#History
Suanpan --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suanpan


A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING

From Texas A&M University
Accounting History Outline --- http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html


Accounting History (across hundreds of years)
 
A Change Fifty-Years in the Making, by Jennie Mitchell, Project Accounting WED Interconnect --- http://accounting.smwc.edu/historyacc.htm


Papyrus --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus
Early accounting records were written on papyrus

Serious Accounting Historians May Find Some Things of Use Here
Advanced Papyrological Information System from Columbia University --- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/projects/digital/apis/

Questions
What was an ancient Greek ploy to combat inflation?
How do you account for interest paid in cabbages during hyperinflation?

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter --- http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/walrus.html

"Papyrus Research Provides Insights Into 'Modern Concerns' of Ancient World," Science Daily, October 30, 2010 --- Click Here
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101029092045.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29


Origins of Double Entry Accounting are Unknown

Recall that double entry bookkeeping supposedly evolved in Italy long before it was put into algebraic form in the book Summa by Luca Pacioli  and into an earlier book by Benedikt Kotruljevic.

"A Brief History of Double Entry Book-keeping (10 Episodes) ," BBC Radio ---
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r401p
Thanks to Len Steenkamp for the heads up

Jolyon Jenkins investigates how accountants shaped the modern world. They sit in boardrooms, audit schools, make government policy and pull the plug on failing companies. And most of us have our performance measured. The history of accounting and book-keeping is largely the history of civilisation.

Jolyon asks how this came about and traces the religious roots of some accounting practices.

Eventually, educators might be able to get copies of these audio files.

 

October 3, 2009 message from Rick Dull

Benedikt Kotruljevic (Croatian) (Dubrovnik,1416-L’Aquila,1469) (His Italian name was Benedetto Cotrugli Raguseo), who in 1458, wrote "The Book on the Art of Trading" which is now acknowledged to be the first person to write a book describing double-entry techniques? See the American Mathematical Society’s web-site: http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/book1.html .

Rick Dull


And so on --- I think you get the idea.

One truly valuable research for an accounting history mapping project is the free Accounting Historians Journal archive (although not all of the publications are free online but should be free to students using the hard copy stacks in campus libraries) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/dac/files/ahj.html

Using MAAW and Jstor for Accounting History Research ---
http://maaw.info/

 

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory 

 


Collaboration

Collaboration --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Collaboration

Social Networking --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

Google Wave (now defunct) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave

Rick Telberg pointed me to this excellent slide show by Tom Hood (Maryland Association of CPAs and a close friend of Barry Rice)

CPAs and the Social Media (75 slides) --- http://www.slideshare.net/thoodcpa/social-media-strategy-quickstart-for-cpas
Early on Tom picked up on social networking as an important tool in a CPA firm's tool bag.

Collaboration Software --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_software

An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert. Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of work that they are now sharing with us.

MIT Media Lab --- http://www.media.mit.edu/ 

Zoom --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_(software)

Zoom (stylized as zoom) is a videotelephony proprietary software program developed by Zoom Video Communications. The free plan provides a video chatting service that allows up to 100 concurrent participants, with a 40-minute time restriction. Users have the option to upgrade by subscribing to a paid plan. The highest plan supports up to 1,000 concurrent participants for meetings lasting up to 30 hours.[2]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a major increase in the use of Zoom for remote workdistance education,[3] and online social relations.[4] The increase led to Zoom being the 5th most downloaded mobile app worldwide in 2020 at 477 million downloads

 


4 Ways Digital Tech Has Changed K-12 Learning ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/05/20/4-ways-digital-tech-has-changed-k12-learning.aspx

  1. Collaboration
  2. Information Gathering
  3. Remote Learning
  4. Teacher Prep

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology:  The Bright Side and the Dark Side  ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


"Treating Higher Ed's 'Cost Disease' With Supersize Online Courses," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Treating-Higher-Eds-Cost/130934/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Oh my God, she's trying to replace me with a computer.

That's what some professors think when they hear Candace Thille pitch the online education experiment she directs, the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University.

They're wrong. But what her project does replace is the traditional system of building and delivering introductory college courses.

Professors should move away from designing foundational courses in statistics, biology, or other core subjects on the basis of "intuition," she argues. Instead, she wants faculty to work with her team to put out the education equivalent of Super Bowl ads: expensively built online course materials, cheaply available to the masses.

"We're seeing failure rates in these large introductory courses that are not acceptable to anybody," Ms. Thille says. "There has to be a better way to get more students—irrespective of where they start—to be able to successfully complete."

Her approach brings together faculty subject experts, learning researchers, and software engineers to build open online courses grounded in the science of how people learn. The resulting systems provide immediate feedback to students and tailor content to their skills. As students work through online modules outside class, the software builds profiles on them, just as Netflix does for customers. Faculty consult that data to figure out how to spend in-person class time.

When Ms. Thille began this work, in 2002, the idea was to design free online courses that would give independent novices a shot at mastering what students learn in traditional classes. But two things changed. One, her studies found that the online system benefits on-campus students, allowing them to learn better and faster than their peers when the digital environment is combined with some face-to-face instruction.

And two, colleges sank into "fiscal famine," as one chancellor put it. Technological solutions like Ms. Thille's promise one treatment for higher education's "cost disease"—the notion, articulated by William G. Bowen and William J. Baumol, that the expense of labor-heavy endeavors like classroom teaching inevitably rises faster than inflation.

For years, educational-technology innovations led to more costs per student, says Mr. Bowen, president emeritus of Prince­ton University. But today we may have reached a point at which interactive online systems could "change that equation," he argues, by enabling students to learn just as much with less "capital and labor."

"What you've got right now is a powerful intersection between technological change and economics," Mr. Bowen tells The Chronicle.

Ms. Thille is, he adds, "a real evangelist in the best sense of the word."

Nowadays rival universities want to hire her. Venture capitalists want to market her courses. The Obama administration wants her advice. And so many foundations want to support her work that she must turn away some would-be backers.

But the big question is this: Can Ms. Thille get a critical mass of people to buy in to her idea? Can she expand the Online Learning Initiative from a tiny darling of ed-tech evangelists to something that truly changes education? A Background in Business

Ms. Thille brings an unusual biography to the task. The 53-year-old Californian spent 18 years in the private sector, culminating in a plum job as a partner in a management-consulting company in San Francisco. She earned a master's degree but not a doctorate, a gap she's now plugging by studying toward a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.

She has never taught a college course.

Ms. Thille wasn't even sure she'd make it through her own bachelor's program, so precarious were her finances at the time. Her family had plunged from upper middle class to struggling after her father quit his job at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. But with jobs and scholarships, she managed to earn a degree in sociology from Berkeley.

After college, Ms. Thille followed her fiancé to Pittsburgh. The engagement didn't last, but her connection to the city did. She worked as education coordinator for a rape-crisis center, training police and hospital employees.

She eventually wound up back in California at the consultancy, training executives and helping businesses run meetings effectively. There she took on her first online-learning project: building a hybrid course to teach executives how to mentor subordinates.

Ms. Thille doesn't play up this corporate-heavy résumé as she travels the country making the case for why professors should change how they teach. On a recent Tuesday morning, The Chronicle tagged along as that mission brought Ms. Thille to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was meeting with folks from the university and two nearby community colleges to prepare for the development of a new pre-calculus course.

It's one piece of a quiet but sweeping push to develop, deploy, and test Open Learning Initiative courses at public institutions around the country, led by an alphabet soup of education groups.

The failure rate in such precalculus courses can be so bad that as many as 50 percent of students need to take the class a second time. Ms. Thille and her colleagues hope to improve on that record while developing materials of such quality that they're used by perhaps 100,000 students each year. Facing Skepticism

But first the collaborators must learn how to build a course as a team. As Ms. Thille fires up her PowerPoint, she faces a dozen or so administrators and professors in Chicago. The faculty members segregate themselves into clusters—community-college people mostly in one group, university folks mostly in another. Some professors are learning about the initiative in detail for the first time. There is little visible excitement as they plunge into the project, eating muffins at uncomfortable desks in a classroom on the sixth floor of the Soviet-looking science-and-engineering building.

By contrast, Ms. Thille whirls with enthusiasm. She describes Online Learning Initiative features like software that mimics human tutors: making comments when students go awry, keeping quiet when they perform well, and answering questions about what to do next. She discusses the "dashboard" that tells professors how well students grasp each learning objective. Throughout, she gives an impression of hyper-competence, like a pupil who sits in the front row and knows the answer to every question.

But her remarks can sometimes veer into a disorienting brew of jargon, giving the impression that she is talking about lab subjects rather than college kids. Once she mentions "dosing" students with a learning activity. And early on in the workshop, she faces a feisty challenge from Chad Taylor, an assistant professor at Harper College. He worries about what happens when students must face free-form questions, which the computer doesn't baby them through.

"I will self-disclose myself as a skeptic of these programs," he says. Software is "very good at prompting the students to go step by step, and 'do this' and 'do that,' and all these bells and whistles with hints. But the problem is, in my classroom they're not prompted step by step."

Around the country, there's more skepticism where that came from, Ms. Thille confides over a dinner of tuna tacos later that day. One chief obstacle is the "not-invented-here problem." Professors are wary of adopting courses they did not create. The Online Learning Initiative's team-based model represents a cultural shift for a professoriate that derives status, and pride, from individual contributions.

Then there's privacy. The beauty of OLI is that developers can improve classes by studying data from thousands of students. But some academics worry that colleges could use that same data to evaluate professors—and fire those whose students fail to measure up.

Ms. Thille tells a personal story that illustrates who could benefit if she prevails. Years ago she adopted a teenager, Cece. The daughter of a drug user who died of AIDS, Cece was 28 days' truant from high school when she went to live with Ms. Thille. She was so undereducated, even the simple fractions of measuring cups eluded her. Her math teacher told Ms. Thille that with 40 kids in class, she needed to focus on the ones who were going to "make it."

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
In a way we already have something like this operating in colleges and universities that adopt the Brigham Young University variable speed video disks designed for learning the two basic accounting courses without meeting in classrooms or having the usual online instruction. Applications vary of course, and some colleges may have recitation sections where students meet to get help and take examinations ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

Although BYU uses this no-class video pedagogy, it must be recognized that most of the BYU students learning accounting on their own in this manner are both exceptionally motivated and exceptionally intelligent. For schools that adopt the pedagogies of Me. Thile or BYU, the students must be like BYU accounting students or the pedagogy must be modified for more hand holding and kick-butt features that could be done in various ways online or onsite.

Perhaps Ms. Thille is being somewhat naive about turf wars in universities. Certain disciplines are able to afford a core faculty for research and advanced-course teaching with miniscule classes because teaching large base courses in the general education core justifies not having to shrink those departments with almost no majors.

Where Ms. Thille's pedagogy might be more useful is in specialty courses where its expensive to hire faculty to teach one or two courses. For example, it's almost always difficult for accounting departments to hire top faculty for governmental accounting courses and the super-technical ERP courses in AIS.

Bob Jensen's threads on courses without instructors ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#NoInstructors
Of course Ms. Thille is not exactly advocating a pedagogy without instructors. There are instructors in her proposed model.

Bob Jensen's threads on competency-based learning and assessment ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#ECA


Apple does not have a corner on the market for innovations in textbook authoring
"2 New Platforms Offer Alternative to Apple’s Textbook-Authoring Software," by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 17. 2012 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/2-new-platforms-offer-alternative-to-apples-textbook-authoring-software/35495?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Apple’s recent release of free software to build e-textbooks has brought attention to custom publishing of academic materials. But Apple’s software, called iBooks Author, lacks easy tools for multiple authors to collaborate on a joint textbook project. Since most books aren’t written in isolation, two new publishing platforms seek to make that group collaboration easier.

The first, Booktype, is free and open-source. Once the platform is installed on a Web server, teams of authors can work together in their browsers to write sections of books and chat with each other in real time about revisions. Entire chapters can be imported and moved around by dragging and dropping. The finished product can be published in minutes on e-readers and tablets, or exported for on-demand printing. Booktype also comes with community features that let authors create profiles, join groups, and track books through editing.

Inkling Habitat, the other new offering, appears to have even greater ambitions. Where iBooks Author is designed mostly for would-be amateur publishers, Inkling Habitat creates a cloud-based platform for the professional market. Matthew MacInnis, Inkling’s chief executive, said the company’s tool is designed to give the global teams who work on professionally published textbooks a single outlet to publish interactive material for the iPad and the Web. Mr. MacInnis said hundreds of users can access the same textbook content at once, and the software will keep track of each step in the editing process.

Inkling Habitat also automates some of the editing process that is unique to e-textbooks, like checking for broken links between special terms and their definitions in a glossary. Those automatic functions, Mr. MacInnis said, will allow e-textbook publishing to get easier without requiring additional staff. “You can’t build the industry up around digital content if you’re going to throw people at every problem,” he said.


Stanford University's d. school
"It's all about the space at Stanford's design school," by Robin Wander, The Stanford Report, January 18, 2012 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

Stanford's d.school space is the stage for creative collaboration. A new book by two of its leaders provides direction for design spaces elsewhere.

The spaces within Stanford's popular d.school are as creative as the furniture and fixtures are inventive, and every aspect of the space impacts behavior.

In his foreword for Make Space, David Kelley, the founder of the design school as well as the design firm IDEO, writes, "Regardless of whether it's a classroom or the offices of a billion-dollar company, space is something to think of as an instrument for innovation and collaboration. Space is a valuable tool that can help you create deep and meaningful collaborations in your work and life."

As a spectator on the second floor of Stanford's d.school building, on any given day you might observe a team of students standing at a project table in an active stance – literally learning on their feet. Or you might see a group engaged in a sharing exercise sitting on foam cubes in a circle as if around a campfire. From the overlook you might also be able to peer down at the atrium and see an assembly of executives paired up at cocktail tables doing some cutting and pasting – as in scissors and glue, not keystrokes.

Need an office? Slide a few suspended dry-erase panels together and roll in a table and chair. Swap out the table and chair for a couple of couches on coasters and you've got yourself an informal lounge. Need a respite from an open, collaborative environment? Step into the "Booth Noir," a simply furnished low-tech hiding place tucked in a corner. In each case the environment supports a different kind of learning or exchange of information.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's sadly neglected threads on classroom, building, and campus design are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Design


"Click here to find out more! Google Docs Can Now Be Exported Through Takeout," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, January 24, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_docs_data_can_now_be_exported_through_takeo.php

Google Docs can now be exported from the Google Takeout menu, thanks to Google's Data Liberation Front. Previously, users could export and import documents in various formats, but they are now available alongside data from all other Google services in Takeout.

Google Takeout was unveiled in summer 2011. It allows Google users to export all their Google data to disk or just data from individual services. It's all thanks to the Data Liberation Front team, which builds tools to give Google users control over their data.

Continued in article

 

Tax Professor Amy Dunbar Loves Google Docs

Collaboration --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Collaboration

Social Networking --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

Google Wave --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave

Google Docs --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs

May 31, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

http://users.business.uconn.edu/adunbar/videos/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html 

If anyone wants the “quiz” that the students worked, send me an email (not AECM), and I will send you the file.

Amy

Amy Dunbar University of Connecticut School of Business Department of Accounting 2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041 Storrs, CT 06269-1041

cell 860-208-2737
amy.dunbar@business.uconn.ed 

May 31, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie [rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]

Hi Amy,

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses.  It's free, includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for students to collaborate on team projects.  It also makes it easy to submit the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype).  To use these tools, they need a headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com) is a free, hosted video messaging service.  You can record up to a 10 minute video clip that can be shared by URL link.  TokBox also includes a video chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference.  This feature works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com)  includes chat, audio and video-conferencing.  The chat feature works probably better than what you have been using.  With a headset/microphone, you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call.  Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great  screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype.  Following is an example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper.  One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space through an email link.  Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group video conference call.  This enables students to brainstorm and get a project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students use the audio conference call feature to talk with each  other.  While all are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and views it on his/her computer screen.  One or more students act as the editor.  All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document in .pdf format to his/her hard drive.  The student then submits the document for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get things done.  Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can  do for free.  Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively inexpensive.  The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and online classes.  It works great.  The approach changes the nature of how students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA.  92407-2397
Email:  rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone:  (909) 537-5726Skype (Username):  ricklillie

On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)

January 25, 2012 update from Amy Dunbar

Hi Bob,

I’m now using Google Docs with my undergrad students, too. (I’m back in the classroom after 12 years online.)  No one needs instructions on how to use the tool anymore.  I particularly like the chat function in the spreadsheet.  Students generally use the Google chat feature instead of AIM. To make sure I have access to the spreadsheets, I set them up for each group and send the groups the link. Google is truly making learning collaborative. At the end of the semester, I delete them all and start over with the next class.

And a follow-up to Rick Lillie’s suggestion to read

Clark, R. C., and R. E. Mayer. 2011. E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning Third ed. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

After reading that book, I revised all my content modules in an effort to reduce cognitive overload.  Now I use dropdown windows to provide examples, problems, comments.  My Dunbar comments are coded a different color, so they can ignore them.  ;-)  When I mapped my quizzes back to the content modules, I discovered that a lot of my material was not on point for the quizzes, and thus wasn’t essential to what I thought they should know cold when the course was over.  That extra material is now in a drop-down window titled “more,” which students can read if they want to know more.  The content on each page is now fairly straightforward (she says hopefully).  Thank you, Rick, for suggesting that book.  It changed the way I create my content modules.

Amy
UConn

 

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How to author books and other materials for online delivery
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How Scholars Search the Web ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

 


Open Sharing Tool Library and Networking for Multiple Nations
"OpenScout supports the collaborative reuse and adaptation of Portuguese and Brazilian OER," by Alexander Mikroyannidis, The Financial Education Daily, November 16, 2011 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

The OpenScout Tool Library is a social network of individuals and collectives who are developing or using learning resources and want to share their stories and resources from different countries.

The OpenScout Tool Library is currently hosting the activities of the COLEARN community of research in collaborative learning and educational technologies in the Portuguese language. This group is run by Alexandra Okada (The Open University UK) and consists of learners, educators and researchers from academic institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Their interests focus on collaborative participation through social media, colearning (collaborative open learning) using Open Educational Resources (OER), Social Media and Web 2.0 research. There are 26 research groups from Brazilian and Portugal universities - 115 people currently registered in the Tool Library.

At the moment, this community is developing a book project called "Web 2.0: Open Educational Resources in Learning and Professional Development". From January to February 2012, three workshops will be run in the Tool Library for improving OER skills: image, presentation and audio/visual material. These collaborative activities and workshops aim at engaging people in developing their skills and discussing concepts as well as preparing themselves to be OER users who are able to produce, remix and share open resources and open ideas.

 


Related Links:

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

 


Cutting-Edge Social Media Approaches to Business Education: Teaching with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, and Blogs, by Charles Wankel ---
http://management-education.net/rmed9/


January 10, 2011 message from David Albrecht

HETL is a professional organization dedicated to advancing teaching and learning in higher education.  It got its start on LinkedIn with discussion groups.  To participate in the discussion group, a collegiate teacher (and now doctoral students) would have to apply.  If the applicant had 2-5 years experience teaching in higher education (and met certain disclosure requirements on their profile), they were admitted.

LinkedIn membership is now over 10,000 and rapidly climing.  I believe it is the largest LinkedIn discussion group.  Knowing me, you'd probably expect that I'd get involved in the discussions.  I have.  I answered a call for volunteers, and am now a reviewer for its publications.  There are two refereed venues.  One is for commentary pieces on higher education.  So far, contributors have been well-known academics such as Dee Fink.  The other is an on-line journal.

Currently, HETL has a call out for volunteers to expand its editorial and review boards.  Information can be found at the HETL portal (
http://hetl.org).  While there, you can see that an option is to join with a paid membership ($60 per year).

I really like the give and take with profs from around the world.  There were over 450 comments on a thread about whether or not to be a Facebook friend with a student.

You can find out more information about the group from the web site:
 http://hetl.org

Dave Albrecht

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology and learning ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


"8 Simple Ways To Share Data Online," by David Strom, ReadWriteWeb, June 17, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2011/06/8-simple-ways-to-share-data-on.php

If you have to jointly author a spreadsheet with a colleague, what is the first thing that you do? Email it back and forth. This can be painful, particularly as you try to keep track of your partner's changes and hope the emails transit back and forth across the Internet. Add a third or fourth person, and things get worse. Luckily, there is a better way, and a number of Web-based service providers have stepped up with tools to make spreadsheet sharing a lot easier than sending attachments.

We've written about a few of them, including Longjump and Hyperbase (one of our products of the year for 2008), but I have tried a bunch others, and will show you what is involved and how they stack up.

The process is very straightforward: you either copy and paste data or take your spreadsheet and upload it to the service, after creating accounts for you and your collaborators. Then you can make changes via your Web browser, no other software is required. Some of the services allow for more bells and whistles. Setup time is minimal; your data is properly protected by the service and safe from harm. And you don't need to learn any Web/database programming skills either.

For many people, the spreadsheet is still one of the most popular low-end database applications. The rubric of a table of rows and columns is easily understood and can easily be used as a way to view records and fields of a database. Plus, you don't need to design special reports to view your data entries, and you can easily sort your data without having to create data dictionaries or other database structures, just use the appropriate Excel commands. Having a specialized service that can share this data makes it easier to collaborate too, whether your partners are across the office or on the other side of the world. As long as they have an Internet connection, they are good to go.

There are eight different services currently available, in order of increasing cost:

Online Spreadsheet Sharing Services

 

Service

Price

Storage limits

Pagos  Spreadsheetlive.com

Free (for now)

1 MB

Google Docs

Free

Really unlimited

Microsoft Live

Free

50 MB

Smartsheet.com

$10/mo for up to 10 spreadsheets

30 MB

Longjump Database

$19/mo for two users

3 MB

HyperBase

$175 setup plus $44/mo for 5 users

1.25 GB

TrackVia.com

$250/mo for 10 users

4 GB for entry plan

Intuit QuickBase

$299/mo for 10 users

1 GB for entry plan

Pricing and support

When you decide on the particular service, it pays to read the pricing fine print. There are discounts for annual subscriptions on most services, and some such as Smartsheet offer additional discounts for non-profit and educational institutions. All of these services have 14 day or 30 day free trials to get started, so you can get a feel of what is involved in manipulating your data and how easy it is to make changes, produce reports, and receive notifications.

Continued in article

June 18, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar

I find Google docs great for small spreadsheets, but cumbersome for large files.

I set up Dropbox folders for each of my groups in my online class (3-5 students in a group). They post their project spreadsheets in the group folders, and if a student has a question, I can quickly open the spreadsheet to see what is going on. Students contact me by AIM and we discuss the spreadsheet via AIM. Works like a charm for me.

Amy Dunbar

UConn

Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL): Learning Spaces Collaborative --- http://www.pkallsc.org/

Bob Jensen's threads on sending large files across the Internet ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles


Tax Professor Amy Dunbar Loves Google Docs

Google Docs --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs

May 31, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

http://users.business.uconn.edu/adunbar/videos/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html 

If anyone wants the “quiz” that the students worked, send me an email (not AECM), and I will send you the file.

Amy

Amy Dunbar
University of Connecticut School of Business
Department of Accounting 2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041 Storrs, CT 06269-1041

cell 860-208-2737
amy.dunbar@business.uconn.ed 

May 31, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie [rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]

Hi Amy,

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses.  It's free, includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for students to collaborate on team projects.  It also makes it easy to submit the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype).  To use these tools, they need a headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com) is a free, hosted video messaging service.  You can record up to a 10 minute video clip that can be shared by URL link.  TokBox also includes a video chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference.  This feature works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com)  includes chat, audio and video-conferencing.  The chat feature works probably better than what you have been using.  With a headset/microphone, you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call.  Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great  screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype.  Following is an example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper.  One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space through an email link.  Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group video conference call.  This enables students to brainstorm and get a project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students use the audio conference call feature to talk with each  other.  While all are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and views it on his/her computer screen.  One or more students act as the editor.  All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document in .pdf format to his/her hard drive.  The student then submits the document for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get things done.  Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can  do for free.  Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively inexpensive.  The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and online classes.  It works great.  The approach changes the nature of how students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA.  92407-2397
Email:  rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone:  (909) 537-5726Skype (Username):  ricklillie



“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's Updates on Education Technologies ---
 http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

How Scholars Search the Web ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

From Rick Lillie's on Thinking Outside the Box Blog on March 7, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/collanos-workplace-free-collaboration-workspace/

Collanos Workplace: Free Collaboration Workspace

In an earlier post, I wrote about the latest book by Curtis J. Bonk, The World Is Open:  How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education.  Bonk’s book is an excellent read.  I highly recommend it to educators at all levels.

While I am familiar with most of what Bonk writes about, just about every chapter introduces me to something new.  For example, Chapter 8, “Collaborate or Die!” introduced me to Collanos Workspace, a free collaboration workspace software tool developed by Collanos Software, AG (Zurich, Switzerland).  Collanos Workspace is a workspace tool similar in design to Groove workspace, originally developed by Ray OzzieGroove is now integrated into Microsoft Office .  Ray Ozzie is the guiding light for Microsoft’s move toward cloud computing.

"Update to Posting about Collanos Workspace — Exceptional Program," by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog, March 11, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/update-to-posting-about-collanos-workspace-exceptional-program/

Last week, I posted comments about Collanos Workspace I asked several Master of Science in Accountancy (MSA) grad students that I will direct in a self-study project during Spring Quarter 2010 to download Collanos Workspace.  They have gotten up and running very quickly.  So far, I am really impressed with the features of Collanos Workspace and how easy it is to use.

While Collanos Workspace does not have all the built-in bells and whistles of Microsoft Groove, the bells and whistles are easily replaced by Web 2.0 tools (e.g., Skype, TokBox, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets).  Web 2.0 sharing/collaboration tools can be used in conjunction with the Collanos Workspace.  This is very easy to do.

This morning, one of my students called me on SkypeHe shared his desktop with me and then opened his Collanos Workspace.  I have two monitor screens, so I opened my Collanos Workspace on my other monitor.  We talked on Skype.  He added files and posted a note to his workspace.  Since we were both online, the items he added instantly added and displayed on my workspace.  Outstanding performance!

I am working on papers with a couple of colleagues.  I am going to do my best to persuade them to download and use Collanos Workspace.  We can work together both live and offline.  I cannot say enough about the convenience that Collanos Workspace offers.

This new tool is taking me back to my “Groove” days.  I really liked Groove and hated to see it get buried as an advanced feature of Microsoft Office.

Continued in article

Rick Lillie has to be frustrated. First his beloved TokBox software became vaporware. Now his highly acclaimed Collanos is possibly history.
"Collanos Workplace — Seems to have died!" by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog,October 22, 2010 —
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/collanos-workplace-seems-to-have-died/

In a previous posting, I introduced you to Collanos Workplace and told you how great the collaboration software is, especially for use with distance teaching and learning projects.  I have used it successfully with both undergraduate and graduate students.  For example, during Winter Quarter 2010, I used Collanos Workplace to guide five grad students through independent study projects.  Collanos Workplace made it easy to communicate with students and keep the whole process under control.  In a nutshell, I felt that Collanos Workplace was a great collaboration tool!

Jensen Comment
Collaboration software sees to be particularly vulnerable. Google Wave crashed on shore. However, Google Docs lives on with great prospects for the future.
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Collaboration

 

Interactive Network Simulation
Inspiration: Games versus Teachers
"Creator of 'The Sims' Talks Educational Gaming," Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/media/video/v55/i41.5/wright/?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Introduction to (video) Game Design 2009 --- http://pod.gscept.com/intro2gd2009.xml 
Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment and learning games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Bob Jensen's threads on virtual worlds in education are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Accounting professors should seek out the free online


"What Belongs in a 21st-Century Classroom? Faculty and IT Staff Disagree," by Sophia Li, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 19, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/What-Belongs-in-a-21st-Century/25642/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Faculty members and information-technology staff members alike say technology is useful for teaching and learning, but professors take a narrower view of what technology belongs in today's classroom, according to a report released on Monday by the technology company CDW Government Inc.

Eighty-eight percent of the 303 faculty members surveyed said technology was essential or useful for student learning, and over 60 percent said they used electronic materials in their teaching, according to the report.

The most popular tools cited by professors were e-textbooks and online documents, with faculty members reporting far less enthusiasm for other electronic tools. Under a quarter of faculty members surveyed use wikis or blogs in their teaching, and only 31 percent of professors surveyed considered online collaboration tools "essential" to today's classroom, compared with 72 percent of over 300 IT employees surveyed.

That suggests an interesting gap between technology staff members and professors when it comes to how smart classrooms need to be. How wired should teaching spaces be?

E-mail Print Comment (22) Share Share Delicious Digg Facebook Linked In Mixx Reddit Twitter Yahoo Buzz Comments 1. morningsider - July 19, 2010 at 05:47 pm

Perhaps IT employees already know how to use such tools. I am self taught but have been evangelizing wikis to my faculty colleagues. I have even voluntarily led a faculty workshop on wikis--just to help my colleagues learn how to use them.

I think there are at least three problems that might explain this "gap" between IT and faculty attitudes. First, for many faculty there is a learning curve: on top of structuring course material, they have to learn the vagaries of specific software or platforms. Second, there are so many options for tech tools many faculty don't know which are most appropriate for their teaching style. Who can guide them to the tools most useful for their teaching? Third, many faculty, at least at my institution, don't have enough technical support in the classroom. Let's say an instructor has prepared a class period on collaborative work on a wiki: the network goes down (too frequent an occurrence on our campus) or the data projector malfunctions. S/he calls computer services for help--no one is available to troubleshoot until it is too late.

The existence of technology tools is not enough. Faculty need help, training, and technical support before such tools can be used effectively.

2. arrive2__net - July 20, 2010 at 05:06 am

The information-technology staff members provide support across all faculty members, so their answers probably would reflect the perceived needs across all faculty. Faculty are likely answering just for themselves. Faculty have to pay a lot of attention to what is going on in their own field, they have to keep up-to-date with what often turns out to be a moving target. For professors, learning, developing, and practicing applications of new learning technologies is a whole other work effort that goes on top of their existing full time job of being a teacher and a scholar (and often a researcher). Another factor is that a professor can get burned by investing a lot of time developing and learning tech applications if then, he or she turns out not to be teaching that course next year or term, or if changes in the text or field renders the tech application out-of-date. For IT, on the other hand, the technology is their bread-and-butter, so naturally ... (you'd better bet) it matters.

Bernard Schuster Arrive2.net

3. beveridge - July 20, 2010 at 07:09 am

At Queens College, where I teach, seven different sign-ons are required for students to have full access to the various types of computer systems they need: Account to Claim College System Account, College System Account, E-mail Account, Blackboard Account, Cuny Portal Account, MyQc Web Account, Portal Account for Library Access, Account for Remote Access.

Any of these tools: wikis, e-portfolios, blogs, add still another level of access issues and make teaching even more difficult with extremely limited resources.

In a recent survey, we found tht about 15% of students do not have adequate access to do their work in a Statistics class. About half drop out, and the other half jump through significant hoops to get them.

In the words of Van Holland (former UMICH Tech Guru) "No more miracles please."

4. paievoli - July 20, 2010 at 07:20 am

You can easily fix the sign-on problem. Just use a student portal that supplies all needs in one place. A very simple aggregator of all contant in one place that is accessible 24/7/365. This is the problem. Just take a look at my site and see. http://www.thecampuscenter.com everything in one place and for free no seat charges no cost.

5. mberman54 - July 20, 2010 at 08:05 am

I'll throw in an IT prefessional's point of view: It's our job to be futurists in this area. Pin one of us down and we'll admit that we don't know which of the tools we advocate for today will still be around in 10 years, but we also know that if they're not around, the functions will be subsumed into other things. We also know, from supporting our student populations, that the students are trending strongly towards a preference for online communications. Morningsider made the important point that many faculty don't know how to use, or are uncomfortable, with these tools. From experience I can promise you that they will get easier to use over time, but in the meantime we're here to help you, and if you want to reach your students, you'll find them online.

6. infogoon - July 20, 2010 at 08:05 am

@beveridge - There are many single sign-on technologies that would help with that. Industry standards like LDAP and Kerberos are supported by most systems (email, Blackboard, etc.) and can be used to synchronize passwords across multiple login environments.

My school decided to bite the bullet and deploy a solution to mitigate this same problem a few years back. It's a fair amount of legwork, but not especially cutting edge or difficult for most environments.

7. infogoon - July 20, 2010 at 08:06 am

(Oh, I forgot to mention - Blackboard does _not_ support LDAP authentication on their lowest tier product, forcing you to buy a huge and expensive bundle of additional services instead. They're an exception. We got around the problem by switching to another LMS, since our contract with them ended during this deployment.)

8. vudutu - July 20, 2010 at 08:17 am

There are a number of problems, the usual budget issues, management by committee, lack of training, dated and overly complex systems and tools, poor direction, lack of faculty involvement in understanding IT and not feeling inclusion in IT decisions.

That all said I believe the biggest issue is digital immigrants teaching digital natives. The most digitaly enabled and accepting are the adjuncts, the aging faculty are frozen in the digital headlights. IT personel, like the younger students live with tech so they accept it.

9. csgirl - July 20, 2010 at 08:22 am

I'm in computer science, and if anything, tend to be ahead of our IT staff when it comes to nifty online tools. My teaching is of course very dependent on technology. My problem is, I can't get IT to adequately support the tools that I need - software repositories, bug tracking systems, any IDE other than Visual Studio - so I have to spend a lot of time doing my own setup and support. I also find that IT is its own little closed world. They don't have much inkling of the teaching needs of faculty, so the applications they choose to promote are often not that useful.

10. jleone - July 20, 2010 at 08:23 am

At RIT, we have a strong ITS and excellent support services for using technology in the classroom. And while older faculty tend to be lass facile with technology, it isn't uniformly true. At age 72, I have pushed myself to stay current with technology. Of course, I teach in the computing disciplines. We have access to very high quality seminares and workshops for faculty on our campus. We have access to hi-tech rooms for recording lectures. Our major problem is the strong push for scholarly endeavors, a recent (past 10 years) in the direction our institution has taken.

11. interface - July 20, 2010 at 08:39 am

Every IT department has its favorite platforms; every IT person has preferred programs and ways of accomplishing any given task; every administration has different notions of the place of technology in the classroom. And those favorites and preferences and notions keep changing. If you're an adjunct working for different institutions, as more and more of us are, it's tiring and time-consuming and ultimately counterproductive to try to adjust to them all. One thing's true across the board: those most enamored of technology are the first to lose sight of the fact that it's a good servant and a bad master, and that there's no substitute for the human connection necessary for good teaching.

12. clancymarshall - July 20, 2010 at 08:50 am

The DynamicBooks platform is an e-book that enables instructors to upload online documents, audio and video and also to edit the text to make it more relevant for students. What do you think? Will instructors in 21st Century classrooms customize e-books for their students or use them as is?

13. 3224243 - July 20, 2010 at 09:21 am

#9 (csgirl) - I'm at a comprehensive state institution with 8500 students and 300 faculty. All of our general-use classrooms (appx 100) have a base level of technology with upgrades performed regularly and newgen technology implemented as budget allows. What we provide and support is a result of what faculty members request. And, we do it with 2.5 FTE.

Get off your high horse. You're not the only instructor on campus and you're not the only one we support.

14. catlkelley - July 20, 2010 at 09:21 am

From the title I thought this article would be about the classroom itself - i.e. what technologies need to be installed in a classroom, such as data projectors and smart boards.

In any case, from an IT / teaching support point of view, I agree with comment #2 above. If 25% (or even 10%) of our faculty need or want a particular technology, then that is 100% a concern for me. So I am not at all surprised that the numbers of IT people who find particular technologies to be "essential" is much higher than the numbers of faculty who say that about the same technology. I am actually surprised that the numbers for IT staff aren't higher than they are.

Reading through the comments so far, it is very clear to me that there is a great deal of variability in the kind of support that is provided to faculty. And by this I do not mean only the breadth of technologies available. I mean the support that faculty need to thoughtfully integrate technology into the curriculum. My office is dedicated to the concept mentioned by "interface" in comment #11 - namely, technology is a good servant but bad master. We try to focus on teaching & learning first and technology only when it will help. It's a difficult thing to do, as we are also bound to keep up with current trends and new technologies. We'd like to see adventurous faculty try out the new stuff so that we can gauge its utility in real life.

15. broekhuysen - July 20, 2010 at 09:44 am

I wonder how many of the faculty members surveyed are teachers of foreign languages -- I'd be willing to bet that a very higher percentage of them use technology regularly (as long as they teach in institutions with the specific professional support they need) -- and not only in "labs", for doing homework, but as a constant presence in the classrooom -- if they have the kind of access they need.

16. alex369 - July 20, 2010 at 10:32 am

Let me get this straight: The Chronicle publishes a free ad for CDW Government Inc., a private company with undisclosed interests, and there is a serious debate about the company's claims?

17. jeanniec - July 20, 2010 at 10:40 am

@alex369 Agreed. Why is this even posted here? According to the report you can contact Kelly Caraher CDW-G Public Relations for more information. Her title says it all.

18. drjeff - July 20, 2010 at 10:44 am

As an IT guy, I couldn't sit here a "listen" to everyone saying how "easy" it is to do "single sign-on." (This is what IT folks call integrating things to the point that students -- and faculty -- don't have a separate account on each little fiefdom's system.)

Yes, the technology to do it is reasonably well-known (even if beyond the least expensive version of Blackboard and some other products). All you do it install, set up and populate a directory system (usualy LDAP), then make every system refer to it rather than its own database. But, because the various systems are, on most campuses, highly Balkanzed (at least in their ownership), many campuses, like many corporations, find it exceptionally difficult to get essentially every department to dedicate the effort (even if fairly small) to support the project, which is what's necessary to actually make it happen.

In corporations, the CEO or COO usually ends up "pushing" successful implementations, or else it takes literally years. On a campus, it often takes the President. The next person in line (on our campus, it's the Executive VP for Finance and Administration) may or may not have the necessary "pull" with some of the departments.

Don't forget, we're probably talking about everyone from the Rec center to the Religious Studies department to the Credit Union, not to mention Food Services, Computer Science and the LGBTQ Center. Did I leave out Middle Eastern studies and the repair shop behind the research labs? You get the idea.

Sure, you (or I) can describe what has to be done with one sentence. Getting it done? That's going to take a little more.

19. csgirl - July 20, 2010 at 11:29 am

#13, you guys sound seriously overwhelmed, and I can appreciate that. I used to teach at a comprehensive state U that sounds remarkably like what you are describing. But that isn't what this article is talking about. The article seems to be discussing a gap between supremely knowledgable IT people and Luddite professors who won't adopt the wonderful technology the IT people recommend (at least, this is how the IT folks see it). This is the mentality I deal with at my current school, where we have armies of IT specialists. The problem is, our IT people are spending tons of time playing with whiz-bang technology that no professor has requested, congratulating themselves on how "advanced" they are, instead of educating themselves on the technology that we actually need and use.

20. jboncek - July 20, 2010 at 11:45 am

Technology is sometimes useful, but hardly essential.

21. lizlanin - July 20, 2010 at 11:58 am

"For professors, learning, developing, and practicing applications of new learning technologies is a whole other work effort that goes on top of their existing full time job of being a teacher and a scholar (and often a researcher)."

Shocker, sounds like my job in the corporate world. I too have to learn new technologies in order to do my full-time job... why should professors be any different?


"Frontiers of Collaboration: The Evolution of Social Networking," Knowledge@Wharton, July 7, 2010 ---  
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2536              

Social networking tools such as Twitter and the emerging Google Wave web application are taking individuals and organizations to the frontiers of real-time communication and collaboration. The technology has the potential to make it easier to discover and share information, interact with others, and decide what to buy or do. But the key word is "potential": Social networking's evolution is still in its early stages. What makes the current crop of services more promising than those that came before? What are the obstacles to further progress?

An expert panel debated these questions at the annual Supernova technology strategy conference, produced in partnership with Wharton and held last winter in San Francisco. The 2010 Supernova forum will be held this month in Philadelphia.

The panel at the San Francisco event was chaired by David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Appearing on the panel were: Anna-Christina Douglas, product marketing manager at Google; Laura Fitton, principal of Pistachio Consulting and co-author of Twitter for Dummies; Paul Lippe, founder and CEO of Legal OnRamp; Jason Shellen, founder and CEO of Thing Labs, and Deborah Schultz, a partner with the Altimeter Group. In addition, Google engineers were in the room demonstrating Google Wave by allowing the audience to post to the social networking service during the session; their comments appeared in real time on projection screens near the panelists.

Weinberger began the session by asking panelists what made the introduction of social networking tools different from previous technological endeavors to improve communication and collaboration. One significant issue discussed was how social networking compared with knowledge management (KM). KM systems first appeared on the scene about 20 years ago and once represented the frontier, embodying companies' most innovative ideas for integrating internal access to disparate information in order to improve communication, collaboration and business processes.

KM systems were implemented through technologies such as web portals, e-mail networks, content management systems and business intelligence infrastructure. Web portals, which were probably the most successful type of KM system, allow users to access a range of information -- including reports, diagrams, catalogs and maintenance records -- through one interface, rather than many. The portals also include external information supplied by business partners, government agencies and news sources. The technology automatically pulls information from the sources on demand so that users do not have to search for it manually.

Organizations employ KM systems to increase the value of their "intellectual capital." However, the technology that supports KM systems has traditionally been difficult to develop and deploy. And the systems have not been universally successful at fostering real time collaboration between employees.

According to Shellen -- who was part of the development teams for Google's blogging program and Reader aggregator service -- before social networking tools enabled quick and casual communication, many bloggers in corporate organizations had "some KM tool where you captured the knowledge in the tool's silo and assigned all sorts of tags, folders and so on to it. You would then pass the blog to your manager for him or her to [learn from] what you were writing." Shellen now heads Thing Labs, a San Francisco-based company that builds web-based software for sharing content. Social networking is easing some of the frustration users in many organizations have encountered with traditional KM systems. Through use of Twitter and other tools, more of the intellectual capital that KM systems once guarded is flowing freely, in real time, inside and outside organizations. If an employee needs to find expertise or share information, he or she doesn't have to work within the rigid confines of a KM system, or even the confines of his or her organization. Instead, the employee can use social media to collaborate with others and to find answers more quickly and put relevant advice into practice.

While there are virtues to being able to communicate faster and more easily with social networking tools, panelists agreed that many organizations are struggling to adjust to the spontaneity and loss of control over information that comes with these tools. Concerned that organizations will eventually clamp down, Weinberger asked, "Will all the fun be stripped out of it? Will people become afraid to Tweet about things that are not strictly business-related?" Fitton, whose consulting firm focuses on helping companies to use micro-blogging in a business environment, suggested that companies may find the "messy and random serendipity" of Twitter and other social networks to be more efficient than lumbering KM systems and processes. "It brings an infusion of humanity to business," she noted, who adding that, in her experiences at Pistachio Consulting, she has observed social networking having an impact on organizations by leveling management hierarchies, accelerating team-building across geographical locations, and improving mentoring. She stated that, in some cases, research to find human expertise that used to take many hours can happen much faster when queries are "flung out into the commons" to catch the attention of people who can provide answers more quickly.

Breadth vs. Depth

One of the advantages social networking tools have over KM systems, experts say, is that they simplify the process of obtaining information that would be useful to a business or employee. Tools such as Twitter provide a sort of "KM in the cloud," allowing users to collaborate with each other and send messages to locate expertise without a company having to build and maintain a complex and expensive system to provide these capabilities internally. Social networking tools provide access to a broad population and employ simple, standardized, techniques to link users to information. But while social networking offers "an enormous amount of horizontal power," Lippe said, "most of the hard collaboration problems are [solved] in vertical domains." His firm, Legal OnRamp, is a collaboration platform for lawyers that allows information to be collected and shared virtually. Membership is by invitation only.

Lippe noted that, in the legal field, "there's already a structure of knowledge, and most knowledge repositories and structures of the collaborative web have existed for multiple generations. So, the question is, how do you tap into them?" One core structure is attorney-client privilege, which Lippe said "has long preceded the information confidentiality and security regime that we all have now. It creates the structure of what you can and cannot share." In the legal universe, he added, the messy serendipity of "horizontal" social networking cannot solve the hardest problems. "Lawyers have some questions they will answer for free, and others that they will figure out a way to get paid to answer."

But the legal field's communication sensitivities are "a very specific case," Shellen pointed out. He noted that companies have built private social networks that feature protected blogs and search engines, and that these tools have proven effective in achieving new forms of collaboration while keeping information secure. Organizations are now incorporating use of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social media into their daily routines, although they are in need of systems that can integrate and update the information being posted across all of the platforms. Shellen's Thing Labs produces a reader called "Brizzly" that can be used to provide that service.

Lippe agreed that, despite the concerns he noted, large legal firms have an opportunity to use social networking to reestablish an intimacy with clients that they may have lost as the businesses grew larger and adjusted to structural changes in the industry. Lippe wrote recently on his Legal OnRamp blog that social networking tools can be used to save attorneys from "e-mail and attachment overload" and to "share existing knowledge or collaborate on new work [including] high volume work like commercial contracts and high complexity work like major case litigation."

Office culture plays a significant role in what platform is used to share information, according to Schultz, a partner with the San Mateo, Calif.-based Altimeter Group, a technology strategy consulting firm. She noted that media companies, for example, may be a better fit for the horizontal nature of social networking. Schultz has been active in social media and networking for many years and has advised organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 50 companies, including Citibank and Procter & Gamble. At P&G, she built the P&G Social Media Lab, a program that enables the company to study the new dynamics of customer relationships in the age of social networking, and to use social media to break the mold of standard marketing measures and approaches that were geared toward older types of media. By encouraging brand managers to pay close attention to what customers were saying on community sites and other social networking places, Schultz said the Lab has helped P&G redefine how it engages, communicates with and uses marketing to influence consumers. "I see the tools making the roles we have more porous," she stated. "As the consumer-driven nature of social networking moves into organizations, the collaboration potential of their use becomes more interesting."

The use of tools like Twitter and Google Wave "definitely make a cultural statement," said Douglas. The Google product marketing manager described how Google Wave has the capabilities for real-time, rolling conversation and collaboration among users that can include messages, links and attachments. Douglas noted that each conversation or "wave" can be modified with different editing and replying privileges so that enterprises can "exercise controls for how people want to lock down content." The Google engineers demonstrated the application on the big screen behind the panelists; they showed how users can comment with links embedded in their messages and also load attachments.

Google Wave could be used effectively for private communication inside the firewall, as well as for working with a diverse community outside an organization, panelists said. Previous KM systems did not easily integrate communication with content management, making it difficult to use existing tools to access and manage information during real time conversations. Google Wave and other social networking tools offer the potential of a much tighter integration between communication and content, meaning conversations can include richer information sharing and easier references to content available across the organization.

To Shellen, the most interesting aspect to how social networking and collaboration tools are used is users' ability to join ongoing conversations. He said his firm is currently building a "data set on top of that engagement, where we ask people to explain trending topics on Twitter." The combination of immediate updates plus access to more in-depth information can enhance knowledge. "Tools like Twitter make me much smarter about you," Schultz noted. "And the 'you' could be an entity or an individual." She said that with the right kind of filtering, people can collaborate and make more effective use of the information available on social networks. "Companies can collaborate in real time with customers on products and even pricing."

But does the 140-character limit for posts to Twitter enable engagement, or is it "a sign of triviality?" asked Weinberger. "Constraints breed invention," replied Shellen. Douglas added that communities using Twitter, Google Wave and other tools are creating their own etiquette. Panelists agreed that both the creation of etiquette for particular conversations and the sheer ability to engage in several discussions at once would be difficult using blogs and older forms of web content sharing programs.

An Open and Vibrant World

Weinberger asked the panelists whether progress toward the real-time collaboration frontier is being driven by new technology or human needs. Speaking to the human needs, Fitton observed that social networking tools such as Twitter "help us overcome human isolation in a way that is not brand new but is happening on a different scale." She said that the collaboration possible on the site is a question of "not just; 'What are you doing?' but, 'What do we have in common?'" Fulfilling that need is what fascinates her about the phenomenon. Shellen added: "There's accountability behind it; we now have modes of identity tied to short bursts of communication that are very much 'you.'"

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on social networking ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

 


 

Organizing your papers and citations from the Web
Sharing and remotely accessing your bookmarks

February 16, 2006 message from Vidya Ananthanarayanan to the faculty at Trinity University

Dear Faculty,

Ever wished your bookmarks in Internet Explorer or other browsers were accessible anytime anyplace? Ever wanted to share your Internet resources with your class, research colleagues, or peers? How would you like to know what information sources other people in your field are using? Perhaps, you simply want to organize all your bookmarks in a manner that is more meaningful and personal to you? How often have you been frustrated by an outdated or broken URL and wished you could have saved the article or paper itself?

Want to find out more about how you can do any or all of the above? Then mark your calendars for the Social Bookmarking: Tag & Share! TEACHnology Seminar in Library Room 103 from 10:00 - 11:15 am tomorrow. We will explore online services like del.icio.us and CiteULike, and discuss ways to leverage them in the classroom and in your research. Refreshments will be served.

Vidya Ananthanarayanan
Instructional Support Manager
Center for Learning and Technology
210.999.7346
vidya@trinity.edu 
http://www.trinity.edu/ims

Jensen Comment
The CiteULike cite is at
http://www.citeulike.org/

CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special software.

Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer. You can share your library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about.

You're currently looking at a list of the last few papers submitted by all the CiteULike users. Why not register for a free account today and start organising your collection and see just the articles you're interested in? All we need is your email address, a username, and a password. It should take less than fifteen seconds.

The del.icio.us cite is at http://del.icio.us/

» keep your favorite websites, music, books, and more in a place where you can always find them.

» shareyour favorites with family, friends, and colleagues.

» discover new and interesting things by browsing popular & related items.


The Best Ways to Digitize Old Photos, Tapes and Discs So Your Memories Live On ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-ways-to-digitize-old-photos-tapes-and-discs-so-your-memories-live-on-11609943584?mod=djm_dailydiscvrtst

If my son asked me today to see video of my late grandfather, whose name he bears, I’d be in trouble.

First, I’d have to locate the VHS tapes. Then I’d have to hunt down a gray-market VCR. ($500 and up for defunct technology!) Then I’d have to meet in some other dark alley for a converter box to hook it up to my fancy smart TV. Then I’d have to hope that, back in 1996, someone was kind and did in fact rewind.

Luckily, my 3-year-old only asks for “Dora the Explorer.”

Technology allows us to preserve the stories of people who die—assuming the technology doesn’t die, too.

The idea of old photos and videos being lost in obsolete media formats was something I thought about a lot as I was producing “E-Ternal: A Tech Quest to ‘Live’ Forever,” a documentary about death and technology.

It’s something viewers have written to me about, too. Some even suggested in emails that paper is the best solution to ensuring stories are passed down. Of course, I never met a piece of paper that improved in time—or in fire. Printouts are great, but they’re not the same as digital copies living on a rugged hard drive or up in the cloud for the entire family to access.

Converting old media into digital files might not sound like your idea of a good time, but it doesn’t have to be a struggle. Here are some tips on how to make these older formats enjoyable in 2021.

Old Photos

There are really two routes to digitizing any old media: 1) Source some specialized hardware, roll up your sleeves and do it yourself, or 2) outsource.

Photographs and prints are the easiest to do yourself. The most efficient route? Invest in the $600 Epson FastFoto FF-680W scanner. Put a stack of photos—even Polaroids—in the tray and it scans them in bulk, a photo as fast as every second, sending them to your computer via USB or Wi-Fi. Epson’s software helps with assigning years to each of the photo’s metadata and has simple color-restoration and editing tools. It’ll even scan the backs with the fronts, to preserve any writing or time stamps that are visible.

While it’s pricey, the cost is worth it if you’re dealing with hundreds of photos. Plus, the scanner is something you can share with family members or friends who are daunted by their own photo troves.

Don’t want to spend that much? iOS and Android apps like Google Photoscan or Photomyne’s Photo Scan App let you use your smartphone’s camera to capture the photos. Find a table with good light, and point and shoot—without getting your hand-puppet shadow in the way. The apps will automatically crop out the surface. Just set aside plenty of time and prioritize the most important images, since you have to go photo by photo with this option.

 

If any of that sounds like a headache, just ship your photos to the pros at services like ScanMyPhotos.com and Memories Renewed. Gather your photos, organize them by year, get some bubble wrap and pop them in the mail. ScanMyPhoto will even send you a prepaid label and shipping box. The services will then digitize them, giving you options to get them on a DVD, USB drive or cloud download. The companies send back the originals. I used ScanMyPhotos a few years back and was quite satisfied with the turnaround time, the quality of the scanned images and the care taken with my original prints.

Old Slides

Those services will also take your old slides—35mm and other formats. But I recently discovered the thrill of scanning those myself. Inspired by my uncle, who scanned hundreds of 35mm slides during quarantine, I bought the $160 Kodak Scanza Digital Film Scanner.

Just power up the coffee-tin-size device, pop your slide or negative into the appropriate tray and slide it into the machine. You can see the image on the built-in screen. Hit the camera button to save the photo to an SD card. Sadly, there’s no easy way to assign dates to the photos—you’ll have to do that afterward in your photo-editing program of choice.

If you’re looking to do some quick and dirty slide scans, try the Photomyne’s SlideScan app for iOS and Android. Hold your slide up to a backlit surface (your computer’s web browser pointed to photomyne.com/backlight is great) then snap a photo. The app automatically crops and brightens the image. The quality wasn’t great, but it’s a nice way to figure out what’s hiding on those old negatives.

ld Tapes

Converting videotapes—be they VHS, Betamax, MiniDV, Video8 or some other ancient format—requires a device that can play them. Then you need another device to record the video, like this $170 ClearClick Video2Digital Converter 2.0. There are other ways to do this, too, including hooking the VCR or old video camera up to your computer via a converter like this

It’s a lot. There are plenty of online services that do tape conversion, too, including ScanMyPhotos, Memories Renewed and Legacy Box. Also, Costco, CVS, Walmart and other retailers use a third-party service called YesVideo. Drop the tapes off at a local store and they’ll take care of the rest for you.

Many of them will also handle your old audiocassettes. You can also try one of these cassette-to-MP3 converter gadgets.

Old DVDs

All those services will convert DVDs to digital files, too, although doing that on your own is simple.

Continued in article


Free Public Affairs Case Teaching Materials and Sometimes Entire Course Materials from the University of Washington
The Electronic Hallway --- https://hallway.org/

The Electronic Hallway is pleased to announce a unique and progressive new product— Integrated Management: A Complete Core Curriculum — a previously untested venture in presenting an entire course package using online technology. This package represents a 30 week integrated core management curriculum.

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education and training alternatives are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on free online textbooks and learning materials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

 


From the University of Virginia
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
--- http://www.iath.virginia.edu/

IATH is a research unit of the University of Virginia. Our goal is to explore and develop information technology as a tool for scholarly humanities research. To that end, we provide our Fellows with consulting, technical support, applications development, and networked publishing facilities. We also cultivate partnerships and participate in humanities computing initiatives with libraries, publishers, information technology companies, scholarly organizations, and other groups residing at the intersection of computers and cultural heritage.

The research projects, essays, and documentation presented here are the products of a unique collaboration between humanities and computer science research faculty, computer professionals, student assistants and project managers, and library faculty and staff. In many cases, this work is supported by private or federal funding agencies. In all cases, it is supported by the Fellows’ home departments; the College or School to which those departments belong; the University of Virginia Library; the Vice President for Research and Public Service; the Vice President and Chief Information Officer; the Provost; and the President of the University of Virginia.


News Update from Campus Technology on January 11, 2005

Creating the Classroom of Tomorrow

What does it take to successfully integrate all systems across a campus? Planning, communication, flexibility, and more. In a new micro site sponsored by HP, you'll read how several campuses approached their IIS projects and what made them successful. Join a peer forum to discuss implementation and budget issues; read white papers, case studies and articles on the challenges of integration.

http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=11787 


December 12, 2006 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Perhaps the most significant new "feature" in the new release is the hook that Adobe is providing to other revenue-enhancing products like Acrobat Connect, which provides web-conferencing capabilities within Reader for a competitive price to www.gotomeeting.com (which I use). Incidentally, I personally believe that such a web conferencing product is an indispensable feature of any Internet-delivered accounting course.

One intriguing new development in the new Acrobat PROFESSIONAL version ( the pdf creation tool), is the ability to create forms that can be filled out and saved by users who have the free Reader. This is a departure from prior practice for Adobe, because they were trying to sell more expensive server software to facilitate that task.

Richard

 


Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases

This section was moved to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#KnowledgeBases

 


Learning Customization Even in Large Classes

"Customization Is the Future of Teaching, Harvard Researcher Says," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 25, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Future-of-Teaching-/132493/

Jensen Comment
I'm reminded of Steve Hornik at Central Florida who stands in front of a classroom of over 1,000 students. The above article presents Chris Dede's ideas on how to customize large lecture and case courses to the varying needs of individual students.

By the way Steve was an early adopter of Second Live 3-D learning technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

The Learning Scientists --- www.learningscientists.org

 


Synchronous Partnering Course Modules in Universities in Different Nations

"Frontiers in Higher Education: A Procedural Model," Ruth Sesco, The International HETL Review, Volume 2, June 9, 2012 ---
http://hetl.org/

The paper describes a procedural model implemented at Ohio State University that shares similar content and interaction among international partner classes for a short time, usually 3-5 weeks. The model is flexible and adaptive to any discipline at both the graduate and undergraduate levels and includes expertise from both partnering instructors. Technologies are embedded to integrate a variety of structured opportunities for interaction and to utilize different teaching and learning strategies. There is no exchange of credits or funding, and all instructors are individually responsible for grading their own students, thus allowing subject expertise and peer interaction from around the world at no extra personal cost. The model can be implemented to internationalize an entire curriculum to a broad spectrum of learners world-wide with a significantly reduced carbon footprint, at minimal cost, and in direct response to the needs of higher education.

Jensen Comment

I suspect that Ruth Sesco independently developed a model that was invented for an international accounting course by a San Diego State University accounting professor years ago when the most advanced online technology was rudimentary.

You can read about this remarkable international accounting professor and what she accomplished with almost no budget by going to ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255light.htm

 

 

New and Old Tools

 

OER TUTORIALS EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY ---
www.cccoer.org/about/members/member-activities/timely-oer-tutorials

Robotic Process Automation: Solutions Even a Managing Partner Can Use ---
http://thinktwenty20.com/index.php/blog/569-robotic-process-automation-solutions-even-a-managing-partner-can-use  

Open Educational Resources Toolkit ---
https://guides.library.uoit.ca/OER-Toolkit

HOW TO CREATE ANIMATED VIDEOS TO COMMUNICATE SCIENCE ---
https://forest-ecology.com/learning/


Zoom --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_(software)

Zoom (stylized as zoom) is a videotelephony proprietary software program developed by Zoom Video Communications. The free plan provides a video chatting service that allows up to 100 concurrent participants, with a 40-minute time restriction. Users have the option to upgrade by subscribing to a paid plan. The highest plan supports up to 1,000 concurrent participants for meetings lasting up to 30 hours.[2]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a major increase in the use of Zoom for remote workdistance education,[3] and online social relations.[4] The increase led to Zoom being the 5th most downloaded mobile app worldwide in 2020 at 477 million downloads


Here’s education technology students hope you’ll keep doing in the fall — and what they hope you’ll drop ---
Click Here

DON’T lecture with slides for an entire Zoom (or onsite) class.

DO offer more active-learning and discussion exercises in class.

DON’T require students to use a tech tool that you don’t understand.

DO keep using anonymous polling.

DO get students up and about.

DO provide more asynchronous materials and activities (think about generating your own Camtasia videos on very technical aspects of your course)

DO emphasize interaction with and between students.

Jensen Comment
Although professors should understand their tech tools, there are times when professors should be willing to introduce course content they really understand. For example, how many accounting and finance professors fully understand bitcoin and other virtual currencies? They should learn enough about such content to include it in their courses. But if we had to fully understand everything we teach we may be leaving out important content just because we cannot yet answer all possible questions raised by students. There are some topics that teachers and students can and should interactively learn together. And even if we do have answers to some questions, it's sometimes better to make students learn those answers on their own rather than spoon feed ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

 


Music:   A Unique Way to Teach the Basics of Accounting ---
https://jborden.com/2021/03/22/music-monday-a-unique-way-to-teach-the-basics-of-accounting/

Jensen Comment
There are a lot of tools and tricks of the trade. I think I'd pass on using music to teach basic accounting. It's better to put students on laptops and use narrated Camtasia illustrations of how accounting rules and traditions work.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
Scroll down


Overcoming Mistakes of Early Efforts in Online Teaching During the 2020 Pandemic

Slate:  In Praise of Textbooks Especially During a Pandemic ---
https://slate.com/technology/2020/08/remote-learning-means-we-need-textbooks.html

Five Common Mistakes in Online Teaching (based upon student feedback)---
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3634399

1. Over-Assigning Work
2. Recording Long Video Lectures
3. Not Engaging Students in Multiple Formats of Learning
4. Being Disorganized
5. Not Engaging with Students

Eight Mistakes in Online Teaching ---
https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/2020/04/the-8-most-common-mistakes-when-teaching-online/

  1. Trying to "translate" a classroom course to the online environment. While I'd argue that there's no such thing as "online pedagogy" (there's only good pedagogy and poor pedagogy), classroom and online are different experiences that require attention to the conditions of learning distinct to each. Attempts to re-create the classroom learning experience, methods, and modes to the online environment is a basic error. Teaching online requires a "start over" in your course design, though not necessarily a change in student learning outcomes.

     
  2. Applying wrong metrics to the online experience. For example, many professors are wondering how to take attendance, or figuring out what counts for attendance. Attendance is a rather archaic and almost meaningless metric left over from the industrial age model of schooling. A better metric is student engagement.

     
  3. Becoming a talking head. It's bad enough students have to put up with a lot of poor classroom lectures. Now they have to suffer through countless hours of talking heads as professors videotape themselves "lecturing." I've been teaching online for 22 years. I've never once used Zoom in an online course or posted taped lectures. Forcing students to watch a taped disembodied talking head almost guarantees student disengagement, especially if we fail to appreciate the liability of transactional distance in the online environment. If the content of your lecture is that important, give your students a manuscript or your lecture notes to study.

     
  4. Posting video lectures over seven minutes long. The lecture method takes on a different function in the online environment. When instructors ask me how they can video tape and post their lectures online I ask, "Why would you want to duplicate the most maligned and least effective teaching method and pretend the online environment is a ‘classroom’ when it offers so much greater opportunity for student engagement?" The question to ask is, "What is the pedagogical function of this video?" The most effective functions are: a short introduction, an explication, or a demonstration.

     
  5. Assessing the wrong thing. I see some schools wanting to assess whether students "like" the online experience. What students "like" is beside the point of the educational. A common student comment on course evaluation for online courses is, "I would have preferred to have taken this course in the classroom." The response is, "How do you know?" Ask those students if they learned what the course was intended to provide, and they'll likely say, "Yes!" Assess the right thing: evidence of student learning and achievement of the course student learning outcomes. One can also evaluate the effectiveness of the course design: structure, scope, flow, alignment with program goals, etc.

     
  6. Ignoring aesthetics and design when creating an online course. Figuring out your course should not be an assignment. Your course should be designed so intuitively and aesthetically pleasing so the student perceives, intuits, and understands immediately what they are seeing and what is expected of them. Your students don't read a user manual or instructions when playing complex video games—they can immediately perceive what the game is about and what they are supposed to do. A well-designed website does not provide an orientation to new visitors. Your course should be clean, intuitive, and logical in design (and that includes not adding anything that does not directly support the learning outcomes).

     
  7. Attempting to go for coverage rather than depth. Many classroom instructors fail to appreciate that because online learning requires a higher level of student engagement, they need to reduce the amount of coverage they usually attempt in a classroom course—-which usually is way too much as it is. A good rule of thumb: cut the content coverage by half and focus on student engagement that (1) helps students achieve a learning outcomes and (2) provides evidence of learning.

     
  8. Failing to ask for help. Most faculty members are used to the silo-oriented isolated nature of academia. Traditionally, they develop their courses alone. At most they may share their course syllabi with colleagues on their faculties or departments, though more often than not they are seen mostly by the dean, registrar, and library services. Teaching online, especially for first time instructors, is a great opportunity to be more collaborative in our approach to teaching. Ask for help. Experienced online instructors, your school's instructional designers, and numerous online teaching support groups are ready and happy to help you make your online course the best it can be.

Common Mistakes in Online Teaching ---
https://www.tboxplanet.com/en/2020/05/12/common-mistakes-of-online-teaching/

Mistake 1: Preferring quantity over quality
Mistake 2: Lack of planning and organization
Mistake 3: Using too many assumptions
Mistake 4: Being monotonous
Error 5: Little feedback

Jensen Comment
Nothing is more boring than watching talking heads or endless PowerPoint slides on a computer screen or inside classrooms.

Students prefer live-action asynchronous and even interactive videos.
Exhibit A is the hundreds of wonderful tutorials available free from Khan Academy ---
https://www.khanacademy.org/
For example sample the math videos ---
https://www.khanacademy.org/math

Exhibit B is at Brigham Young University where the first two semesters of basic accounting is taught via asynchronous videos to students living on campus.
There are only a few times where students meet in a classroom ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

Exhibit C is when I flipped my own classrooms
In the last ten years of my 40 years of teaching full time I flipped my classrooms. I prepared hundreds of short Camtasia videos on the most technical parts of my accounting and AIS courses. Before class meetings students viewed these videos over and over until they saw the light. In class I then had students demonstrate in front of the class what they had learned. Student teams can even make their own videos as term projects.

Camtasia videos or related screen capture videos from other software vendors are really quite easy to make and don't take much more time than preparing a lecture. They work best where what you are trying to teach can be shown in successions of computer screens. Students watch your cursor move about and listen to you explaining what is happening --- you use a microphone to put your voice into the videos. In Camtasia you can even make the videos interactive to keep students engaged.

Camtasia Free Trial --- https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html
Ask you campus educational technology experts about Camtasia and competing software for preparing Camtasia-like videos.

You can use Zoom to bring your videos into remote classrooms, although there are other ways to bring these videos to students on and off campus.

How a Flipped Classroom, Journal Clubs, and “Ad-Lib” Conversations Kept Students Engaged in Brian Gibbs' biology and chemistry courses ---
https://narratives.insidehighered.com/covid-19-forced-him-to-teach-online/index.html?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=1f9c3dc283-DNU_2020_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-1f9c3dc283-197565045&mc_cid=1f9c3dc283&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

How to Look Better on Zoom (and Other Video-Calling Apps) ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/673264/how-to-look-better-on-zoom-and-other-video-calling-apps/

Digitize Old Slides, Negatives, and Photo Prints with These Converters ---
https://www.reviewgeek.com/71367/digitize-old-slides-negatives-and-photo-prints-with-these-converters/


Among some of the colleges that moved classes quickly from onsite to online, I'm getting all sorts of raves about "Keep Teaching" temporary remote teaching software ---
https://keepteaching.osu.edu/

Going Online in a Hurry: What to Do and Where to Start ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Going-Online-in-a-Hurry-What/248207?utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en&utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_1081819&cid=wb&source=ams&sourceId=296279

The coronavirus has colleges and universities swinging into action to move courses online. In the coming weeks, we’ll find out just how prepared (or not) academe is to do this on a large scale. Those of us in online teaching and educational technology have moved quickly to help, too, and it’s astonishing how many helpful resources have already been pulled together.

Even just a few weeks into the crisis, and really only a few days since class cancellations started to become a reality, there are top-quality guides free for the taking, created by people who really know their stuff. I will make no claim to have read all or even a fraction of them, but there are several that are clearly share-worthy:


Continued in Article

How to Look Better on Zoom (and Other Video-Calling Apps) ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/673264/how-to-look-better-on-zoom-and-other-video-calling-apps/

The 6 Best Free Video Conferencing Apps ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/661906/the-6-best-free-video-conferencing-apps/

Bob Jensen's long-time threads on asynchronous learning ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology in general ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

How to Save an Excel Sheet as a PDF ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/659219/how-to-save-an-excel-sheet-as-a-pdf/

Remotely Hands-On:  Teaching lab sciences and the fine arts during COVID-19 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/14/teaching-lab-sciences-and-fine-arts-during-covid-19?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=e230e94718-DNU_2019_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-e230e94718-197565045&mc_cid=e230e94718&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Free Resources for Teachers and Students:  What Happened to Thinkfinity.org?
https://www.mymove.com/broadband/provider/verizon-fios/

Compilation on Curriculum and Assessment (free download from Inside Higher Ed) ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/07/14/compilation-curriculum-and-assessment?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=4c95c1fd20-DNU_2020_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-4c95c1fd20-197565045&mc_cid=4c95c1fd20&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Bob Jensen's Threads on Assessment ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering ---
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Doing-Science-Engineering-Learning/dp/1732265178/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=richard+w.+hamming&qid=1593986045&sr=8-1/marginalrevol-20
Chapter 30 Download (You and Your Research) ---
https://d37ugbyn3rpeym.cloudfront.net/stripe-press/TAODSAE_zine_press.pdf

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software ---
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578675862/

FEDERAL CROWDSOURCING AND CITIZEN SCIENCE TOOLKIT ---
https://www.citizenscience.gov/toolkit/#

Bob Jensen's threads on education links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch


Camtasia and Other Self-Made Videos ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#NewTools

Privacy, Consent, and the Virtual One-Shot ---
https://acrlog.org/2020/11/13/privacy-consent-and-the-virtual-one-shot/

. . .

I (article author) did teach two virtual guest lectures in May and thought nothing of the fact that the instructors recorded them—something we’d discussed in advance and which seemed important given the emergency outside of all of our apartments and the very real technology barriers that students at CUNY face.

Then in the summer when both courses ran again and the instructors emailed to ask if I could reprise my guest lectures, they both indicated they could also just use the recordings from spring if I was busy or away. I responded immediately that either was fine as though we all implicitly understood that in virtual education contexts, ourselves and our pre-recorded simulacra are basically the same. Aren’t they?

But then, upon further reflection, I felt a little odd and I began to wonder how many MP4s of me had been recorded or shared since the pandemic had started. I thought of a virtual conference panel I participated in, which I learned was being live-streamed to YouTube only after the session had commenced: “thousands of people are watching right now,” one of the organizers said, proudly. Then in June, I was asked by a faculty member who I’d worked with before to do virtual library instruction for a research-intensive course and was startled to join a Zoom session and see the red recording button blinking before I opened my mouth.

I wondered then, gloomily, if part of the natural progression of higher education in this moment is not only the loss of corporeality but the end of the ephemeral educational encounter altogether. Or perhaps we are all experiencing some kind of temporal implosion in which college exists both nowhere and everywhere, and classes are attended by black boxes on a screen, which may or may not represent the attention and presence of actual students, and the teacher might be ported in from another time and place.

. . .

I don’t know exactly what I’m worried will happen with the videos, which are not exciting and I can’t imagine many people rewatching. I certainly would never rewatch them, in part because they are, with some small deviations, almost identical. In the background are small personal details-—a framed May Day poster a friend designed, a dying succulent, my swimsuit drying on a door-knob, my husband walking by. Parts of the videos are potentially dangerous out of context in that they are mildly political; almost all students in first year composition courses are researching social and political issues. It’s unlikely but not impossible that pieces of the videos could be recontextualized and weaponized by alt-right cyber-trolls who spend their days harassing and doxxing liberal academics and students of color (the majority of students at the CUNY campus where I work are Black and Hispanic).

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
In my courses (not online) I made videos of the most technical aspects of my courses (e.g., how to account for very technical derivative instrument contracts as speculations versus as hedges under FAS 133 rules). The students watched and rewatched these videos over and over before class as many times as needed, because they knew they would have to demonstrate what they learned in front of the class in subsequent class meetings).

My point is that there are many types of videos that can be used for onsite or online teaching. My preference is to make learning videos on very technical topics that students learn at different rates. Videos were a great way to level the playing field on learning rates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

 


How PwC is using VR to shake up bias trainings and get employees to think about their hidden prejudices
https://www.businessinsider.com/using-virtual-reality-for-diversity-and-inclusion-trainings-2020-7

 .       PwC and tech startup Talespin have teamed up to train employees on implicit bias using virtual reality. 
·        VR-based implicit bias training immerses its participants in scenarios where they learn to make inclusive hiring decisions and point out instances of discrimination.
·        Studies have shown VR learners required less time to learn, had a stronger emotional connection to the training content, were more focused when learning, and were more confident about their takeaways from the training. 
·        It comes at a time of public reckoning that current corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives aren't doing enough, especially when it comes to implicit bias during the hiring process. 

Virtual reality could permanently alter the way businesses approach diversity and inclusion trainings.

Despite spending billions of dollars on D&I initiatives, US companies are more segregated now than they were 40 years ago, and implicit bias in hiring remains one of the biggest culprits. Implicit bias refers to the unknown assumptions people make about others based on their gender, ethnicity, age, or minority status, rather than their professional qualifications.

Some companies are exploring new options for diversity trainings. PwC is one of them.

The professional-services firm is working with software company Talespin to implement VR-based implicit-bias training programs —and it could be a new frontier for how companies approach diversity, equity, and inclusion training. 

The Big 4 consulting and tax firm completed a pilot with Talespin last year, and it has since used virtual reality programming to train over 4,000 employees on implicit bias.

How the VR training works 

The training places employees in simulated office settings designed after actual PwC offices, where they speak with virtual characters through a head-mounted display. During the five-to-seven-minute training modules, they are prompted to make decisions about who to hire and promote, and must use inclusive leadership practices introduced prior to the simulation.

Kyle Jackson, CEO of Talespin, told Business Insider that PwC employees using the VR tool are trained on how to recognize unconscious bias when hiring. They have to think about how even a candidate's name on a résumé can stir up implicit biases, he said. 

Studies have shown, for example, that résumés with names that sound "white" get more call backs than those that don't. Employees using the VR training are asked to formulate responses if these biases are expressed in a hiring meeting by a colleague, or a senior partner.

 Continued in article

 


Sixty Minutes April 5, 2020:  How to Communicate Interactively With the Dead (without doubt the most fascinating Sixty Minutes module I've ever viewed)

Jensen Comment
It's possible to communicate with dead people in many ways, especially if they have Websites that are still hosted. For example, one of my colleagues and close friends was a sociology professor named Mike Kearl at Trinity University. Mike died of a sudden heart attack in March 2015. But his once-popular and widely viewed Website is still hosted by Trinity University.

One of the ways of communicating with a dead scholar's Website is via Web crawlers like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Duck Duck Go, etc.
For example I entered the search phrase "EXERCISING THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION" in the following Web crawler ---
https://www.google.com/advanced_search
One of the hits I got was Mike Kearl's hit at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/mkearl/
This in a way is how Mike can still communicate with us via Web crawlers.

One of the most exciting modules I've ever seen on CBS Sixty Minutes was aired on April 5, 2020 ---
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/holocaust-stories-artificial-intelligence-60-minutes-2020-04-05/
This is far beyond mere Web crawling.

You have to watch this show from beginning to end to appreciate how extensive interviews with a person before death, innovative video capturing, and artificial intelligence have been combined to create interactive communications with the dead.

As this technology becomes more efficient and less costly, it will almost be like the dead really aren't dead.


The “Feynman Technique” for Studying Effectively: An Animated Primer ---
http://www.openculture.com/2020/03/the-feynman-technique-for-studying-effectively-an-animated-primer.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Also see
https://www.aimsedu.org/2017/02/03/the-feynman-technique-of-learning-part-ii/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIiOyH1OO16AIVhJ6fCh1psAvCEAAYASAAEgIUOfD_BwE


Facebook Messenger --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Messenger

MIT:  Forget Zoom—children are using Facebook Messenger Kids to deal with coronavirus isolation ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/30/975013/coronavirus-zoom-facebook-messenger-kids-isolation-friends/


American Library Association ALA welcomes LinkedIn Learning’s (formerly Lynda,com) changes to terms of service ---
http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2020/03/ala-welcomes-linkedin-learning-s-changes-terms-service


50 Education Technology Tools Every Teacher Should Know About ---
https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/50-education-technology-tools-every-teacher-should-know-about


Snagit:  I really like the Grab Text and the Panoramic Capture Options of Snagit 2020

Snagit (screen shot or video capture) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snagit
Also see the free trial offer at https://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.html

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition

I've always liked Snagit from TechSmith for capturing all or part of what's on my computer screen as a picture file or capturing video. But there are times when you are capturing a picture of text that I would prefer to capture the screen image as text rather than as a picture such as when I want to quote from a book page or a PDF file that won't let you select that text and copy it to your clipboard directly. The Snagit 2020 software is a relatively cheap OCR capturing text on your computer screen test  I find myself using it the Grab Text app over and over again when I want to quote only part of a text page as text rather than as a jpg or other image file. The OCR app in Snagit is relatively accurate, although you should carefully proof read any OCR captures for errs.

Video Tutorial:  SnagIt Grab Text Capture --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlsMybfOjx4

Another feature in Snagit that is useful is the scrolling capture feature that was available on versions even before Snagit 2020 but never would work on my computer. Many screen capture apps will only only capture what is currently on the screen. The Scrolling Capture option in Snagit (maybe) allows you to also capture parts of the image that are only visible if you scroll. There may be a way to get this to work on my computer, but I never found the way.

Video Tutorial:  Snagit Scrolling Capture --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL2ULh3l6hY

For me the above tutorial Scrolling Capture app never worked on my computer. The arrows never appear for me. However, the following Panoramic Capture option in Snagit 2020 does work on my computer.

Video Tutorial:  Snagit 2020 Panoramic Capture --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRIlPokOefI

Video Tutorial:  Snagit Video Capture --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sVXP8R7bBE
You might have to contact Snagit Tech Support if your videos do not capture audio

 

Added Jensen Comment
I did not create hot keys to bring up the Snagit capture window. Instead I pinned the capture program to the Windows task bar --- that way I'm only one click away from capturing what I want on the screen.


1001 Inventions --- www.1001inventions.com

NCES: Distance Learning Dataset Training ---
https://nces.ed.gov/training/datauser/

A Hundred Quick Technology Tips for CPAs ---
https://www.fm-magazine.com/issues/2019/jun/100-tech-tips.html?utm_source=mnl:globalcpa&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=17Jul2019

Lawsky's Free Income Tax Problem Generator ---
https://www.lawskypracticeproblems.org/about

EDUCAUSE: 2017 Student and Faculty Technology Research Studies ---
https://library.educause.edu/resources/2017/6/2017-student-and-faculty-technology-research-studies

The History of Teaching Machines --- http://teachingmachin.es/timeline.html
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology history --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Technology Integration (integrating education technology into the classroom) ---  http://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration

Digital Humanities Tool Box --- http://www.scoop.it/t/digital-humanities-tool-box

"iPad Apps for the Classroom," by George Williams, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 4, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/ipad-apps-classroom/55185?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

"Parallels Desktop 10: A Smoother Way to Run Windows on Your Mac," by David Pogue, Yahoo Tech, August 28, 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/in-2005-steve-jobs-made-a-jaw-dropping-95952187969.html

The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning --- http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/index

2014: The Year in Interactive Storytelling, Graphics, and Multimedia --- http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/29/us/year-in-interactive-storytelling.html

Stop Procrastinating:  Guide to Better Study Strategies ---
http://www.stopprocrastinatingapp.com/how-to-study

Learning Technology:  T.H.E. Magazine's Readers Choice Awards for 2016 ---
https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/10/31/readers-choice-awards-2016.aspx

UMass Dartmouth: Open Educational Resources --- http://guides.lib.umassd.edu/c.php?g=254707&p=1698634

HASTAC: The Pedagogy Project (technology in education and learning) --- https://www.hastac.org/pedagogy-project

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Learn How to Create a Webinar Page With WordPress ---
https://readwrite.com/2019/12/19/learn-how-to-create-a-webinar-page-with-wordpress/


A Simple App to Teach Regression ---
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3507142


Flash Cards for Learning (over 500 million) ---
https://www.chegg.com/flashcards

Amazon Kindle Textbook Creator --- https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1002998671 

Amazon launched a new service that helps educators and authors publish their own digital "textbooks" and other educational content that students can then access on Fire tablets, iPad, iPhone, Android smartphones and tablets, Mac, and PC.

"Educators and authors can use the public beta of Amazon's new Kindle Textbook Creator tool to easily turn PDFs of their textbooks and course materials into Kindle books," the company explained in its announcement. "Once the book is ready, authors can upload it to KDP in just a few simple steps to reach students worldwide."

Features include flashcards, highlighting, and note-taking.

Those who publish through the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) program can earn royalties of up to 70% and keep their rights and maintain control of their content. "They can also choose to enroll their books in KDP Select for additional royalty opportunities like Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, and access to marketing tools like Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions," Amazon said.

More information about the KDP program is available on the Amazon website.

From the Scout Report on March 4, 2016

FlashTabs --- https://flashtabs.co/

The idea behind FlashTabs is as simple as it is effective. Let's say you are studying for an anatomy exam, or a driver's test, or a learning a new language. How do you integrate the information and the studying process throughout the day? FlashTab has an answer. The Chrome browser extension lets you create digital flashcards that will appear every time you open a new tab. This way, learning is integrated into daily activities at work and/or at home. Adding the extension takes only a few clicks of your mouse. From there, create a deck of flashcards and activate. Then learn your targeted information as you browse the Internet

 

Flashcard Machine --- http://www.flashcardmachine.com/

A free service for creating web-based study flashcards that can be shared with others.

With over 109 million flash cards created to-date, Flashcard Machine is your premier online study tool.

For example, search for the word "accounting" at
http://www.flashcardmachine.com/flashcards/flashcards.cgi


Chronicle of Higher Education:  Innovators: 10 Classroom Trailblazers ---
https://www.chronicle.com/specialreport/Innovators-10-Classroom/156?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=aedc459027d84bcf8c69f0560d2ddeae&elq=499dd218c46f4987ae1f280407953b22&elqaid=17228&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7478

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Chatbot --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot

CHATBOTS EXPLAINED: Why businesses (and educators) should be paying attention to the chatbot revolution ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/chatbots-explained-why-businesses-should-be-paying-attention-to-the-chatbot-revolution-2016-7

QuickBooks jumps on the chatbot bandwagon ---
https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/quickbooks-jumps-on-the-chatbot-bandwagon

Jensen Comment
Early on in education technology I adopted and made visits to nearly 200 college college campuses demonstrating the use of course management systems (in those days ToolBooks) and screen capture videos (in those days Camtasia) for flipped classrooms. If I were not retired these days I would adopt chatbots for my courses and my traveling dog and pony shows.
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Presentations

THE VOICE ASSISTANT LANDSCAPE REPORT: How artificially intelligent voice assistants are changing the relationship between consumers and computers --
http://www.businessinsider.com/voice-assistant-report-2017-3

Bob Jensen's threads on new technologies for learning ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Doceri:  The Interactive Whiteboard for iPad --- https://doceri.com/

DisplayNote Collaboration Beyond Wireless Presentation Systems --- https://www.displaynote.com/

Article Citation:

Veronica Paz (2017) Innovative New Apps and Uses for the Accounting Classroom. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting: Spring 2017, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 63-75.

https://doi.org/10.2308/jeta-51653

Educational

Innovative New Apps and Uses for the Accounting Classroom

Veronica Paz

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Editor's note: Accepted by Hui Du.

ABSTRACT:

New instructional technologies provide educators with opportunities for student engagement and collaboration. As technology evolves, educators will spend more time identifying and testing new platforms. This instructional resource paper reviews several recent innovative technologies by providing brief descriptions, pricing, and current and potential uses. More specifically, this paper examines Doceri and DisplayNote in detail. My results from analyzing exam scores and course grades identified that the use of Doceri improves overall course performance in an introductory managerial accounting class. Poll Everywhere is an audience response system using mobile phones, Twitter, and the web in place of clickers. Student surveys suggest that the use of the Poll Everywhere app encourages questions and class discussions. Students perceived they participated more, and the class provided more illustrative examples with the utilization of the Poll Everywhere app. Top Hat is a cloud-based classroom and student response system used to increase student engagement during lectures using cell phones, tablets, or other devices. Finally, nClass and Asana are new tools to consider for classroom adoption and future research.

Keywords: innovative classroom technologies, new apps, new teaching tools

Bob Jensen's threads on new technologies for learning ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Learning by and from mistakes is a good way to learn. This was noted in the metacognitive self-learning pedagogy of the BAM Project ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

Khan Academy --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy

"How Sal Khan Hopes to Remake Education," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 30, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/How-Sal-Khan-Hopes-to-Remake/235895?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=06b109af16a944e2831e75c6293af5c1&elq=82ccd8bee8914a20b7b7263e89cf9c60&elqaid=8470&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2793

Salman Khan is not afraid to make mistakes in his popular teaching videos. In fact, he considers them a feature.

"I’ll giggle every now and then because I make a mistake, which I think students say, "OK, it’s OK to make mistakes and it’s OK to giggle while doing mathematics," he says. "And it seems like a small thing. But when was the last time you giggled, you know, while doing a math problem?"

He’s the founder of Khan Academy, which has grown from something like a hobby, when he recorded videos in his walk-in closet, to a thriving nonprofit organization with more than twenty million registered students. Those videos are now one small part of a mission to remake education.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


UNC's Technology Commons and Resources
"UNC Gives Professors a Way to Rate Classroom Technologies Across Campuses," by Corinne Ruff, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 19, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/UNC-Gives-Professors-a-Way-to/235367?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=b0cfb869eb844215a7f879a683640f31&elq=1a51e43df2934d40b7a99b53117d85a6&elqaid=7957&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2473 

The University of North Carolina system has built a Yelp-like review site for teaching tools, where it is asking professors to review and comment on how useful various digital services were in their classrooms.

Though the process will not be quite as simple as awarding five stars, Matthew Z. Rascoff, the system vice president for technology-based learning and innovation who is leading the project, said professors would use a research-based rubric to describe which tools had helped increase student learning and which aren’t worth the time or money. Technology vendors will also be able to use the site to view feedback on products.

The online platform, known as the UNC Learning Technology Commons, opened to vendor applications last week and will end its first round of applications in mid-March. After a rolling review of the first cycle of applications within the next few weeks, faculty members on the university’s 17 campuses will have access to the commons. There they will be able to virtually discuss, review, and share ideas on which instructional technologies work and how educators in diverse disciplines can use tools to engage students in the classroom.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on education technologies ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


Maker kit program turns libraries into places for content creation, not just consumption ---
http://lisnews.org/maker_kit_program_turns_libraries_into_places_for_content_creation_not_just_consumption

Librarianship is a funny profession–the day is often a mixture of hokey jokes from people who haven’t been in a library in years, and strategizing ways to implement robotics and computer coding into programs for everybody from preschoolers to seniors. When people see what libraries actually get up to these days, they’re almost always surprised. So many people in America depend on their libraries to help them forward when it comes to technology, and lots of libraries have answered that call with aplomb, learning as they go.

Continued in articel

Bob Jensen's threads on libraries --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#---Libraries
 


In an attempt to develop empathetic students, business schools are teaching literature. Does that work?

"Better Management Through Belles Lettres:  Literature at the B-school," by Lisa Haney, Baffler.com, December 2015 ---
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/better-management-belles-lettres/haney_wgroundb29-3_42rgb  

At six o’clock on a Wednesday evening last spring, dozens of students at Columbia Business School jostled into William C. Warren Hall to learn how the study of literature might prepare them for executive success. They were there to attend “Leadership Through Fiction,” a three-hour weekly course led by adjunct associate professor Bruce Craven, a novelist and Hollywood screenwriter turned business school administrator.

Craven was all smiles as he stood in the middle of an ultramodern amphitheater, radiating can-do energy and West Coast cool. This evening, the class was discussing Little Big Man, Thomas Berger’s 1964 parody of the western genre. Narrated by 111-year-old Jack Crabb, who claims to be the sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn, the novel moves briskly through a series of gruesome confrontations between the Cheyenne tribes and white settlers in the nineteenth century. But Craven did not begin the class discussion by pointing to the history of colonial conquest or its attendant politics of racial genocide, as one might expect in a literature class. What he focused on, rather, was the failure to communicate.

“You can see how ineffective the communication is between the Cheyenne and the settlers,” Craven said. “In their world at the time, violence was the immediate reaction. Yet we can still fall into these kinds of traps. What kinds of insights can we take away from this?”

“These types of situations really make you tough,” one student volunteered. “They thicken your skin. It might be painful, but it can be really beneficial.”

“Good!” Craven said. “Anyone else?”

“I think its good when youre talking with people from different cultures to bring things back to the human level,” said another student. “Talk about things that arent inherently contentious—the weather, your family, children. Thats a good way to bridge the gap.”

“But sometimes conflicts just cant be resolved,” said Brian, a former Navy officer who quickly emerged as one of the classs more outspoken students. “Through a leaders—or a heros—journey, it’s important to realize whats worth fighting for, and when you shouldnt compromise your values.”

Craven nodded. “It often comes down to finding a balance between protecting your identity—staying true to your identity and your values—and finding common ground.” Then he launched into a story about running an executive coaching program in China. “One of the things I had to practice was listening and not always jumping in as a big loud American trying to talk my way through differences,” he recalled. He reframed this insight with his signature nonchalance. “For the Cheyenne, its like, ‘Our laws are better . . . Our women are hotter . . . Our culture rocks.Its like Coachella, Lollapalooza, Woodstock—but with knives.”

A four-minute promotional video posted online alongside Craven’s syllabus outlines the rationale for repurposing literature as management shibboleth—a teaching philosophy that embraces everything from ordinary self-improvement to solipsistic delusion. The camera leads the viewer to the King’s Highway Diner, just inside Palm Springs, California. Craven sits at the counter, flanked by a pile of books. As he rifles through the stack, he puts on his reading glasses and peers over them intently when he wants to make a point. These novels, he explains, are “narratives about characters in many different professions” who must find a “balance between their professional obligations, their personal expectations, and goals.” Like real people, fictional characters stumble, and it is “through their stumbling,” Craven promises, “that we will learn how to prepare ourselves for the future.”

The Stumbling Muse

Through my own travels in the literary frontiers of New York, I had heard of classes like Craven’s. Some years earlier, I had received an email from a friend, a former investment banker, tipping me off to a class he was taking at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business called, improbably enough, “The Moral Leader.” “It’s probably a lot like what you do now,” he assured me. “We read novels and plays and poems to try to figure out how they can make us better people.” When I tried to explain that that wasn’t at all what I did—I was a literary critic, not a therapist or a spiritual guru—he seemed distressed. “You should give it a try,” he replied encouragingly, and added, almost as an afterthought: “Plus, you could make a lot more money teaching in a business school than at a college.”

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic literature and free libraries ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/electronicLiterature.htm

 


From the Scout Report on October

Wikispaces Classroom --- https://www.wikispaces.com/content/classroom 

As the site notes, Wikispaces Classroom is "a social writing platform" where teachers and students can use the latest technology to seamlessly communicate and collaborate. This virtual workspace allows teachers to create a safe, private network where students may work on writing projects, either independently or in teams. Creating a classroom is relatively easy, but does require a free account. Once an account is created, users can build a space of their own by creating new pages, uploading files, starting discussions, and adding projects and tags. For educators looking for ways to make homework more interactive and dynamic, Wikispaces Classroom is a big step forward.  


LeechBlock ---  http://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/ 

Since it first appeared in 2007, LeechBlock has provided Internet users with a simple tool intended to increase productivity by blocking "those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day." With many customizable options, this Firefox browser extension allows users to select specific sites to block while leaving access to those that may be needed for school or work. It also tracks the total amount of time spent browsing websites within a specific block of time, a helpful feature for staying on top of your good and bad browsing habits. Interested users will want to explore this website before installing, which features Examples of various uses of the different settings, as well as a comprehensive FAQ section, and four-step Installation guide


Community College Research Center --- http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Faculty Focus (teaching tools) ---  http://www.facultyfocus.com/

Use Plickers for quick checks for understanding to know whether your students are understanding big concepts and mastering key skills ---
https://www.plickers.com/
Thank you Sharon Garvin for the heads up.

"What Twitter Changes Might Mean for Academics," Chronicle of Higher Education, September 8, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/what-twitter-changes-might-mean-for-academics/58035?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

Higher Education Outreach Innovation --- Teaching and Learning on the Streets
"Big Idea, Tall Order," by Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, October 14, 2014 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/14/cathy-davidsons-new-big-idea

TED --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_%28conference%29
Also note the Criticism section

TED-Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing --- http://ed.ted.com/



Flash Cards for Learning (over 500 million) -
--
https://www.chegg.com/flashcards

Amazon Kindle Textbook Creator --- https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1002998671 

Amazon launched a new service that helps educators and authors publish their own digital "textbooks" and other educational content that students can then access on Fire tablets, iPad, iPhone, Android smartphones and tablets, Mac, and PC.

"Educators and authors can use the public beta of Amazon's new Kindle Textbook Creator tool to easily turn PDFs of their textbooks and course materials into Kindle books," the company explained in its announcement. "Once the book is ready, authors can upload it to KDP in just a few simple steps to reach students worldwide."

Features include flashcards, highlighting, and note-taking.

Those who publish through the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) program can earn royalties of up to 70% and keep their rights and maintain control of their content. "They can also choose to enroll their books in KDP Select for additional royalty opportunities like Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, and access to marketing tools like Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions," Amazon said.

More information about the KDP program is available on the Amazon website.

From the Scout Report on March 4, 2016

FlashTabs --- https://flashtabs.co/

The idea behind FlashTabs is as simple as it is effective. Let's say you are studying for an anatomy exam, or a driver's test, or a learning a new language. How do you integrate the information and the studying process throughout the day? FlashTab has an answer. The Chrome browser extension lets you create digital flashcards that will appear every time you open a new tab. This way, learning is integrated into daily activities at work and/or at home. Adding the extension takes only a few clicks of your mouse. From there, create a deck of flashcards and activate. Then learn your targeted information as you browse the Internet

 

Flashcard Machine --- http://www.flashcardmachine.com/

A free service for creating web-based study flashcards that can be shared with others.

With over 109 million flash cards created to-date, Flashcard Machine is your premier online study tool.

For example, search for the word "accounting" at
http://www.flashcardmachine.com/flashcards/flashcards.cgi

 


The Most Effective Memory Methods are Difficult—and That's Why They Work ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2018/12/13/quartz-69gtthe-most-effective-memory-methods-are-difficultand-thats-why-they-work


PDF Annotator (not free):  Type, Write & Highlight ---
http://www.pdfannotator.com/en/how?utm_source=PDF+Annotator+Newsletter&utm_campaign=54e734fe67-PA_News_2015_10_1_EN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0f269f1950-54e734fe67-196223493

With PDF Annotator you can ...

·         Take notes on academic articles.

·         Grade student papers.

·         Mark-up your text books.

·         Get rid of PPT presentations and the like, by live completing PDFs.

                        And much more, learn about it.

October 12, 2015 message from accounting professor Jim McKinney (University of Maryland)

I use the PDF Annotator with my tablet PC in class all the time. I create pdf worksheets and walk through problems in class and can save the results and post on-line.


Podcast --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast

"Improving My Teaching Via Podcast," by Jim Lang, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 17, 2015 ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1125-improving-my-teaching-via-podcast?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

At the end of every academic year, my department gathers to celebrate our graduating English majors and everyone is invited to share a favorite poem or passage. One of my colleagues always reads aloud Galway Kinnell’s poem "Oatmeal," in which the poet describes how the great authors of the world enrich his breakfast with their writing.

"Yesterday morning," she recites, "I ate my oatmeal porridge, as he called it with John Keats.

Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:

"due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal should not be eaten alone.

"He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton."

I’ve been having a similar experience lately, although, instead of the great poets, my companions have been leading thinkers and visionaries on teaching in higher education. Nevertheless, they have been very kind to accompany me as I run my daily errands, do chores around the house, exercise, and even wait in security lines at the airport.

As I was making pancakes for my twins the other day (I’m not an oatmeal fan), Jose Antonio Bowen, president of Goucher College and author of Teaching Naked, spoke to me about why he loves "noisy and messy classrooms." He also reminded me that "the thing that teachers do best in the classroom is to be human beings, and to get to know their students as human beings, and to make that connection between what matters to your students and what matters to you." -

Read more at: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1125-improving-my-teaching-via-podcast?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en#sthash.KZe6xhFe.dpuf


Alexa Voice Service (AVS) ... may be Amazon’s best hardware product since its Kindle e-reader
"Amazon's Awesome Alexa Voice Tech Reaches Out To Other Devices:  The Alexa Voice Service goes into developer preview." by Adriana Lee, ReadWriteWeb, July 31, 2015 ---
http://readwrite.com/2015/07/31/amazon-alexa-voice-service-developer-preview-echo

Alexa, the chatty personality that makes the Amazon Echo smart speaker so fun and handy, wants to join more devices. The company announced Friday the launch of its free Alexa Voice Service (AVS) developer preview.

AVS was born out of the company’s work on the Echo, which may be Amazon’s best hardware product since its Kindle e-reader. The device is a voice-controlled cylindrical appliance that can tell you the weather, give you traffic conditions on your commute, play music, control connected lights and other appliances, and—of course—buy things from Amazon. 

See also: Amazon Echo’s Ready To Chat Up Everyone Now—Except Developers

Voice features may seem rather dime-a-dozen these days, but Echo’s accuracy and grasp of natural language could be among the best to date. Although it’s not perfect either, it does largely succeed in living up to the promise of understanding organic speech. Users can talk to it easily, without learning a rigid lexicon of verbal commands.

Now hardware makers, both professional and hobbyists, can see what those language powers can bring to their projects.

Here's the caveat!

Continued in article


Video:  Illegal to Film in the Library---
https://multcolib.org/policies-manuals/behavior-rules-governing-use-multnomah-county-library

Jensen Comment
Photocopy machines are often placed in libraries because it's assumed that extensive photocopying of books is too expensive for copyright violations. However, newer technologies in video make page copying quite cheap.

October 16, 2015 reply from Scott Bokacker

This would be one tool to do it cheaply https://www.camscanner.com/ 


"Rethinking Twitter in the Classroom," by Kelli Marshall, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 1, 2015 ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1021-rethinking-twitter-in-the-classroom?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

When I first required my students in a large lecture course to use Twitter, many of the roughly 120 enrolled did not approve. And they voiced that opinion quite clearly on my evaluations. Their comments could be divided into two categories: helpful and unhelpful.

Here are a few of the helpful ones:

These comments are helpful because they express a concern (e.g., Twitter feeds are tough to follow) and then offer a solution (e.g., perhaps make Twitter optional). Unfortunately, most of my students’ comments regarding Twitter fell into the unhelpful category. (Note: Except for inserting single quote marks for clarity, none of the spelling, grammar, or wording below has been modified.) Among the unhelpful remarks:

See more at:
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1021-rethinking-twitter-in-the-classroom?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en#sthash.r9qESVrd.dpuf

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on education technologies ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


"The Best Teaching Resources on the Web," by David Goobler, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 22, 2014 ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/770-the-best-teaching-resources-on-the-web?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

. . .

Often my first stop when I'm looking for a new idea for the classroom is Faculty Focus. It regularly publishes short articles with practical ideas for the college instructor. It’s a great resource -- well-designed, organized by topic, and searchable. It also boasts Maryellen Weimer and her Teaching Professor blog, an outgrowth of Weimer's much-loved newsletter of the same name. Weimer's articles are little jewels of concision, distilling practical advice from recent pedagogical research findings.

Another useful site is that of the IDEA Center, a nonprofit that you may know from its student feedback services. Over the years, IDEA has amassed a trove of pedagogy research, from short "Notes on Instruction" to longer, peer-reviewed "IDEA papers." Take a look; there's plenty there.

Speaking of peer-reviewed papers, it's now easier than ever to plug in to current pedagogy research. Alongside traditional, research-heavy articles, many pedagogy journals also feature shorter, more practical papers that offer easily usable ideas. Here's a good list of top pedagogy journals.

I often find new classroom ideas by visiting the web pages of campus teaching and learning centers. Many of those websites have evolved into excellent collections of teaching tips, as their sponsoring universities have become more attuned to faculty development. Some of my favorites are the ones at UT Austin, Berkeley, and BYU.

Closer to home, The Chronicle hosts a wide variety of good resources for instructors looking for ideas. James M. Lang has been writing a monthly column on teaching for years now, and if you're reading this, I probably don't need to tell you how useful his columns are. Although there doesn't seem to be a dedicated archive page for Lang's columns, you can find links to his most recent columns by clicking here and scrolling down to "On Course". In addition, The Chronicle’s ProfHacker blog, while it features posts about far more than just teaching, has a roster of experienced and personable academics frequently write about classroom strategies. The blog is a particularly good place to go to learn more about using new technologies in the classroom.

Finally, a promising new resource has just been launched right here at Vitae: a straightforward and easy-to-use syllabi database. It’s an obviously useful idea. Teachers have probably shared syllabi for as long as there has been syllabi; this just facilitates that sharing across great distances. I’m excited at the prospect of this database growing and providing a library of well-made syllabi, ready to consult the next time I’m putting together a new course. It will only be as good as its contributions, however. The folks at Vitae have made it very, very easy to upload a syllabus; I just put one up in about 60 seconds. Why not head over there now and share one of yours?

What web resources do you make use of for your teaching? I’m always eager to learn of more—add your favorite sites to the comments below.

- See more at: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/770-the-best-teaching-resources-on-the-web?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en#sthash.04UAyWZs.dpuf

Often my first stop when I'm looking for a new idea for the classroom is Faculty Focus. It regularly publishes short articles with practical ideas for the college instructor. It’s a great resource -- well-designed, organized by topic, and searchable. It also boasts Maryellen Weimer and her Teaching Professor blog, an outgrowth of Weimer's much-loved newsletter of the same name. Weimer's articles are little jewels of concision, distilling practical advice from recent pedagogical research findings.

Another useful site is that of the IDEA Center, a nonprofit that you may know from its student feedback services. Over the years, IDEA has amassed a trove of pedagogy research, from short "Notes on Instruction" to longer, peer-reviewed "IDEA papers." Take a look; there's plenty there.

Speaking of peer-reviewed papers, it's now easier than ever to plug in to current pedagogy research. Alongside traditional, research-heavy articles, many pedagogy journals also feature shorter, more practical papers that offer easily usable ideas. Here's a good list of top pedagogy journals.

I often find new classroom ideas by visiting the web pages of campus teaching and learning centers. Many of those websites have evolved into excellent collections of teaching tips, as their sponsoring universities have become more attuned to faculty development. Some of my favorites are the ones at UT Austin, Berkeley, and BYU.

Closer to home, The Chronicle hosts a wide variety of good resources for instructors looking for ideas. James M. Lang has been writing a monthly column on teaching for years now, and if you're reading this, I probably don't need to tell you how useful his columns are. Although there doesn't seem to be a dedicated archive page for Lang's columns, you can find links to his most recent columns by clicking here and scrolling down to "On Course". In addition, The Chronicle’s ProfHacker blog, while it features posts about far more than just teaching, has a roster of experienced and personable academics frequently write about classroom strategies. The blog is a particularly good place to go to learn more about using new technologies in the classroom.

Finally, a promising new resource has just been launched right here at Vitae: a straightforward and easy-to-use syllabi database. It’s an obviously useful idea. Teachers have probably shared syllabi for as long as there has been syllabi; this just facilitates that sharing across great distances. I’m excited at the prospect of this database growing and providing a library of well-made syllabi, ready to consult the next time I’m putting together a new course. It will only be as good as its contributions, however. The folks at Vitae have made it very, very easy to upload a syllabus; I just put one up in about 60 seconds. Why not head over there now and share one of yours?

What web resources do you make use of for your teaching? I’m always eager to learn of more—add your favorite sites to the comments below.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


The Jigsaw Classroom: A Cooperative Learning Technique --- http://www.jigsaw.org

Welcome to the official web site of the jigsaw classroom, a cooperative learning technique that reduces racial conflict among school children, promotes better learning, improves student motivation, and increases enjoyment of the learning experience. The jigsaw technique was first developed in the early 1970s by Elliot Aronson and his students at the University of Texas and the University of California. Since then, hundreds of schools have used the jigsaw classroom with great success. The jigsaw approach is considered to be a particularly valuable tool in averting tragic events such as the Columbine massacre.

Overview of the Technique
  History of the Jigsaw Classroom
  Jigsaw in 10 Easy Steps
  Tips on Implementation
  Books and Articles Related to the Jigsaw Technique
  Chapter 1 of Aronson's Book "Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine"
  Links on Cooperative Learning and School Violence
  About Elliot Aronson and This Web Site
 


Evernote --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evernote

"Using Evernote in the Classroom," by Amy Cavender, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 20, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/using-evernote-in-the-classroom/58347?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"A Brief Word from an Evernote Convert," by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 6, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/A-Brief-Word-from-an-Evernote/25291/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

"Evernote and Markdown: Two Tools that Work Great Together," by Amy Cavender, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 10, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/evernote-and-markdown-two-tools-that-work-great-together/58457?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Sometimes, I come across ideas for posts quite by accident.

Early this afternoon (November 6), for instance, I was looking at the wiki that we use for scheduling our posts, trying to figure out my posting schedule for the next few weeks. I was also wondering whether I’d be able to post something for the week of November 10. We try to have our posts in by midnight on Thursday of the week before the post runs, and I was, quite frankly, drawing a blank on post ideas.

I’d pretty much concluded I’d have to put posting anything off for a week, and I turned to other concerns. I’ve been frustrated with my writing (or lack thereof) lately, and I’ve been thinking I need to restart a daily writing practice — something along the lines of using 750words.com, but without relying on that service

Readers may recall that I recently wrote about using Evernote in the classroom. In that post, I noted that I use Evernote for storing all kinds of information, not just for keeping track of my class notes. Since everything in my Evernote account is searchable, it seemed a good place to start keeping that daily writing.

The catch is that I’ve started doing most of my writing in Markdown, for a number of reasons. (I won’t go into them here, but if you’d like some good reasons and a quick introduction to Markdown, check out Lincoln’s post from a few years back.)
So far as I’m aware, Evernote doesn’t handle Markdown natively. Still, I was sure there had to be a way to get them working together, and that more than likely some clever person had already figured something out. So off to Google I went, and I found this:
Evernote for Sublime Text. I’ve been using Sublime Text for most of my writing for some months now. A Sublime Text package that integrates with my Evernote account is ideal. I can do my writing in the application and markup language I’ve become most accustomed to using, and can send daily work to my Evernote account with just a few keystrokes, and without having to leave Sublime Text. The note shows up in Evernote formatted in rich text, but I can easily open it (or any other note in my account) again in Sublime Text to continue editing in Markdown. This may turn out to be just the tool I was looking for.

It turned out to be a fine post idea, too.

OneNote --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_OneNote

Switching from Evernote to OneNote, part 2 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/switching-from-evernote-to-onenote-part-2/62621?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=4f5dcfbb54e84d2081bfbe1a9db81423&elq=1f69d115eefd4271b7587f212191aec5&elqaid=10366&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3881

 


Open Library is yours to borrow, read & connect ---
https://openlibrary.org/

One web page for every book ever published. It's a lofty but achievable goal.

To build Open Library, we need hundreds of millions of book records, a wiki interface, and lots of people who are willing to contribute their time and effort to building the site.

To date, we have gathered over 20 million records from a variety of large catalogs as well as single contributions, with more on the way.

Open Library is an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open, and we welcome your contribution. Whether you fix a typo, add a book, or write a widget--it's all welcome. We have a small team of fantastic programmers who have accomplished a lot, but we can't do it alone!

Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive, and has been funded in part by a grant from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.

Bob Jensen's threads on libraries ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---Libraries

Bob Jensen's threads on free electronic literature ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

Bob Jensen's links on free scholarly downloads in various academic disciplines ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm


"Everything You Want to Know About the Apple Watch, Except for Everything Apple Refused to Tell Us," by Alyssa Bereznak, Yahoo Tech, September 10, 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/everything-you-want-to-know-about-the-apple-watch-97105083429.html

"Apple’s first smart watch seems like the best of its kind so far, but the user experience is still a little unclear," by Rachel Metz, MIT's Technology Review," September 9, 2014 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530586/the-apple-watch-may-solve-the-usual-smart-watch-annoyances/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140910

Apple Watch: Coming to a Classroom Near You? ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/apple-watch-coming-to-a-classroom-near-you/54449?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


Sad message of the January 30, 2004 Week from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]  

ERIC CLEARINGHOUSES CLOSE

After over thirty years of service, the U.S. Department of Education's ERIC Clearinghouses, and the AskERIC service, permanently closed at the end of December 2003. ERIC is a national information system funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to provide access to education literature and resources. The Clearinghouses, stationed at various educational institutions, provided documents and reference services on educational topics ranging from Elementary and Early Childhood Education to Urban and Minority Education to Adult, Career, and Vocational Education.

The new ERIC uses one URL (http://www.eric.ed.gov) to:

-- search the ERIC database,

-- access the ERIC Calendar of Education-Related Conferences,

-- link to the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS) to

purchase ERIC full-text documents, and

-- link to the ERIC Processing and Reference Facility to

purchase ERIC tapes and tools.

ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) --- http://eric.ed.gov/ 

Community College Research Center --- http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/ 

Continuing Education --- http://www.rand.org/topics/continuing-education.html

 

Robert R. McCormick Foundation: Resources (tools for teaching and learning) ---
http://www.mccormickfoundation.org/page.aspx?pid=640

How It Works: 3D Printing with Fused Deposition Modeling --- Click Here
http://thejournal.com/whitepapers/2014/07/stratasys-3d-printing-with-fdm-073014.aspx?pc=e844em01&utm_source=webmktg&utm_medium=E-Mail&utm_campaign=e844em01 

3D Printing Videos --- Search YouTube for 3D Printing --- https://www.youtube.com/ 

Bob Jensen's Threads on Education Technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

"A Year of Turkel Tutorials," by Konrad M. Lawson, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/a-year-of-turkel-tutorials/54789?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on education research and teaching helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm


David Giles Econometrics Beat Blog ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/

Common Accountics Science and Econometric Science Statistical Mistakes ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm


"40 Android Apps for Teaching and Learning," Chronicle of Higher Education, February 27, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/40-android-apps/55769?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
Many of these were developed by Google.


The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning --- http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/index

Community College Research Center --- http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Sad message of the January 30, 2004 Week from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]  

ERIC CLEARINGHOUSES CLOSE

After over thirty years of service, the U.S. Department of Education's ERIC Clearinghouses, and the AskERIC service, permanently closed at the end of December 2003. ERIC is a national information system funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to provide access to education literature and resources. The Clearinghouses, stationed at various educational institutions, provided documents and reference services on educational topics ranging from Elementary and Early Childhood Education to Urban and Minority Education to Adult, Career, and Vocational Education.

The new ERIC uses one URL (http://www.eric.ed.gov) to:

-- search the ERIC database,

-- access the ERIC Calendar of Education-Related Conferences,

-- link to the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS) to

purchase ERIC full-text documents, and

-- link to the ERIC Processing and Reference Facility to

purchase ERIC tapes and tools.

ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) --- http://eric.ed.gov/ 

Community College Research Center --- http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/ 

Continuing Education --- http://www.rand.org/topics/continuing-education.html

 

Bob Jensen's threads on education research and teaching helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

 


Robert R. McCormick Foundation: Resources (tools for teaching and learning) ---
http://www.mccormickfoundation.org/page.aspx?pid=640

How It Works: 3D Printing with Fused Deposition Modeling --- Click Here
http://thejournal.com/whitepapers/2014/07/stratasys-3d-printing-with-fdm-073014.aspx?pc=e844em01&utm_source=webmktg&utm_medium=E-Mail&utm_campaign=e844em01 

3D Printing Videos --- Search YouTube for 3D Printing --- https://www.youtube.com/ 

Bob Jensen's Threads on Education Technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


"A Year of Turkel Tutorials," by Konrad M. Lawson, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/a-year-of-turkel-tutorials/54789?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Many of the students and scholars I know who have picked up technical skills in the world of the command line (see Lincoln’s introduction and a series of posts here at Profhacker) or who have attempted their hand at programming come to what they know through tinkering. Some new way they want to analyze their sources, improve the discovery of interesting patterns, organize their stuff, or automate their tasks supplies them the justification they need to carve out some time to learn by playing. Tinkering leads to googling, googling leads into the world of obscure documentation, endless forum posts, and tutorials usually targeting a much different audience with differing needs. This adds significantly to the time it takes to figure things out.

One of the earliest and most consistent exceptions to this in the case of my own learning is found in the tutorials by William Turkel, especially through his blog entries and important work on the Programming Historian project. They not only introduce some really powerful utilities and coding snippets, but apply them immediately to the kinds of tasks we might find useful as historians and indeed the broader humanities.

2013 offered a particularly rich harvest of tutorial material by Turkel on his blog, especially contributing to what he calls a "workflow for digital research." Most of these help you obtain, clean, and analyze textual sources. As with most things technological, there are many different ways to perform most of the tasks listed below, but I found that these postings give great practical examples of some of the core techniques of using the command line for manipulating texts. I’d like to just highlight just some of them and suggest why you might want to give them a try.

Installing Debian Linux in a Virtual Machine

Almost all of Turkel’s tutorials this year work from the command line. If you use a Mac with OS X, you already have access to a lot of command line utilities and many others you can find and install using Homebrew or the respective websites for the tool you want. This is not always the case, however, and for the "permuted term index" utility mentioned in one of the text analysis posting mentioned below I wasn’t able to find a way to get it for OS X (tips welcome). A solution to this problem and also for Windows users is to set up a virtual machine that runs a Linux distribution like Debian. Turkel’s posting goes through the whole process step by step and will get you up and running. Also see Lincoln’s posting here at Profhacker.

A virtual machine is also very handy to keep self-contained sandboxes when you want to tinker. The free VirtualBox software used here is very easy to use and if you participate in the ArchiveTeam Warrior program, you probably already know how it works. For those working with security sensitive materials, you can also easily keep a virtual machine and its files encrypted.

Basic Text Analysis with Command Line Tools in Linux

This is a great intro to some of the most useful command line utilities for very basic text analysis. Using an example from Project Gutenberg, this tutorial uses the command "wget" to download the file, shows you how to use "head" and "tail" to quickly see the beginning and end of large files, the use of the "sed" command to "crop" a header or footer, the "wc" command to get basic text statistics, "grep" to search the text for things you are interested in, the "tr" command to clean a text and prepare it for analysis by removing punctuation, capital letters, etc. and then the sort and uniq commands (covered in earlier Profhacker posts here and here) to get word frequencies.

Pattern Matching and Permuted Term Indexing with Command Line Tools in Linux

This posting on pattern matching taught me some great trips on how to use the "grep" command when you have a handwritten document with difficult to read words that you can only make out a few letters from. It also shows you how to color matched patterns that you have searched for with "egrep" and how to use "fgrep" to isolate words in a text that are not found in the dictionary. This is handy when you are looking for unusual terms, proper nouns, or potential mistakes in Opical Character Recognition. The posting also shows you how to use the "ptx" (permuted term index) command, which I had never heard of, to quickly create a concordance from a text.

Batch Downloading and Building Simple Search Engines with Command Line Tools in Linux

This posting is more advanced and requires some scripting. Turkel often uses the Python programming language in his earlier postings but in all of these postings he uses "BASH scripts" which are really just little sequences of regular commands you can issue on the command line (in the Bash shell) with some added flow control and logic to handle repetition etc.

In this posting Turkel uses "wget" to download a batch of files, the "split" command to split a large file into smaller ones and a simple web indexing package called "swish-e" to build an index from your source and make searching it easier.

Named Entity Recognition with Command Line Tools in Linux

Building on the last posting, we now work with the java-based Stanford Language Processing Software, and Turkel shows us how to find a list of potential people, places, and organizations in our text source.

Doing OCR (Optical character recognition) Using Command Line Tools in Linux

This posting shows how you can use the free Tessecract OCR software on the command line using an example of some typed correspondence from the early 20th century. Another great section in this posting is how to do "fuzzy match" search of a text using tre-agrep (I had trouble getting this to work on OS X, so try it in the VirtualBox Linux install instead).

Working with PDFs Using Command Line Tools in Linux

We have talked a bit about working with PDFs on the command line here before. See, for example, Lincoln’s post on fixing PDFs using pdftk. This post by Turkel offers an introduction to a broader range of command line utilities for PDF, including "xpdf", "pdftk", "pdfimages" and "pdftotext" for the extraction of text and images from PDFs and the creation of new PDFs with imagemagick’s "convert" tool.

Continued in articel


Internet Archive: Computers & Technology --- https://archive.org/details/audio_tech


A Must Read
Educause:  Emerging Trends in Education Technology
--- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/09/qt#250713

Educause and the New Media Consortium have released the 2011 Horizon Report, an annual study of emerging issues in technology in higher education. The issues that are seen as likely to have great impact:

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

University of Virginia Teaching Resource Center --- http://trc.virginia.edu

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

SUNY Albany Guide to Web Resources --- http://libguides.library.albany.edu/content.php?pid=130754&sid=1121460

Teaching Resources: University of New England --- http://www.une.edu/cas/core/teaching.cfm

Boston Public Library: Business ---
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/sets/72157628017141829/

Doing What Works --- http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/methods/whatworks/edpicks.jhtml

"Check Out EDUCAUSE 2010 Resources," by Tanya Roscorla, Converge Magazine, October 18, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/training/Check-Out-EDUCAUSE-2010-Resources.html

Question
Why is the annual Educause Conference "weird?"

"Virtual Desktops in Education: Reduce Costs and Support Next-Generation Learning" white paper to find out how desktop virtualization can,"
Cisco, June 2011 --- http://www.cisco.com/web/offer/eduk12/index_a1.html?keyCode=207725_1

4Teachers: Teach with Technology --- http://www.4teachers.org/

From the Harvard Business School:  Working Knowledge --- http://hbswk.hbs.edu/
Topics --- http://hbswk.hbs.edu/topics/
Accounting and Control is listed under Finance --- http://hbswk.hbs.edu/topics/accountingandcontrol.html

CGMA Portfolio of Tools for Accountants and Analysts ---
http://www.cgma.org/Resources/Tools/Pages/tools-list.aspx
Includes ethics tools and learning cases.

Teaching Channel --- https://www.teachingchannel.org/

Grammar Girl Tips --- http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

MathDL Mathematical Communication --- http://mathcomm.org/

The Writing Center at Harvard University --- http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/resources.html

"ProfHacker Goes to Educause," Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/profhacker-goes-to-educause/27941

"The Idea Makers:  Tech Innovators for 2013," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 29, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Idea-Makers-Tech/138823/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

"Up in the Cloud: Hype and High Expectations for Cloud Computing," Knowledge@Wharton, January 16, 2013 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3171

Moodle Unveils Free Cloud Hosting for Educators ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/07/06/moodle-launches-free-cloud-hosting-for-educators.aspx

From Carleton College (Interactive Simulation Role Play by Residents (students) of a Town Alongside an Active Volcano
The Sleeping Mountain --- http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/roleplaying/examples/sleepmtn.html

TeacherTube (a video server for teachers) --- http://www1.teachertube.com/

Education: Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City ---  http://www.kansascityfed.org/education/
Note the Financial Fables section --- http://www.kansascityfed.org/education/fables/index.cfm

Bob Jensen's threads on financial literacy ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers

Strategies for Effective Teaching: A Handbook for Teaching Assistants --- http://www.engr.wisc.edu/services/elc/strategies.pdf

"Microsoft Will Pay for U. of Nebraska’s Switch to Its New Cloud-Based Service," by Jie Jenny Zou, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 7, 2011 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/microsoft-will-pay-for-u-of-nebraskas-switch-to-its-new-cloud-based-service/32121?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

125 technology quick tips from the AICPA, by J. Carlton Collins, June 2012 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2012/Jun/20114845.htm

How It Works: 3D Printing with Fused Deposition Modeling --- Click Here
http://thejournal.com/whitepapers/2014/07/stratasys-3d-printing-with-fdm-073014.aspx?pc=e844em01&utm_source=webmktg&utm_medium=E-Mail&utm_campaign=e844em01 

3D Printing Videos --- Search YouTube for 3D Printing --- https://www.youtube.com/

Bob Jensen's Threads on Education Technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy --- http://plato.stanford.edu/

Technology Student Association --- http://www.tsaweb.org/

Digital Preservation Tools Showcase --- http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/tools/

"Make Presentations and Publish on the Web with Flowboard," by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 20, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/presentations-with-flowboard/49393?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on Education Technology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

See Edutainment --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

See the online tutorial links at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

Educause Live --- http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?SECTION_ID=34&bhcp=1

From PBS:  Touch Table Computing Video --- http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/231-touchtable.html

The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies (creative ideas in writing, art, and photography) ---  http://www.salt.edu/

Technology in the Arts --- http://www.technologyinthearts.org/

Social Networking for Education:  The Beautiful and the Ugly
(including Google's Wave and Orcut for Social Networking and some education uses of Twitter)
Updates will be at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

Family Learning Forum --- http://familylearningforum.org/
Note the link to videos

Teaching History With Technology --- http://www.thwt.org/

"The Future Is Now: 15 Innovations to Watch For," by Steven Mintz, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 22, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Future-Is-Now-15/140479/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Drawing With Light [Flash Player] http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/youth/dwl/default_e.jsp

More than 100 colleges have set up channels on YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
Search for words like “accounting”

Resources for Teaching Social Psychology --- http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/

"YouTube Creates New Section to Highlight College Content," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 27, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3684&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

There are now nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of which are in very basic accounting.
But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
There are nearly 70 videos on XBRL

Wiley Teams Up With TED to Create Lecture Materials for Big-Idea Videos ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/wiley-teams-up-with-ted-to-create-lecture-materials-for-big-idea-videos?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Warning:  Watch out for some TED speakers who know the difference between causation and correlation but don't reveal what they know in the videos.
Many of these videos are more suited to debate seminars than lecture courses.

YouTube Education Channels --- http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

Experiment in Ultra Learning (some amazing stories) --- Click Here
http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/10/26/mastering-linear-algebra-in-10-days-astounding-experiments-in-ultra-learning/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StudyHacks+%28Study+Hacks%29 

MITx, EdX, and MOOCs
Bob Jensen's threads on free courses, tutorials, video, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

"Turn Your Phone Into a Scanner," by Natalie Houston, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 29, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/turn-your-phone-into-a-scanner/45757?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Arts at the Core --- http://advocacy.collegeboard.org/preparation-access/arts-core

Invent with Python (make your own computer games) --- http://inventwithpython.com/

Computer Science for Dummies
Computer Science Unplugged --- http://www.youtube.com/csunplugged

"Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: Data and Learning Analytics," by Audrey Watters, Inside Higher Ed, December 20, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/hack-higher-education/top-ed-tech-trends-2012-data-and-learning-analytics 

"How to Wipe Personal Info from Electronics," by Eric Escobar, Tech Talker, January 30, 2013 ---
http://techtalker.quickanddirtytips.com/how-to-wipe-personal-info-from-electronics.aspx

"HTML5 Moodle Mobile App Comes to Android, iOS," by David Nagel, T.H.E. Journal, May 9, 2013 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/05/09/html5-moodle-mobile-apps-comes-to-android-ios.aspx

An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert. Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of work that they are now sharing with us

National Archives: Teachers' Resources --- http://www.archives.gov/education/

"QuickWire: Top 10 Trends in Academic Libraries," by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 16, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-top-10-trends-in-academic-libraries/31796?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

RSS --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
Feed43 --- http://feed43.com/
"How To Turn Any Page into a Feed with RSS Scraping," by Jason B. Jones, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 26, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-turn-any-page-into-a-feed-with-rss-scraping/34942?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Creative Commons Case Studies --- http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies

Innovation 20/20 Series (from the University of Georgia College of Education) --- http://www.coe.uga.edu/itt/2020-2/ 

The aim of the Innovation 20/20 Series is to showcase teaching innovations in the College of Education, and share ideas about how the “Big I” and “little i” innovations are taking place at the largest College of Education in the nation. Recognizing how important a commodity time is in our lives, each session consists of a focused presentation of only 20 minutes sharing a specific innovation, followed by 20 minutes of discussion and interactive engagement with the topic. If your schedule does not allow to be present during the talks, please visit the links below to view the video archive of the presentations.

November 1, 2012 Respondus message from Richard Campbell

Is the student taking your class the same one who is taking your exams??

Keep an eye on www.respondus.com

"Before And After Pics From Pixtr, The Photo App That Erases Your Flaws," by Julie Bort, Business Insider, May 4, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/before-and-after-pics-from-pixtr-the-photo-app-that-erases-your-flaws-2013-5

Bob Jensen's threads about online cheating ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#OnlineCheating

Software for online examinations and quizzes ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#Examinations

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


"We Tested Standing Desks—Here's Proof They Make You More Productive," ReadWriteWeb, September 26, 2013 ---
http://readwrite.com/2013/09/26/standing-desks-productivity#awesm=~ojdOJQwaAd0Nar

Who Wrote at Standing Desks? Kierkegaard, Dickens and Ernest Hemingway Too ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/ernest-hemingway-standing-desk.html

Harvey M. Wagner --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_M._Wagner

One of the first Business School Deans to work at a standing desk was Harvey Wagner when he became Dean of the business school at the University of North Carolina back in the 1960s. Prior to that Harvey was a Stanford University professor and author of one of the first books in Operations Research in the early days of OR. Harvey was one of my OR professors. He was a good teacher with a great technical brain, but I cannot imagine that he was a very good dean. He eventually wrote five books and over 60 technical articles in OR and management science.

While Harvey stood at his own desk as a Dean at UNC his office visitors also had to stand. It was rumored that Harvey liked this because meetings were shorter when people were not comfortably seated.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


"Translation Apps and Traveling Abroad," by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 30, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/translation-apps-and-traveling-abroad/52643?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

During my last week of being mostly disconnected at a conference in France, I ran into one big challenge: my knowledge of French is limited, and usually involves dictionary-heavy translation of text, not everyday conversation or quickly reading for comprehension and navigation. I relied heavily on phrases picked up from travel guides before my trip. Most street signs were immediately comprehensible: other documents, like menus, descriptions on products at the pharmacy, or signs on art, took much more work.

Throughout the trip, I found myself wishing for better technical solutions to the problem of translation. I started relying on a few apps to make the daily information processing easier.

  • Word Lens. The visual translation app Word Lens, available on Android and iOSis beautiful. It works by taking a picture and attempting to translate the words directly at they appear, which can lead to some very strange interpretations but often is enough to get the gist. It works as well on signs as conference paper titles in printed programs–of course, it may have trouble with discipline-specific terms. It can even translate powerpoint signs if they’re close and clear enough and the font isn’t too small.
  • Google Translate. There are several rival apps for translation, but Google’s (web, iOS, Android) works well for already-digital texts or quickly typed in work and ultimately is the most powerful solution I’ve seen. It requires an active Internet connection, so it isn’t so great on the go, and it can be tedious to type in long phrases on a smartphone for translation. This works best when the specifics really matter.
  • A Pocket Phrasebook. Those of you traveling without tech might rely on some old-fashioned solutions: a phrasebook and a dictionary, whether downloaded or paper, may not be as fast as Google or a translation app, but it’s often organized with attention to terms a traveler needs to reference quickly. Languages has several options for download (each for a fee) in-app.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on languages ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Languages

 

 


A Great Idea for Correcting Wikipedia
"Med Students Earn Credit by Editing Wikipedia Articles," Inside Higher Ed, September 30, 2013 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/09/30/med-students-earn-credit-editing-wikipedia-articles

Medical students can earn academic credit at the University of California at San Francisco for editing content on Wikipedia. Fourth-year medical students in a new class will be editing articles, adding images, reviewing edits and adding citations to support unreferenced text. They will focus on editing 80 frequently used articles that have low levels of quality. Wikipedia is a widely used reference for health topics, but medical entries can lack sources and have gaps in content.

“We’re recognizing the impact Wikipedia can have to educate patients and health care providers across the globe, and want users to receive the most accurate publicly available, sound medical information,” said Amin Azzam, association clinical professor and instructor for the new class, in a news release. The class will also teach students how to communicate with consumers about health topics.

The class is a collaboration between the UCSF School of Medicine and the Wiki Project Med Foundation.
 

Jensen Comment
I don't see why schools of accounting cannot do something like this for student assignments. However, since accounting is so poorly posted, relative to economics, finance, and medicine, to Wikipedia accounting students would probably have to start new modules.


"Student Engagement in the Online Classroom," by Errol Craig Sull, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 31, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Student-Engagement-in-the/136897/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"Genesis of an Online Course," by   Amy Dunbar* June 2003 Revised November 2003 ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/Dunbar2002.htm 


"Choose Your Own Classroom Adventure with Inklewriter," by Anastasia Salter, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 7, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/classroom-adventure-with-inklewriter/45873?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Most eBooks are still pretty boring as objects: text, pictures, maybe a video or interactive visualization in a more experimental work. But that landscape may be changing, thanks in part to the number of cool free tools for building interactive books. One of these platforms, inklewriter, has some great potential for use with students in the classroom or for creating interactive stories or texts.

Last week, Inkle Studios released “Future Voices,” a curated collection of stories produced with its interactive story development tool. This slick iPad app features the tech behind Frankenstein, an interactive adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel by Dave Morris. Play through any of these stories for a while and you’ll see everything from straightforward choices of action to complex moral dilemmas and experiments. You can also check out many experiments on the web, including Emily Short’s Holography–she’s also written some thoughts on inklewriter as a platform.

While Inform 7 (as discussed last week) uses a parser interface based on interpreting a broad range of user actions (get lamp, open door, look at book, etc.), Inklewriter uses an interaction model similar to ’80s Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks, which recently came back into print and made the transition to eBooks. However, it goes beyond any of the simple page-shuffling models of those past books in part because it can keep track of decisions and variables from the user’s actions.

Inklewriter has a great tutorial “story” to introduce writers to the platform. The interface, shown below, is mostly free of distractions and built around creating story nodes and choices:

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Ebooks.htm


Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning

"Kentucky Moves 173 School Districts to Cloud-Based ERP," by Leila Meyer,  T.H.E. Journal, April 4, 2013 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/04/04/kentucky-moves-173-school-districts-to-cloud-based-erp.aspx?=THENU


"Preparing for Launch: Avoiding Browser Hell with BrowserStack," by Joanna Swafford, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 9, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/preparing-for-launch-avoiding-browser-hell-with-browserstack/48341?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

March 11th saw the pre-release of my digital project, Songs of the Victorians, an archive of parlor and art song settings of Victorian poems, and also a scholarly tool to facilitate interdisciplinary music and poetry scholarship. I had been building it for the last two years with the help of fellowships from NINES and the Scholars’ Lab, and it was a great experience to finally make the site public.

It was also a surprisingly challenging experience, as I had to figure out how to make the site display properly on a wide variety of browsers, operating systems, and iOS devices (iPad, iPod, etc.).

Before I jump in with details about the trials and tribulations of testing website compatibility, I’ll first explain a little more about my site and the programming and design challenges it presents. It is a part of the final chapter of my dissertation on Victorian poetry and music, and it will contain four songs: Michael William Balfe’s and Sir Arthur Somervell’s settings of “Come into the Garden, Maud” (both based on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s monodrama, Maud), Sir Arthur Sullivan’s version of Adelaide Procter’s “A Lost Chord,” and Caroline Norton’s “Juanita,” although for the limited release, it only includes “Juanita.” The site contains two components for each work: an archive of high-resolution images of the first edition printing with an audio file, and an article-length analysis of the song’s interpretation of the poem, with playable excerpts of relevant musical phrases to support the argument. When the song is played on either component, each measure of the score is highlighted in time with the music so that everyone, regardless of their ability to read music, can follow the score and the thread of the argument.

To incorporate audio, I needed to use a comparatively new feature of html, namely, the <audio> tag, which lets you embed an audio file and player in a website. I was disappointed to discover that no two browsers handled it in precisely the same way: Internet Explorer won’t recognize it at all in versions 8 and earlier (and inexplicably won’t render it in version 10), ios devices will only play the audio file if it is triggered by a user event, and Firefox will only play ogg vorbis, not mp3 files.

Such compatibility difficulties are often colloquially (and aptly) referred to as “browser hell.” I learned about some of these problems from researching the <audio> tag as I was developing Songs of the Victorians, but I learned most from an incredibly useful site for testing website compatability: BrowserStack.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


"Free Spreadsheet-Based Form 1040 Available for 2012 Tax Year," by David H. Ringstrom, AccountingWeb, February 1, 2013 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/article/free-spreadsheet-based-form-1040-available-2012-tax-year/220959?source=technology

Jensen Comment
This might be a great application (using hypothetical taxpayers) for students learning spreadsheets as well as basics of income tax reporting.

I used a similar approach when teaching students how to use Webledger software ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Webledger.htm

For example, the term project report for a team of my students is available at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5342/projects/Netledger.pdf
This project was conducted when students could get free WebLedger accounts. I don't think that's possible these days.

 


Ubiquitous computing --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing

"PC makers hope that new ways of interacting with computers will boost sales"  PC makers hope that new ways of interacting with computers will boost sales," by Tom Simonite. MIT's Technology Review, January 10, 2013 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509751/pc-makers-bet-on-gaze-gesture-voice-and-touch/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130111

"Touch Screens that Curve, Bend, and Even Touch Back:  New technology could let the screens on future devices wrap around corners, act like paper, and sense touch on the rear as well as the front," by Tom Simonite, MIT's Technology Review, January 11, 2013 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509761/touch-screens-that-curve-bend-and-even-touch-back/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130111

Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology


"MILLIONS OF LESSONS LEARNED ON ELECTRONIC NAPKINS," by Rick Lillie, AAA Commons, January 2, 2013 ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/6040b395eb
Most AAA Commons postings are only available to AAA members. However, this may be one of the freebies

Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm


Can't we sing about accounting as well?

Math and Science Sing Along Experiments
Sing About Science & Math: Lesson Plans (oceanography sing along) --- http://singaboutscience.org/wp/lesson-plans/ 


"Episode 100: How Colleges Talk About (Tech) Reinvention," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 31, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/techtherapy/2012/10/31/episode-100-how-colleges-talk-about-reinvention/

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


"Touch Screens that Curve, Bend, and Even Touch Back:  New technology could let the screens on future devices wrap around corners, act like paper, and sense touch on the rear as well as the front, by Tom Simonite, MIT's Technology Review, January 11, 2013 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509761/touch-screens-that-curve-bend-and-even-touch-back/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130111

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology


"EDUCAUSE WEEK," by Tracy Mitrano, Inside Higher Ed, November 10, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/law-policy-and-it/educause-week-0

In addition to short summaries of leading presenters, you may want to just note what speakers were given the great honor of speaking at plenary sessions. You can then do Google and other searches on these speakers.

For example, look up Clay Shirky --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky


"Microsoft Introduces Office 365 for Higher Ed," by George Williams, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 23, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/office-365-for-higher-ed/43588?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Here at ProfHacker, we’ve written several posts over the years about cloud computing and collaboration. Most of our focus has been on GoogleDocs and collaborative authorship (see my “GoogleDocs and Collaboration in the Classroom,” for example).

Not to be outdone by the cloud services offered by Google and others, Microsoft has been working on offerings like Office Live (which I wrote about in 2010) and Office 365 (which the New York Times covered in 2011). These services are designed to let users access and edit cloud-based documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from any device with a connection to the Internet and to collaborate on these files simultaneously with other users. And as Microsoft attempts to stay competitive with its mobile devices, introduces a new operating system (or two), and starts selling a new tablet device, cloud-based tools are going to be more and more important.

Last week, Microsoft announced Office 365 University, a cloud-based service to be made available to students, faculty, and staff at colleges and universities. The company says that the service is scheduled to become “[a]vailable in the first quarter of 2013,” and will be free for higher ed users who have purchased Office University 2010 or Office University for Mac 2011. (However, later in that same announcement a price of $1.67 per month is specified, which is still pretty good, but not as good as free).

Continued in article

The Chronicle’s 2012 Digital Campus Microsite ---
http://chronicle.com/section/The-Digital-Campus/519/?cid=dl_dcmtxt_h4

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


"Website update," by J. Carlton Collins, Journal of Accountancy, September 2012 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2012/Sep/Website-update.htm

Q: I have been tasked with reviewing and updating our firm’s website content, and I want to go about it as efficiently as possible. Can you help me get started?

A: I find that I can review content better on a printed page with pencil in hand. Adobe Acrobat Standard X ($139) provides the ability to produce a single document containing your entire website. To use this feature, from the Acrobat X menu, select Create, Create PDF from Web Page, and enter the website’s URL (URL is an acronym for uniform resource locator, which is the site’s home page web address) in the URL box. Click the Capture Multiple Levels button, select the Get entire site radio button, and then click Create


From the Scout Report on August 17, 2012

ShowOrHide 1.0 --- http://www.deprez.org/folio_0028_en.html 

Many Mac users have hidden files located on their computers that they might not know about. ShowOrHide is a utility designed to locate invisible files and folders so that users will have more knowledge about such items. This program is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.5 or later.


Lucidchart: Diagramming --- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/apboafhkiegglekeafbckfjldecefkhn 

For all those who have wrestled with creating charts and diagrams in word processors, the Google Chrome application Lucidchart may be a long-awaited answer. Users can start using the intuitive drag-and-drop interface right away, although a free signup is required to save diagrams. By sharing a link with coworkers, project collaborators can work on the same diagram at the same time. This application is compatible with all computers running Google Chrome.


The number of wildfires in the West are down, but the effect on lives and tourism revenue remains significant Wildfires Have Burned Nearly 7 Million Acres So Far, Up 6 Percent From Last Year
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/08/22/159748679/wildfires-have-burned-nearly-7-million-acres-so-far-up-6-percent-from-last-year 

Northwest Wildfires Could Become More Common
http://www.kuow.org/northwestnews.php?storyID=159774757 

Wildfires strain outdoor tourism business in western U.S.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-18/news/sns-rt-us-usa-wildfires-tourismbre87h088-20120818_1_frank-church-river-middle-fork-colorado-blazes

National Interagency Fire Center --- 
http://www.nifc.gov/prevEdu/prevEdu_main.html 

Wildfire: Are You Prepared? ---
http://www.usfa.fema.gov/citizens/home_fire_prev/wildfire/ 

Smokey Bear --- http://www.smokeybear.com/


R Project --- http://www.r-project.org/
Free Download for Windows --- http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/

“R is really important to the point that it’s hard to overvalue it,” said Daryl Pregibon, a research scientist at Google, which uses the software widely. “It allows statisticians to do very intricate and complicated analyses without knowing the blood and guts of computing systems.”
Ashley Vance, "Data Analysts Captivated by R’s Power," The New York Times, January 6, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?_r=0

"You Too Can Be Nate Silver ," Bloomberg Business Week, November 9, 2012 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-09/you-too-can-be-nate-silver

Well, it would seem we have identified the week in which being a big data wonk became cool. After all, there’s Nate Silver—the Electoral College Oracle—being feted on The Daily Show and across the Web for collecting polling data and then massaging it with a clever algorithm. Now everyone wants to hang out with the skinny, kinda nervous dude who knows his way around R. (R? Look it up. You’ll need this for cocktail parties from here on out.)

If you don’t have time to attend the soon-to-be-planned Nate Silver’s Datapalooza, you can still have a crack at becoming the big data star around the office. That’s because the data fiends in Silicon Valley have been hard at work creating software that lets mere mortals run complex information analysis jobs. Some of the best examples of this type of technology can be seen at the Alteryx Analytics Gallery, where you can find ready-made apps for poring over data ranging from census figures to how a merger between two companies may play out.

Alteryx’s main business revolves around selling software that helps people submit big data sets and then choose from a menu of analytical operations to perform on the information. The idea is to remove some of the coding grunt work that has surrounded data analysis jobs for decades. “This has been the world of statisticians and Ph.D.s and not the people on the front lines trying to make good business decisions,” says George Mathew, the president and chief operating officer at Alteryx. “We wanted to change that.”

Customers using Alteryx’s software will find some huge, preloaded data sets like information from the 2010 Census and marketing services company Experian’s consumer profiling data. Then you can literally drag and drop analysis functions such as regression models from a menu to apply them to the data and receive a pretty report at the end. Companies can, of course, supply their own data, making it possible for, say, an executive at a retailer to take data from 900 million point of sale transactions, 2.5 million loyalty cards, and 500,000 Likes on Facebook (FB) and try to determine what the value of Facebook Likes might be on a given store.

The Analytics Gallery is a spot where people can find prepackaged data analytics apps and have some fun poking around on the information. Ahead of the presidential election, for example, there were models available that let you see how particular zip codes might vote based on polling numbers and things like census data. The Presidential Election App predicted Obama’s win with Silver-like accuracy.

One of the newer apps has been tuned for Facebook employees trying to cash in on the company’s initial public offering. It helps you find the ideal house based on how many Facebook shares you’re willing to sell, how close you want to live to the company headquarters, and the usual bedrooms and bathrooms desired.

Alteryx’s Mathew hopes these types of apps will prove that more people can become data analysis whizzes if they’re given the right tools. He says there are 200,000 so-called data scientists in the world, who regularly command more than $200,000 per year in salary. These are your Nate Silvers. Then, there are 2.5 million people in the workforce that have enough statistics, business, and math knowledge to do some serious data crunching with a bit of technological help. “I think there’s a tremendous arbitrage opportunity here,” Mathew says.

Hear that, Silver?

 

Jensen Comment
To my knowledge, Nate Silver is not a collector of raw data. He is a data aggregator using databases collected by others. As such he's totally dependent upon the depth and quality of data points in those databases. He's best known for aggregating baseball and political poll databases ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver

Insider Trading Issues
Another issue is whether Nate's findings are self-serving in some way in the sense that players fare better or worse as a result of Nate's predictions. This seems to be less likely in baseball than in political polls. There are various degrees of insider trading in life. To the extent that inside players of a game can alter the databases upon with aggregators like Nate depend, the more dysfunctional highly publicized predictions such as those of Nate Silver become.

 
"Mechanical Turk and the Limits of Big Data:  The Internet is transforming how researchers perform experiments across the social sciences," by Walter Frick, MIT's Technology Review, November 1, 2012 --- Click Here
 http://www.technologyreview.com/view/506731/mechanical-turk-and-the-limits-of-big-data/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121102

 

Herein lies Nate's problem.
Baseball databases are pretty independent, reliable, and very deep about collecting almost everything about professional baseball games apart from personal data of players such as most medical data and other very personal data on players and managers. Players cannot fudge most baseball statistics in a self-serving way.

But with political poll databases, it's a whole new ballgame.

This is my thread with David Johnstone reported at:
My Free Speech Political Quotations and Commentaries Directory and Log ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Political/PoliticalQuotationsCommentaries.htm

 

The dates and messages are in reverse order.

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 4:01 PM, David Johnstone <david.johnstone@sydney.edu.au> wrote:

Dear Bob, I did not know any of this background, so thank you for putting things into clear perspective.

 

One technical point (that does not answer your criticisms totally) is that the Bayes mechanism of using likelihood p(signal|event) to find p(event|signal) is that built-in bias in the signal is accounted for logically in determining just how strong it is.

 

I didn’t forward the message to AECM because I did not think the crowd is keen for more Bayesian spruiking from me, and because I did not know too much about this Silver man. Your points make it clear that caution was justified.

 

I did know that you would be a good barometer though!

 

One thing I will say on another point, accounting as a discipline does not properly understand Bayes theorem, despite the amount of Bayesian argument/modelling. This is remarkable given that accounting is a signalling discipline. Foster was right when he started his Fin Stmt Analysis text with Ch.1 on Bayes and the value of info. I am just finishing up a couple of papers on this, so will send soon.

 

All the best, david

 


"Cheating in Online Courses," Dan Ariely, August 2012 ---
http://danariely.com/2012/08/10/cheating-in-online-courses/

Jensen Comment
f there is more cheating in online courses, the fault lies with the internal controls of the online system rather than the difference between online versus onsite systems per se. Cheating is largely the fault of the online and onsite instructors and their universities. There are controls (not costless) to reduce online cheating to levels below those of onsite courses ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus
For example, observing a student taking an online test can be more one-on-one observation with the proper Webcam procedures or with hiring the Village Vicar to or a Sylvan Systems to proctor the examination.


From the Scout Report on July 13, 2012

Bundlenut ---  http://www.bundlenut.com/ 

Have you ever wanted to create a bundle of links to share with friends, colleagues, and others with simpatico interests? Bundlenut makes this possible with just a few easy steps. Visitors can use the site to create a bundle of links and give the bundle a title. There's a "bundle browser" as well, and it's easy to share them. Some of the sample bundles on the site include "Food from Scratch," "West Coast Road Trip Itinerary," and "Mrs. Comstock's 11th Grade Reading List." This version is compatible with all operating systems.


Tilt 3D 1.0.1 --- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tilt/ 

Have you ever wanted to see a website in 3D? Well, this is now possible with Tilt3D 1.0.1. Created by Victor Porof, the tool is "layers each node based on the nesting in the tree, creating stacks of elements, each having a corresponding depth and being textured according to the webpage rendering." It's a pretty fun little tool and it is compatible with all operating systems running Mozilla Firefox.

 


"A Pile of Products Worth Looking At," by David Pogue, The New York Times,, July 18, 2012 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/a-pile-of-products-worth-looking-at/

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, there are too many new tech products and services for one man to review in a single lifetime.

Here, then, for your summertime skimming, is another batch of interesting-looking tech developments. Again, I haven’t tried these and don’t endorse them — I just think they’re cool ideas worth noting.

Onavo Extend By compressing data, Onavo Extend can increase the power of your data plan by up to 500 percent. Avoid overage charges, roaming fees, data throttling and poor performance, without draining your battery. Also provides a breakdown of your data usage. Free. (www.Onavo.com)

OptimumCS-Pro This app finds the lens settings that minimize the blurring caused by defocus and diffraction, so that you can get the sharpest images from your D.S.L.R. that the laws of optics will allow. For iPhone, $7. (www.georgedouvos.com)

YouVisit This app offers prospective students GPS-guided tours of college campuses and academic programs. Offers news, weather, photos and contact info for each college. Free for iPhone/Android. (www.youvisit.com)

SproutConverter You know all those distorted and blank sections on your home video tapes that remain after you transfer them to your computer? SproutConverter gets rid of them automatically. Import your videos to your computer using whatever device you choose, then drag and drop. $30, for Mac. (www.gearsprout.com.)

Addressgate Ever wanted to contact a neighbor you don’t know? Sign up to this specialized social network with your home address, then communicate with neighbors privately, or view/post neighborhoodwide alerts, news and events. Free. (www.addressgate.com)

Gogobot This app lets friends and like-minded travelers, rather than anonymous strangers, provide tips for coming trips. Online/iPhone/iPod Touch, free. (www.gogobot.com)

Novatel MiFi 4620L Mobile Hotspot No larger than a stack of cards, this self-powered pocket 4G WiFi hot spot has an interactive OLED screen and five-hour battery life. Connects up to 10 Wi-Fi devices. $50 with two-year Verizon contract. (www.verizonwireless.com/verizon-jetpack-mifi-4620l.shtml)

FlightView This app offers push alerts on flight status changes, visibility into nationwide airport delays, directions to the airport and social integration for sharing your flight’s status with the people picking you up from the airport. (j.mp/SEUePI)

YouMail Visual voice mail on steroids. Customized greetings, smart and social caller ID, call blocking and the ability to save your messages. Free. For Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone. (Voice mail transcription services, performed by people instead of software, is available for $5 to $40 a month. (www.youmail.com)

Continued in article


Update on Portable Scanning

August 22, 2012 message from Scott Bonacker

I deleted the extraneous material from this marketing email - it describes a scanner that could be useful for onsite work like I do - and maybe someone else as well – scan student papers at your desk at the front of the room?

Scott Bonacker CPA - McCullough and Associates LLC - Springfield, MO


1. A SCANNER THAT GIVES DUPLEX A WHOLE NEW MEANING

The secret to success in the technology world is to solve a problem. Here's one. Mobile scanners can handle documents, but not bound materials. Wand scanners can handle bound materials but not documents. You can "scan" anything by snapping a photo with your smartphone, but positioning your smartphone perfectly wastes time, the lower quality makes optical character recognition more challenging, and you risk looking dorky. A new scanner attempts to solve this problem.

MobileScan Pro 100 ... in One Sentence

Shipping in September, Ambir's MobileScan Pro 100 is a portable scanner with document and wand functionality.

http://www.technolawyer.com/r.asp?L29119&M59355

The Killer Feature

The MobileScan Pro 100 consist of two components -- a dock and a wand scanner with an LCD display. When the scanner is docked, it functions like a typical sheet-fed simplex scanner with speeds of up to 10 pages per minute in black and white (it can also scan in color).

However, you can detach the scanner from the dock, thus transforming it into a wand scanner for bound materials not to mention fabric and other items that you cannot feed.

Other Notable Features

The entire docked unit measures 12.4 x 2 x 1.7 inches and weighs 12.6 ounces. You can power it with the included USB cable or a battery (the battery resides inside the scanner component). The LCD screen enables you to adjust settings without the need for a computer.

The MobileScan Pro 100 scans at 300, 600, or 900 dpi, and saves your documents in JPEG or PDF format via the bundled PageManager 9 software. You can save scans to an attached computer or to the included 4 GB microUSB card that resides inside the scanner. The scanner can encrypt your scans on the microUSB card for security in the event of loss or theft.

What Else Should You Know?

The MobileScan Pro 100 costs $149.95. It works with Windows PCs and Macs. Learn more about MobileScan Pro 100.

http://www.ambir.com/MobileScan-Pro-100 

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology


Question
How can you capture part of a screen such a a text phrase in a document that would let you select that phrase as text to copy?

Answer
There are many screen capturing alternatives. I ten dot use PaintShop Pro or SnagIt, neither of which are free programs.

From the Scout Report on July 6, 2012

Kwout --- http://kwout.com/ 

What is "kwout"? Basically, it's a tiny application that allows users to "quote" a part of a web page as an image with an image map. It is easy to use, as all users have to do is add the kwout bookmarklet to their favorite browser. Visitors can then grab a screenshot, cut out the area of inte

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


"3 Reasons You'll Buy Google's Nexus 7 Tablet," by Eliot Weisberg, ReadWriteWeb, June 28, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/video-3-reasons-youll-buy-googles-nexus-7-tablet.php

"Google Nexus 7 Makes Amazon Kindle Fire Irrelevant," by Dan Rowinski, ReadWriteWeb, June 28, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/06/google-nexus-7-makes-amazon-kindle-fire-irrelevant.php

"Will Google’s New Nexus Q Kill Google TV?" by Mark Hachman, ReadWriteWeb, June 28, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/will-googles-new-nexus-q-kill-google-tv.php

Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm 


"How Compatible Are Rival E-Readers?" by David Pogue, The New York Times, May 10, 2012 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/how-compatible-are-rival-e-readers/

The mail is still coming in about my review of Barnes & Noble’s latest e-book reader, the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight.

Very little of the mail is actually about the reader, though. Most of it challenges the statements I made when I characterized the state of the e-book world right now.

Here’s a summary — and a few clarifications.

• What I wrote: “When you buy an e-reader, you’re committing to that one company’s catalog of books forever, because their book formats are mutually incompatible.”

Sample reader pushback: “Why do you write about things you don’t know anything about? Apparently, you haven’t heard of the free app called Calibre. It converts any e-book format into any other format. If I want to switch from a Kindle to a Nook, I just let Calibre convert my current Kindle library. It’s that simple.”

My reply: It’s actually not, for one towering reason: Calibre can’t convert copy-protected books. It doesn’t even try. And that rules out most of the books people want to read these days: best sellers. Current, commercial fiction and nonfiction. Books by people who are still alive.

I mean, if all you want to read is old, expired-copyright books like “Moby Dick” and “Little Women,” then — great! You don’t need Calibre at all, because these books are available free online in any format you like (or in formats that any reader can display, like text files or PDF files).

But when it comes to more recent books, my statement still stands. If you buy a bunch of modern books for the Nook and then one day switch to the Kindle, you’ll have to kiss your entire investment goodbye.

• What I wrote: “You can’t read a Kindle book on a Nook, or a Nook book on a Sony Reader, or a Sony book on an iPad.”

Sample reader pushback: “Your remark about not being able to read various book types on rival readers is disingenuous at best. I can read all of my Kindle books and all of my Nook books on my laptop or my iPad, thanks to reader apps made by those companies.”

My reply: Yes, that’s true. There are Kindle and Nook reading apps for tablets, phones and computers, so that you can read your purchased books without actually owning an e-book reader at all!

To be technically complete, therefore, I could have written this: “You can’t read a Kindle book on a Nook or Sony Reader, or a Nook book on a Sony Reader or Kindle, or a Sony book on an iPad, Kindle or Nook, or an iBooks book on a Nook, Kindle or Sony Reader. With a special app, you can read a Kindle book or Nook book on an iPad, laptop, iPhone, iPod Touch or Android phone.”

But my point was not to create a Wikipedia entry on e-book compatibility. I was just trying to make the point that if you are thinking of buying a dedicated e-book reader — and since this was a review of an e-book reader, I think that’s a reasonable assumption — then you’ll be locked into books from its manufacturer.

• What I wrote: “Once you buy the gadget, you’ve just married its company forever. If you ever want to change brands, you have to give up all the books you’ve ever bought.”

Sample reader pushback: “Your article contains an error. If you buy a Nook, you are not tied to Barnes & Noble’s bookstore. They use the ePub format, and accept the Adobe Digital Editions DRM [copy-protection] scheme, so you can buy books from a number of vendors. I have purchased books from B&N as well as Kobo, the Sony bookstore, and a couple other sites.”

My reply: I’ve always known that the Sony, Nook and Kobo readers all read standard ePub files. But it was my impression that, here again, the only books you can exchange freely among readers are the old, public-domain ones — not the copy-protected modern best sellers that most people are interested in.

It appears that I’m wrong. With some effort, you can, in fact, move copy-protected books among those three e-book readers. When I asked that reader how he does it, he sent along the instructions:

Say I bought “My Man Jeeves” from Kobo. I copy it to my Kobo e-reader. Now, to copy it to my Sony reader, I must manually download the acsm file that controls my license for this book. Kobo allows this, but not through their desktop application — only on their Web site. I simply use my Kobo account credentials to log on to the site. I go to “My library.” Beside each of my purchases is a Download button (it may be called “Adobe DRM ePub/PDF”). I click this button, and the acsm file is downloaded.

Now I “open” the acsm file using the Sony Reader desktop application. (On Windows, I do that by right-clicking the file, then selecting “Open with Sony eReader.”) My book is now copied-downloaded into my Sony Reader desktop app. I can then connect my Sony reader by its cable to my PC to copy that book as usual.

Wow. I’m not entirely convinced that average consumers would be willing, or even able, to wade through all of that for every book in their libraries.

But technically, I was wrong, and you’re right. If you’re technically adept, you can transfer your purchased books among Nook, Sony and Kobo readers — and any others that offer ePub compatibility.

The only big-name reader that doesn’t is the Kindle. Once you buy a Kindle book, you really are stuck with Kindles and Kindle reading apps forever.

Continued in article

Whispersync for Voice --- http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kics_hp_dp_lm?ie=UTF8&docId=1000827761

"3 Ideas to Improve Amazon's / Audible's Whispersync," by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, September 23, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/3-ideas-improve-amazons-audibles-whispersync 

Whispersync is Amazon's new feature that allows for Kindle e-books and Audible audiobooks to sync up. This makes perfect sense, as Amazon owns Audible, and can leverage common platforms and accounts to provide a seamless reading experience across e-book and audiobook reading methods.

The idea is that we can get more reading done if we can easily move between platforms, listening to our books while multitasking (driving, exercising, cleaning etc.), and then reading the e-book during those times in which it is rude to have earbuds stuck in our ears.

I love the option of switching back and forth between audio and e-paper (or paper). Most of my reading is done via my ears, but most of my pleasure reading comes through my eyeballs.  

The genius of syncing up the e-book and the audiobook is that the technology gives to us the thing that is most valuable - more time to read.   

All of us would read more books if we had more time to read. 

By syncing a book across platforms, including a Kindle smart phone app, a dedicated Kindle reader, and the audio version, we can read more by reading in smaller chunks. We can get a bit of reading done whenever we have a few minutes. And then we can transition to longer stretches of pleasure reading with our dedicated Kindle reader.

Whisperync is a terrific concept, but in execution Amazon has fallen a bit short. I'm hoping that we are in the early days of cross-method / cross-platform book syncing - and that Amazon will rapidly evolve this service.  

3 ideas for Whispersync:

1. Allow Kindle Book Purchases via Audible: The way it works now is that you purchase the
"Whispersync Voice-Ready" Kindle book first from Amazon, and then you are given the option to buy the audiobook. For example, you can buy the Kindle edition of Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics for $9.55. You are then given the option of buying the Audible audio version for $7.95. On Audible, this book costs $19.59 or 1 credit for members. There is no way to go the other way, to buy the audiobook from Audible and add on the Kindle book. Most audiobook shoppers get our audiobooks from Audible, not from Amazon.  For audiobook fans, the audiobook is the primary means of reading. The e-book is an "add on." By requiring Whispersync purchases to go through the Amazon.com website, Amazon is making it more difficult to find and purchase books.

2. Bundle Kindle Books in with Audible Credits: The bigger problem with the Amazon/Kindle centric Whispersync system is that the program does not work well for Audible subscribers. I'm a longtime
Audible Platinum subscriber,
a program that gives me 24 books (really credits) for $229.50. This works out to $9.56 a book. The Whispersync program is a bad deal for me (and all Platinum subscribers), as the typical cost of a book would jump from under $10 bucks (for the audio version) to around $18 bucks.  What Audible should do is come out with a "super credit" - one that buys both the audio and the Kindle version of the book.  I would pay $12 a super credit, as having the book in both formats is valuable, but not so valuable that I want to double pay for the book. This seems like a good deal for the authors, the publishers, and Amazon - as delivering the digital audio and e-book file does not cost Amazon or the publishers anything extra. My guess is that making a dual format book affordable would drive book sales.

3. Introduce A Dedicated AudioBook Device: The idea of reading audiobook and e-books, with everything seamless syncing, is wonderful in theory. In reality, the hardware makes syncing across audio/e-book formats somewhat challenging. I listen to my audiobooks books on an iPod Nano. Since the Nano is not WiFi enabled syncing is impossible. Syncing only works when listening to the book on an iPhone, or a Kindle device.  Amazon should come out with a dedicated audiobook reader. Call it the Kindle Spark, or the Kindle Ember. A small device that works well for exercising, and that is WiFi enabled so syncing works.  A small screen would even allow for Kindle reading, and for purchases of digital books right from the device.

"Amazon Lights the Fire With Free BooksL  Today, Amazon unveiled something radical: the Kindle Lending Library," by David Pogue, The New York Times, November 2, 2011 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/amazon-lights-the-fire-with-free-books/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Ebooks.htm


"Take a Note: Typing With No Hands," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303772904577335792574509780.html

I am writing this paragraph on an iPhone. But I am not typing it on the phone's virtual keyboard. I am dictating it using a little-known feature that allows you to employ your voice, instead of your fingers, wherever text entry is possible on the device.

So, on the suspicion that dictation on smartphones might prove useful for others as well, I've been testing it heavily over the past week. I used a top phone with Google's Android software, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and an Apple iPhone 4S. In general, I found that, while dictation could occasionally fail badly, it worked surprisingly well in a wide variety of environments and applications.

On both leading smartphone platforms, I found that relatively short dictation—such as emails, texts, tweets, Facebook posts and notes—was at least as accurate, and often more, as typing on a glass screen. It was better in quiet environments, but did OK even in most noisy places like grocery stores, coffee shops and carwashes. It was also faster, since, as long as you don't have to correct numerous errors, speaking is usually faster than typing on glass.

For this review, I am not mainly referring to Siri, the widely publicized, voice-controlled feature on the new iPhones, which can do things like tell you the weather, or stock prices. Nor am I discussing the "voice actions" on Android, which can perform Web searches and other tasks. Both can also help with some text dictation. I concentrated on a much simpler feature of both platforms: a small microphone key that's included right in the phones' on-screen keyboards.

Android phones have had this microphone key for a couple of years, and Apple added it to the latest iPhone, the 4S, last fall, and to the new iPad, when it came out last month. But I'm guessing that many users of these phones either haven't used this special key, or haven't even noticed it.

While the microphone keys work a bit differently on the two platforms, they are basically similar. When the keyboard appears, ready for you to type, you can instead hit the microphone key and simply dictate what you want to say. The phones then send your spoken words to a remote server, which rapidly translates them into text and sends them back to the phone's screen. If corrections are needed, you make them by typing, though both platforms make this easier by indicating the likeliest errors, and suggesting alternatives.

A couple of caveats are in order. I didn't compare dictation to typing on a phone with physical keys, whose devotees are often speedy and accurate. Instead, I thought the apt comparison was with a virtual keyboard, which is becoming the norm on phones, but is still a source of frustration for many users. [PTECHjump1]

But Android was more reliable.

I also didn't try dictating a long document, like this column, because phones are rarely used for lengthy composing.

I found that both platforms' dictation systems worked well enough for me to recommend them. In case after case, both phones got it right, or close enough to require little correcting.

But there are differences. Android has an advantage in that, in the newest version of its operating system, it displays the dictated text almost in real time, lagging just slightly behind your spoken words. On the iPhone, the system only reveals its rendering of your dictation after you've tapped on a "Done" button.

Android's dictation system also supports many more languages than Apple's—40 languages and dialects, including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Hebrew. On the iPhone, only English, French and German are currently supported, though Apple says Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Spanish will be added later this year.

However, I found the iPhone 4S worked better than the Galaxy Nexus in noisier environments. For instance, in a crowded shopping-mall food court, while neither phone was perfect, the iPhone understood me to say: "I am dictating this email from the very noisy Court at Montgomery Mall on the iPhone"—missing only the word "food" and capitalizing "Court." The Android phone mangled a very similar sentence as: "I am dictating this email on droid phone from the bearing noise for it montgomery mall."

Continued in article


"Projects Aims to Build Online Hub for Archival Materials," by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 13, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Building-a-Digital-Map-of/131846/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

In death, as in life, people don't always leave their papers in order. Letters, manuscripts, and other pieces of evidence wind up scattered among different archives, leading researchers on a paper chase as they try to hunt down what they need for their work.

"It can be hugely frustrating—especially when you make a journey cross-country to an archive, and then discover the piece you really wanted must be somewhere else (or, God forbid, rotting away in a landfill)," says Robert Townsend, deputy director of the American Historical Association, in an e-mail interview. Chasing after distributed historical records is so common that "any historian who has not suffered from that problem can't be working very hard," he wrote.

The Internet has made the hunt easier, as more archives post finding aids for their collections online. "Scholars have at least gotten to the point where they can search over the Internet for these materials," says Daniel V. Pitti, the associate director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, or IATH, at the University of Virginia. But what he calls "hunting and gathering" persists for document-seekers, who "a priori have to have some idea, some hunch, of where to go, because the access systems are distinct and not integrated any way."

Now imagine a central clearinghouse for those records, an online hub researchers could consult to find archival materials.

That vision drives a project of Mr. Pitti's called the Social Networks and Archival Context Project, or SNAC. It's a collaboration between researchers and developers at IATH, the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information, and the California Digital Library. The project recently finished its pilot stage with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Another grant, from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will support the project through another two years as it adds millions more records and begins beta testing with researchers.

Some people have already found the prototype, which is up and running although not yet widely promoted. The site allows visitors to search for the names of individuals, corporate entities, or families to find "archival context records" for them.

"So if I'm interested in a particular person," Mr. Pitti says, "I can find where all the records are that would be required to understand them." For instance, a search for Robert Oppenheimer turns up a link to a collection of the physicist's papers housed at the Library of Congress, plus links to other collections in which he is referenced, a biographical timeline, and a list of occupations and subjects related to his life and work.

A researcher can explore a person's social and cultural environment with SNAC's radial-graph feature. It creates a web, which can be manipulated, of a subject's connections as revealed in archival records. The radial graph of Oppenheimer's network, for instance, includes George Kennan, Linus Pauling, Bertrand Russell, and Albert Schweitzer, among many other names represented as nodes on the graph.

Not yet fully developed, the radial-graph feature supports one of the project's main goals: to visualize the social networks within which archival records were created. "What you're trying to do is put together the puzzle, the fabric of someone's life, the people that influenced them and the people they influenced," Mr. Pitti says. "One could certainly, in an analog context, piece this together, but it would take years and years of work. What we're demonstrating is that we can go out there and gather all that information and present it to you, which would liberate scholars." Connecting archival data can reveal patterns of association hidden in disparate collections.

Data Quality Important

To work well, SNAC requires good data. Its first phase drew on thousands of finding aids—encoded with a standard known as Encoded Archival Description, or EAD—from the Library of Congress, the Northwest Digital Archives, the Online Archive of California, and Virginia Heritage. A newer standard for encoding archival information, referred to as EAC-CPF, for Encoded Archival Context-Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families, was then applied to those records, making them easier to find and connect.

Archives are idiosyncratic, and it's not always easy to tell whether a name refers to a particular individual or to different people with identical or similar names. One of Mr. Pitti's main collaborators is Ray R. Larson, a professor in the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley. He concentrates on what Mr. Pitti calls the "matching and merging" required to winnow out duplicate names, find variants of the same name, and so on. To do that Mr. Larson has tested several approaches, including machine learning, in which a computer is programmed to recognize, for example, common variations in spelling.

The job is about to get much tougher, though, because SNAC is about to get much bigger. As part of the second phase of the project, supported by the Mellon grant, 13 state and regional archival consortia and more than 35 university and national repositories in the United States, Britain, and France will contribute records. The British Library "is giving me 300,000 names associated with their manuscript collections," going back to before the Christian era, says Mr. Pitti.

The project will also ingest as many as 2 million standardized bibliographic records, in the widely used MARC format, from the online OCLC collaboration in which libraries exchange research and cataloging information. OCLC has its own centralized archival search function, called ArchiveGrid; Mr. Pitti describes it as complementary to SNAC. Unlike SNAC, though, "ArchiveGrid does not foreground the biographical-historical data, nor does it reveal the social networks that interrelate the archival resources," he says.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on archived databases ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic literature ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm


"4G or Not 4G: A Guide to Cut Through All the 'Fast' Talk," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577307630825596396.html

Of all the confusing technology terms used in consumer marketing today, perhaps the most opaque is "4G," used to describe a new, much faster generation of cellular data on smartphones, tablets and other devices. It sounds simple, but there are many varieties of 4G and conflicting claims.

AT&T T -0.30% claims "The nation's largest 4G network," and T-Mobile says it has "America's largest 4G network." Verizon Wireless boasts "America's fastest 4G network," and Sprint S -0.17% says it had the first 4G network.

Yet the technology used by T-Mobile, and mostly comprising AT&T's 4G network, isn't considered "real" 4G at all by some critics, and the one used by Sprint has proven to be a dead end and is being abandoned. The flavor being used by Verizon is now being adopted by its rivals, but won't be interoperable among them.

It's a headache for consumers to grasp. So here's a simplified explainer to some of the most common questions, based on interviews with top technical officials at all four major U.S. wireless carriers.

What is 4G?

It's the fourth and latest generation technology for data access over cellular networks. It's faster and can give networks more capacity than the 3G networks still on most phones. There's a technical definition, set by a United Nations agency in Europe, and a marketing definition, which is looser, but more relevant to most consumers.

Who needs 4G?

It's mostly for people with smartphones, tablets and laptops who often need fast data speeds for Web browsing, app use and email when they're out of the range of Wi-Fi networks. It can give you the same or greater data speeds as home or office Wi-Fi when you're in a taxi. In hotels and airports, it's often faster than public Wi-Fi networks.

How does 4G differ from another term being advertised, 'LTE'?

LTE, which stands for "Long Term Evolution," is the fastest, most consistent variety of 4G, and the one most technical experts feel hews most closely to the technical standard set by the U.N. In the U.S., it has primarily been deployed by Verizon, which offers it in over 200 markets. AT&T has begun deploying it, offering LTE in 28 markets so far. Sprint and T-Mobile are pivoting to LTE, though they have no cities covered by it yet.

What are these other versions of 4G?

Sprint uses a technology called WiMax. T-Mobile and AT&T deployed a technology called HSPA+, a faster version of 3G that they relabeled as 4G, and which many technical critics regard as a "faux 4G." Sprint will begin switching to LTE later this year, and T-Mobile in 2013.

How fast is 4G?

Claims vary and performance depends upon the type of device, location, and time. In my tests, 4G phones, tablets and data modems for laptops typically deliver from three to 20 times the download speeds of 3G devices. The speed king is LTE. The LTE devices I've used have typically averaged download speeds of between 10 and 20 megabits per second, with frequent instances of over 30 megabits per second. The other forms of 4G have generally produced download speeds well under 10 mbps in my tests. But all of these are better than 3G, which in my tests on all networks and many devices, averages download speeds of under 2 mbps. The Digital Solution 

How does LTE compare with common wired home Internet speeds?

Although it is wireless, LTE is often faster than most Americans' wired home Internet service. According to Akamai, a large Internet company, the average broadband speed in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2011 was a mere 6.1 mbps.

How does LTE compare with Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi is usually a wireless broadcast of a wired Internet service, so, if the average U.S. broadband speed is 6.1 mbps, that's around what the average Wi-Fi speed is. But, in public places, the shared Wi-Fi is often much, much slower than LTE. In tests I did this week at Dulles Airport near Washington, and at a hotel outside Boston, the public Wi-Fi networks delivered well under 1 mbps on the new iPad. But the Verizon LTE cellular network on the iPad averaged over 32 mbps in both places.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


"Students Endlessly E-Mail Professors for Help. A New Service Hopes to Organize the Answers," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 1, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Students-Endlessly-E-Mail/131390/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Meet the Ed-Tech Start-Ups

It's a golden age for educational-technology start-ups. The past three years have seen a spike in venture-capital investment in upstart companies, many founded by entrepreneurs just out of college. Last month The Chronicle outlined the trend ("A Boom Time for Education Start-Ups"), but we wanted to dig deeper.

Below are short features on three such companies, focusing on the problems they hope to solve and the challenges they face in selling their unusual ideas. To get a sense of the emerging field, we've included a list of a dozen other start-ups competing for a piece of the action.

Pooja Sankar may eliminate the need for professors to hold office hours, or to endlessly respond to student questions by e-mail.

Ms. Sankar, a recent graduate of Stanford University's M.B.A. program, leads a start-up focused on finding a better way for college students to ask questions about course materials and assignments online. Her company, Piazza, has built an online study hall where professors and teaching assistants can easily monitor questions and encourage students who understand the material to help their peers.

At first blush, the service seems unnecessary. Students can already e-mail questions to professors or fellow students, and most colleges already own course-management systems like Blackboard that include discussion features. But Ms. Sankar feels that such options are clunky. She says professors are finding that Piazza can save them hours each week by allowing them to post answers to a single online forum rather than handle a scattershot of student e-mails.

Piazza is a Web site that refreshes with updates as new questions or answers come in. Professors simply set up a free discussion area for their course on the service at the beginning of the term and invite their students to set up free accounts to participate. Ms. Sankar says that students typically keep Piazza open on their screens as they work on homework, often staying on the site for hours at a time.

Ms. Sankar, who is 31, was inspired to create the service based on her own experience as an undergraduate in India, where she studied at the highly selective Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur. She says she was a shy student, and one of only three women majoring in computer science, so she often found herself watching from the wings as more social students collaborated on homework assignments. She felt there had to be a way to recreate a study hall online, in a way that made it easy for shy students to ask questions anonymously.

After graduating, she got a master's degree in computer science at the University of Maryland at College Park, and then worked as an engineer for Facebook and other companies for a few years. When she decided to head to Stanford to study business, she was sure she would not try to start a company of her own, since she found the prospect "too scary." But a course on entrepreneurship made her realize that the path to a company was simply a series of "baby steps," and that she wanted to bring her vision of a better "question-and-answer platform" to life.

She wrote the original version of Piazza herself, after teaching herself the programming language Ruby on Rails from a book. By the time she first sought investors, she already had hundreds of students using the service. She raised an initial round of $1.5-million last year from the venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital, and raised an additional $6-million from investors in November.

As of yet, the site has no plans to generate revenue—the service is free and does not carry advertisements. Ms. Sankar said that she didn't write a business plan for the site, because she doesn't believe in them, and that she believes that once a critical mass of students and professors are signed up, revenue models can emerge. When pressed, she says that in the future the company may charge for advanced analytics for professors or other extra features.

She spends much of her time seeking feedback from users and obsessively tinkering with the service in hopes of improving it. "I am an engineer at heart," she explains.

To spread the word about the site, she has taken an unusually personal approach. She sends e-mail messages to professors telling her story and the goal of the site, and asking them to try it.

Greg Morrisett, a computer-science professor at Harvard University, got one of those e-mails. He said he was curious, but he was concerned that the site's policy noted that it claimed ownership over comments posted on the site, which Mr. Morrisett felt violated Harvard's policies. So he wrote back to Ms. Sankar and said he wasn't able to use it. "Ten minutes later she wrote back and said, 'We fixed the policy,'" the professor recalls. (Users now own their own posts.) So he gave it a shot.

Continued in article


Students Evaluating the Lecture Pedagogy
"Lecture Fail?" by Jeffrey Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 24, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Lecture-Fail-/130085/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

PowerPoint is boring. Student attention spans are short. Today many facts pop up with a simple Google search. And plenty of free lectures by the world's greatest professors can be found on YouTube.

Is it time for more widespread reform of college teaching?

This series explores the state of the college lecture, and how technologies point to new models of undergraduate education.

Last month, we began inviting students across the countries to fire up their Web cameras or camera-phones to send us video commentaries about whether lectures work for them. Below are highlights from the first batch of submissions, which are full of frustration with “PowerPoint abuse” – professors’ poor use of slide software that dumps too much information on students in a less-than-compelling fashion.

Continued in article

Some Earlier Papers

 


Creative Computers Replacing Writers and Composers
And the frightening thing about this is that what might be "cheating" becomes possible with zero chance of being caught for plagiarism of things stories and songs written by Hal.

"30 Clients Using Computer-Generated Stories Instead of Writers," by Jason Boog, Media Bistro, February 17, 2012 ---
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/forbes-among-30-clients-using-computer-generated-stories-instead-of-writers_b47243

Forbes has joined a group of 30 clients using Narrative Science software to write computer-generated stories.

Here’s more about the program, used in one corner of Forbes‘ website: “Narrative Science has developed a technology solution that creates rich narrative content from data. Narratives are seamlessly created from structured data sources and can be fully customized to fit a customer’s voice, style and tone. Stories are created in multiple formats, including long form stories, headlines, Tweets and industry reports with graphical visualizations.”

The New York Times revealed last year that trade publisher Hanley Wood and sports journalism site The Big Ten Network also use the tool. In all, 30 clients use the software–but Narrative Science did not disclose the complete client list.

What do you think? The Narrative Science technology could potentially impact many corners of the writing trade. The company has a long list of stories they can computerize: sports stories, financial reports, real estate analyses, local community content, polling & elections, advertising campaign summaries sales & operations reports and market research.

Here’s an excerpt from a Forbes earnings preview story about Barnes & Noble, written by the computer program:

While company shares have dropped 17.2% over the last three months to close at $13.72 on February 15, 2012, Barnes & Noble (BKS) is hoping it can break the slide with solid third quarter results when it releases its earnings on Tuesday, February 21, 2012.

What to Expect: The Wall Street consensus is $1.01 per share, up 1% from a year ago when Barnes & Noble reported earnings of $1 per share.

The consensus estimate is down from three months ago when it was $1.42, but is unchanged over the past month. Analysts are projecting a loss of $1.09 per share for the fiscal year.

The company originated with two electrical engineering and computer science professors at Northwestern University. Here’s more about the company: “[It began with] a software program that automatically generates sports stories using commonly available information such as box scores and play-by-plays. The program was the result of a collaboration between McCormick and Medill School of Journalism.

To create the software, Hammond and Birnbaum and students working in McCormick’s Intelligent Information Lab created algorithms that use statistics from a game to write text that captures the overall dynamic of the game and highlights the key plays and players. Along with the text is an appropriate headline and a photo of what the program deems as the most important player in the game.”

Many of you probably never even heard of the popular "I've Got a Secret" ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ve_Got_a_Secret 

More of you have probably read about artificial intelligence expert Ray Kurzweil (an expert on computer music composition) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil 

Futurist Ray Kurzweil, 17 Years Old, Appears on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1965) --- Click Here
 http://www.openculture.com/2012/02/futurist_ray_kurzweil_17_years_old_appears_on_ive_got_a_secret_1965.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
 


"Professor Hopes to Support Free Course With Kickstarter, the ‘Crowd Funding’ Site," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 29, 2012 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professor-hopes-to-support-free-course-with-kickstarter-the-crowd-funding-site/35864?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Free online courses for the masses are all the rage—and many are being run by start-ups hoping to profit by selling related materials and services. Jim Groom thinks that’s too commercial, so he’s raising money for the online course he co-teaches at the University of Mary Washington using Kickstarter, the popular “crowd funding” service.

In a campaign released today, the professor makes his plea in an irreverent video that mixes in clips from a 90s true-crime show, and video interviews with students and professors shot from unusual angles. He explains that last year he ran the course, which is on digital storytelling and is called DS106, using his own equipment. But the class has grown so large that he needs a new server to keep it going, and he estimates that will cost him $2,900.

He’s asking for contributions ranging from $1 to $3,000, and those who give will get what he describes as “DS106 schwag”—a T-shirt, a bumper sticker, or a desk calendar with a different creative assignment for each day. Some of the rewards reflect the quirky nature of the course itself: For $100 you can have one of the course assignments named after you.

The campaign will run for a couple of weeks. If he hasn’t met his goal of $4,200 (a price that figures in the server cost and the price of the schwag), then the project gets nothing and all of those who pledged keep their money. If the target is met, the deal is on. If the goal is exceeded, he says he will use the extra money to add other enhancements to the course.

In an interview this week, Mr. Groom stressed that the course is “not about him,” and he criticized the way some massive online courses rely on what amounts to a celebrity professor to attract students. He used the word “community” frequently to describe the group of professors and students involved in the course.

The idea for the campaign came from Tim Owens, another instructional technologist at Mary Washington. “I’ve wanted to do a Kickstarter for so long, but I’ve never been able to think of what could we do,” he said. When he heard Mr. Groom wondering where they could come up with $2,900, he suggested the crowd-funding site.

Mr. Groom argues that crowd funding could be a model for other free online-education projects. Even some of the largest, such as MIT’s OpenCourseWare effort, have mostly relied on grants for support and have struggled to find a long-term way to stay afloat.

“It’s like a PBS model” of pledge drives, Mr. Groom said.

The Chronicle asked the folks at Kickstarter whether other educational efforts have used the site to raise money. A representative from the company pointed us to these five campaigns, all of which succeeded:

SmartHistory: Raised $11,513 for a Web site created by two art historians.

Punk Mathematics: Raised 28,701 for a book of mathematical stories.

Open Educational Resources for Typography: Raised $13,088 to develop teaching materials for courses on typography.

Trade School: Raised $9,133 to run a program that turns storefronts into temporary trade schools.

Brooklyn Brainery: Raised $9,629 to set up a collaborative school whose courses would cost $25 for four weeks.

Bob Jensen's threads on the growth of distance education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DistanceEducation

Bob Jensen's threads on alternatives for distance education and training ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

 


"Pandoc Converts All Your (Text) Documents." by Lincoln Mullen, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/pandoc-converts-all-your-text-documents/38700?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

For the past few months we ProfHackers have been running an occasional series about using the command line. I got us started with a couple posts explaining why you might want to use the command line and how to get started using it. Konrad followed with a posts about the uniq command and the sort command for working with text and data files. Amy added a post about how the command line let her hack the NOOK Color, and I wrote about using pdftk to manipulate PDFs.

Taking up the command line is easier if you have a specific problem you’re trying to solve. For me, the problem was that I wanted to do all of my writing in a plain text format, like Markdown or LaTeX. But I need to be able to share my writing in a variety of formats: HTML for the web, PDF for printed documents or academic writing, and occasionally RTF or Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.

The best way I’ve found to move between these formats is Pandoc. Pandoc is a command line tool written by a philosophy professor, John MacFarlane. Its general use is to take a document in one format and convert it to another. You can get an idea of the wide variety of formats Pandoc can translate by looking at an enlargement of the header diagram.

Here’s an example of how this works. Suppose that you have a Markdown document like the one we created for the post on Markdown. (View pandoc-example.markdown on GitHub.) You can convert this to a number of text formats with a simple terminal command:

Markdown to HTML (HTML output on GitHub):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.html

Markdown to LaTeX (LaTeX output on GitHub):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.tex

Markdown to DOCX:

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.docx

Markdown to PDF (download PDF):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.pdf

That command calls pandoc, tells it which file to convert (pandoc-example.markdown) and tells it which file to export (e.g., pandoc-example.html). Pandoc figures out what types of files these are from the extension, or you can pass it additional arguments. For some of the formats, you can convert the other way. For example, you could convert LaTex to Markdown or to a Word DOCX, or HTML to Markdown or LaTeX.  To convert to PDF, though, you’ll need to have LaTeX installed on your system.

Continued in article


Apple does not have a corner on the market for innovations in textbook authoring
"2 New Platforms Offer Alternative to Apple’s Textbook-Authoring Software," by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 17. 2012 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/2-new-platforms-offer-alternative-to-apples-textbook-authoring-software/35495?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Apple’s recent release of free software to build e-textbooks has brought attention to custom publishing of academic materials. But Apple’s software, called iBooks Author, lacks easy tools for multiple authors to collaborate on a joint textbook project. Since most books aren’t written in isolation, two new publishing platforms seek to make that group collaboration easier.

The first, Booktype, is free and open-source. Once the platform is installed on a Web server, teams of authors can work together in their browsers to write sections of books and chat with each other in real time about revisions. Entire chapters can be imported and moved around by dragging and dropping. The finished product can be published in minutes on e-readers and tablets, or exported for on-demand printing. Booktype also comes with community features that let authors create profiles, join groups, and track books through editing.

Inkling Habitat, the other new offering, appears to have even greater ambitions. Where iBooks Author is designed mostly for would-be amateur publishers, Inkling Habitat creates a cloud-based platform for the professional market. Matthew MacInnis, Inkling’s chief executive, said the company’s tool is designed to give the global teams who work on professionally published textbooks a single outlet to publish interactive material for the iPad and the Web. Mr. MacInnis said hundreds of users can access the same textbook content at once, and the software will keep track of each step in the editing process.

Inkling Habitat also automates some of the editing process that is unique to e-textbooks, like checking for broken links between special terms and their definitions in a glossary. Those automatic functions, Mr. MacInnis said, will allow e-textbook publishing to get easier without requiring additional staff. “You can’t build the industry up around digital content if you’re going to throw people at every problem,” he said.

Hi Richard,

Are iBooks superior to ToolBooks that will run on the other 99% of the market?
You don't seem to mention your ToolBooks anymore.
Have you stopped writing ToolBooks?
http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/products/content-creation/toolbook_overview.html


I did not know that iBooks were superior to all eBooks (including ToolBooks) on the market.
Is that what you're trying to tell us?


Does this justify having to pay Apple a huge royalty on every iBook an author sells?



I'm sorry, but I despise eBook vendors that do not support open standards. Apple shot itself in the 1980s with the Mac operating system. Now it's shooting itself in the other foot by trying to be an iBook hardware monopoly. The tech world resists vendors that do not support open standards. Excellent authors trying to make money on iBooks will pay a price!


Windows still has about 92% of the PC Market. Add to this the other alternatives that won't run iBooks like Linux. The last time I looked Kindle still had the overwhelming share of the eBook reader market. Seems like an aspiring author should consider market share.


Personally, at think at this stage of technology, a textbook author should still focus on eBook and hardcopy open standard alternatives and provide multimedia supplements. Eventually, hard copy books will have something like a USB port to a multimedia chip embedded in the binding.


Respectfully,
Bob Jensen

Bob Jensen's threads on eBooks are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Ebooks.htm

 


"Wordle Revisited," by Erin E. Templeton, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 6, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/wordle-revisited/38293?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

ProfHacker first wrote about Wordle back in October 2009, when Julie Meloni called it the gateway drug to textual analysis.” George Williams followed her post with another in November of 2009 that further considered ways to[Use] Wordle in the classroom.”

Inspired by a Twitter conversation last week with Caleb McDaniel (@wcaleb), I decided to revisit it here.

I recently used Wordle in an assignment for my January Intercession class (on F. Scott Fitzgerald) and found it very useful for introducing students to close-reading and the basics of textual analysis. As an English professor, textual analysis is one of the most fundamental skills that I teach, and as a result, it can feel like the bane of my existence. The source of my frustration (and that of my students) is trying to get from summary and/or description to analysis. Students are often very good at describing what is happening in a text, but it can be very hard for them to break out of this habit and think about language in other ways.

Enter Wordle.

To me, there are two things that make Wordle invaluable:

In my class, I first demonstrated how to use Wordle with the novel we were reading (This Side of Paradise), which had the added benefit of being published in 1921, so it is no-longer copyright protected so I could use passages from Project Gutenberg’s edition of the novel rather than having to transcribe them manually. We created a few word clouds together as a class to make sure everyone knew how to do it, and then I asked the students how looking at these passages through the Wordle lens might change their understanding. What did they notice seeing the words rearranged, and in some cases resized (the size of words in the Wordle is directly proportionate to the number of times that the word appears in the initial text block)? By deconstructing and defamiliarizing the passage, Wordle magically freed students from the summary trap and helped them to think about the text analytically beyond the constraints of plot. Word clouds do not have plots, at least not in the linear convention sense that allows easy summary, so analysis was suddenly less confusing.

Finally, I asked students to create a Wordle on their own and post a screenshot of it to the class blog. They could choose any episode from This Side of Paradise that we had not already examined together in class. Once they had their Wordle, they were asked to answer a few questions: “Does this graphic visualization of the text highlight certain themes or issues in the episode? Does it emphasize particular themes or ideas? Do you notice things about the episode that you had previously discounted in your earlier reading?”

Posting the Wordles to the website proved to be a bit tricky for some, but that difficulty stemmed from the screenshot rather than Wordle itself.

My class created some very interesting Wordles, and more to the point, using this tool helped to make the task of literary analysis less daunting, which is often no easy feat! I was left wondering why I don’t use it more often in my classes and am currently trying to figure out ways to incorporate it into other assignments.

Continued in article


"Building Programming Tutorials with Codecademy," by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 8, 2012 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/building-programming-tutorials-with-codecademy/38378?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

For those learning to code this year, either for professional reasons or to expand personal horizons, Codecademy has been a popular tool. Jason has written about Codecademy as a platform for code-literacy, and I discussed the Codeyear “new year’s resolution” initiative the site launched in January. Now the platform has expanded even further with the addition of tools that allow any user to create new courses and projects in JavaScript, Python and Ruby.

Codecademy may not be a substitute for more traditional forms of programming instruction, but this new platform does offer possibilities for shaping hybrid learning or building coding familiarity into a course dedicated to another topic, as customized tutorials could supplement face to face instruction. Julie Meloni makes some great points about the pedagogical problems of Codecademy and the question of results: “…it is not teaching you how to code. It is teaching you how to call-and-response, and is not particularly helpful in explaining why you’re responding, why they’re calling, or—most importantly—how to become a composer.” I share a number of these concerns, particularly when Codecademy is the only source of knowledge–and I hope that this new tool affords Codecademy the opportunity to crowdsource new approaches to pedagogy.

There are some great examples of instructional programming tools available for free on the web, such as Scratch, MIT’s young-learner friendly code “building blocks.” (Scratch is just one kid-targeted programming tool: there are other great suggestions at Digital Humanities Q&A.) But these are often starter languages that don’t directly apply to web development or other applications, and thus require additional investment before literacy in more widely-used languages is achieved.

The choice of languages in Codecademy’s toolset focuses on utilitarian scripting languages with a range of potential applications. As Ryan Cordell noted in Ruby for Humanists, Ruby is a great starting language and its inclusion is particularly promising. As Ryan mentioned, there’s already a site for learning programming basics through Ruby tutorials: Hackety Hack. But Codecademy moves a step further with an easy system for building and sharing interactive tutorials.

Continued in article

4Teachers: Teach with Technology --- http://www.4teachers.org/


"Who Are the Top Technology Innovators in Higher Education?" by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 12, 2011 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/who-are-the-top-technology-innovators-in-higher-education/34638?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

This is only at the nominating stage at this point.
It is, however, informative to read the nominations already listed as comments to the above article.
I liked Paul Miller's nomination and try very hard year after year to serve accounting like Tom Bruce serves law.

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


Financial Instruments:  Perhaps auditing courses could make use of some of the IAASB resources in
International Auditing Practice Note (IAPN) 1000, Special Considerations in Auditing Financial Instruments
|http://www.ifac.org/publications-resources/international-auditing-practice-note-iapn-1000-special-considerations-auditin

 

"IFAC Offers Alerts on Tough Audit Issues," by Tammy Whitehouse, Compliance Week, December 29, 2011 ---
http://www.complianceweek.com/ifac-offers-alerts-on-tough-audit-issues/article/221235/

Guidance emerging from the International Federation of Accountants might prove useful even in the United States in the coming weeks as companies close the books on 2011 and plan for the year ahead.

IFAC's International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board has issued a practice note on special considerations that should be taken into account when auditing financial instruments. The alert, titled International Auditing Practice Note 1000, provide some practical assistance to auditors when dealing with valuation and other issues related to financial statement assertions, a touchy and complex area in any entity's financial statements in light of economic pressures and an increasing focus on fair value.

According to IAASB Chairman Arnold Schilder, the practice note can help auditors understand the nature of and risks associated with financial instruments as well as the different valuation techniques and types of controls entities may use in relation to them. The guidance also highlights audit considerations that should be taken into account throughout the audit process. IAASB Technical Director James Gunn said through a statement that the exercise of developing the guidance was informative even to the board, which will further inform the board's work as it develops future auditing standards.

In a separate release, IFAC's Professional Accountants in Business Committee has proposed some best practices guidance on evaluating and improving internal controls to help organizations benchmark their work in maintaining effective controls. The committee says the guidance is intended to be useful to any organization, regardless of the internal control framework it uses, to help deal with internal control issues that are often problematic because of poor design or implementation.

Vincent Topoff, the committee's senior technical manager, says the guidance would be meaningful even to U.S. companies where internal controls are more closely scrutinized because it was developed in part by U.S. experts who have spent many years working to improve internal controls. “Together, they have identified in this guidance those areas where the application of good practice guidance often goes wrong,” he says. “This guidance considers the areas organizations need to continuously improve and the issues they need to address.” The guidance is not meant to replace any existing framework that is in use, he says.

Finally, the IAASB also refreshed its warnings to auditors to keep economic conditions and pressures in mind as they consider whether disclosures are adequate and whether there is reason to doubt an entity can continue as a going concern. Companies continue to face volatility in capital markets and exposure to debt in distressed countries, leading to uncertainty that puts pressure on cash flow and access to credit, the board advises. Those factors complicate the audit process, and therefore must be considered closely, the board says.

Continued in artilce

Bob Jensen's threads on auditing professionalism are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001c.htm


How can your students watch you dance across Excel cells?

While reading this I kept thinking of how an instructor might use this same technology to be immersed in an Excel spreadsheet or a MS Access database.

Seeing Green Video Trick: This Will Also Work for Still Photographs Edited in Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, or Other Picture Editing Software
"Hollywood-Style Tricks on the Cheap," by David Pogue, The New York Times, December 29, 2011 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/hollywood-style-tricks-on-the-cheap/

A couple of weeks ago, my 12-year-old daughter sought my advice about a video she wanted to make. Her concept was so elaborate and involved so many scenes, I doubted it was even doable — unless she used a green screen and filmed the whole thing in the basement.

A green screen, of course, is the oldest trick in the movie-making book. You name the “how did they film that?” movie — “Mission Impossible,” “Avatar,” “The Matrix,” whatever — and I’ll show you scenes that they shot using the old-fashioned green screen technique.To make it work, you film your actor in front of a bright green background — either a green cloth or a painted wall. Then you import the video into the computer, and its software elves cleverly replace every pixel of green with a background you’ve selected, like a photograph or a video you shot at another place or time. If it is done properly, the audience never suspects that the actor was not, in fact, right there at the Eiffel Tower, the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro or the moon.

The key word, though, is “properly.” Getting green screen shots to look right is fiendishly difficult. If the green dropcloth has wrinkles, if the actor casts a shadow on it, if the actor’s lighting doesn’t match the substituted video background, then the illusion is ruined. (Ever see the final scene of “The Hunt for Red October”? The green screen setup is so crude, it almost looks as if there are crayon lines around Sean Connery’s head.)

So as you can imagine, my success at using home green screen kits has been pretty mixed. Just hanging a green cloth usually doesn’t work very well. You have to light the green cloth perfectly evenly, which requires at least two lights on stands, to prevent shadows. Then you have to light the actor, which usually requires a third light. And if you want your actor to walk, you need a second green cloth on the ground (or you have to paint the floor).

After years of fiddling around with amateur kits, I decided to see what a pro green screen kit might cost. My daughter’s project needed one, and there have been many times over the years when I’ve wished I had one for my own video projects.

So I poked around on photo-video Web sites like bhphotovideo.com and adorama.com. As I figured, the pro kits, containing both screen and lights, cost $1,300 and up. (A 6-by-6 cloth with frame by itself costs $675.) But there, nestled among all the high-priced kits, I saw something that I thought must be a misprint: a complete green screen setup — 9-by-10-foot green screen, a second 5-by-7-foot cloth, two 500-watt lights with 20-inch “softboxes” (diffusing screens for even light), two collapsible seven-foot light stands, software to teach you green screen techniques and perform the actual actor extraction — for $250.

But the customer reviews were overwhelmingly glowing. All of them seemed shocked that a rig this good could cost so little.

So I ordered one.

It’s called the Westcott uLite Green Screen Lighting Kit. It comes in a surprisingly tiny box, but everything was compactly folded inside. In our basement, I hung the 9-by-10-foot screen by its grommets from a water pipe along the ceiling. The light stands were easy to set up, sturdy and extremely easy to position and adjust. With one on each side of the green screen, I had a huge, perfectly evenly lit, wrinkle-free background.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
A popular application of this green backdrop filming is in weather forecast videos where the broadcaster is not really standing in front of a weather map.

While reading this I kept thinking of how an instructor might use this same technology to be immersed in an Excel spreadsheet or a MS Access database.


Facing Up to Ugly
"Forget PIN Numbers, Apple Wants to Let You Unlock Your iPhone With Your Face," by John Paul Titlow, ReadWriteWeb, December 29, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/apple_iphone_facial_recognition.php

Compared to how things used to be done with desktop computers, accessing your smartphone seems as instantaneous as it gets. You just pick up the device, tap a button, slide a finger to the right, enter (or Swype) your passcode and you're in. The whole process takes about two seconds and requires virtually no physical energy on your part. Piece of cake.

As quick and painless as this seems, Apple wants to simplify things even further for owners of its iPhones, iPads and other iOS devices. Imagine walking up to your phone or tablet in its dock and seeing the screen light up with a greeting. You pick it up and pull it a few inches closer to your face, and voilŕ! the screen is unlocked and the digital universe is instantly at your finger tips.

This reality is not too far off, according to a patent filed recently by Apple. The company wants to build presence and facial recognition into its device so that users can simply approach and peer into a device in order to activate it. No more PIN numbers or button-pressing.

This is a feature already available on jailbroken iPhones, but one that works very slowly and can easily be hacked using a photograph.

Update: As some of our diligent commenters have pointed out, facial recognition unlock feature is also available in Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android. That implementation, however, has been shown to be easily fooled and Google has acknowledged that its not as secure as a traditional passcode.

The technology required to get this type of feature to work effectively is pretty sophisticated and, as Patently Apple describes it, "computationally expensive." The trade-off for using an alternative method is weaker security, which defeats the purpose.

In a somewhat jargon-loaded post, the Apple patent-watching blog describes how the company plans to overcome the challenges associated with implementing such technology. Their method would use a two-dimensional analysis of the placement of facial features as well as skin tone and check those details against "target images" previously captured by the device. This patent comes about a month after news of Apple's acquisition of a patent for advanced 3D object recognition, which could be used in a similar fashion.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This technology might have a tremendous future in online and onsite academic integrity. Firstly, it might discourage students from hiring smart people to take entire courses for them. Secondly, it might discourage students from hiring smart people from taking examinations for them. Thirdly, it might discourage fraudulent students from being admitted to universities or to pretend they were admitted like the guy who keeps pretending he's a Harvard Student.

And it may have tremendous possibilities in crime prevention. For example, a pedophile with a long rap sheet might find it harder to get a job teaching in pre-school or K-12 schools.

Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm

 


Learning Management System (LMS) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system

"New Course-Management Software Promises Facebook-Like Experience," by Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 29, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-course-management-software-promises-facebook-like-experience/34488?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Three University of Pennsylvania students who recently dropped out to start an upstart course-management system today unveiled their software, called Coursekit, after having raised more than $1-million in venture capital.

The trio, frustrated with the systems offered by universities, such as Blackboard, decided to team up and design their own online course platform, which emphasizes social networking and an easy-to-use interface. By May, the founders, Joesph Cohen, Dan Getelman, and Jim Grandpre, had raised so much start-up cash, from sources including the Founder Collective and IA Ventures, that they decided to quit school to focus on developing Coursekit.

Thirty universities tested Coursekit this fall, including Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.

Coursekit offers a platform for hosting discussions, posting grades and syllabi, sharing calendars and links, and creating student profiles. The company has hired 80 student ambassadors to introduce the new course-management system to students at colleges across the country.

The software is one of several new challengers to Blackboard, which is used by a majority of U.S. colleges. In October, Pearson announced OpenClass, a free course-management system, and last year a Utah company called Instructure unveiled Canvas, which is available under an open-source license.

"Freeing the LMS," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, October 13, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/13/pearson_announces_free_learning_management_system

Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of the trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Course Management Systems (CMS) are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm


December 3, 2011 message from Rick Newmark

For collaboration tools, we used Sharepoint in our intro to MIS course, which is required for all business students. Since we adopted Pearson products, Pearson provided with the full version of Sharepoint and 200 access codes. Students can rent the ebook for 180 days on Coursesmart for $24 (list price of hard copy is $56). My techphobic students struggled with learning Sharepoint, and all of us, I included, did take some time to get the hang of it. I think Sharepoint makes a great tool for an AIS course because students have to make many security/control/access decisions for their own group sites. For example, what kind of permissions do you grant to various people/groups? How are you going to control access to documents? Are you going to use check-out/check-in for documents or are you going to let multiple people edit simultaneously?

I am going to use it in my graduate AIS course next semester for the reasons stated above and because they will likely use Sharepoint or some other set of collaboration tools in their professional careers.

Rick Newmark

 


Library of Online Technology Articles --- http://www.techcast.org/Library.aspx

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


"Why Spotify Will Kill iTunes," by Maxwell Wessel, Harvard Business Review Blog, July 22, 2011 --- Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/why_spotify_will_kill_itunes.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

For another look at the Spotify launch, see "Why I'm Not Going Near Spotify (and Why You Shouldn't Either)."

iTunes as we know it is over. It is walking, talking, and continuing to pretend it's alive, but Spotify, Europe's outrageously successful streaming music product, has just shown us the future.

Though you might not even be aware of the competitor that is attacking the music titan of the past decade, that iTunes business model is about to be blown up completely and swiftly. And it could even be thought of as fitting; iTunes accomplished the exact same thing during its early-2000s attack on the bricks-and-mortar retail music industry. Apple set the stage to decimate Tower Records and Sam Goody before either had a clue their industry was about to revolt. But innovation theory can provide a crystal ball; theory could have predicted iTunes' success and it's currently predicting Spotify's success.

To appreciate the truth of this claim, it's vital to understand one of Clayton Christensen's theories on marketing and product development: Jobs-to-be-done. Jobs-to-be-done suggests that in order to predict how to develop, compare, and position our products, we should be driven by a fundamental understanding of what that product is hired to do. For example, every day I hire a Coke to be a wake-me-up mid-afternoon break in my workday. To get the Coke, I walk from my building to a store next door and pay $1.25. I could substitute a free cup of coffee from my own office, which would provide my much-needed caffeine at no cost. But because the job is to break up the afternoon, I value both the caffeine in the product and the distance I walk to pick up the product. I am happy to pay for the Coke because it completes the job I hire a mid-day beverage to complete. To disrupt the purchase of my afternoon Coke, a product would has to be fundamentally advantaged in one of the two areas I value for that product; caffeine and time away from my desk.

When it comes to the music industry, I used to hire Tower Records to deliver my music. For that job, I valued Tower's music selection, the store's convenient locations, the fact that its music was compatible with my Discman, and the low prices. When I compared Tower to other options to fulfill that job, it was pretty well positioned.

Enter iTunes. After iTunes was introduced, its online model beat Tower in selection, convenience, and price. As an online storefront it had a fundamental advantage. It was in your home, had no shelf space limiting its inventory, and could beat Tower on price because of its lower fixed costs. The only thing that might have kept Tower treading water at first was its ability to be compatible with Discmen, which we know now disappeared quickly. With a basic grasp of technology innovation trends, Tower should have known as much and immediately begun running around with its hair on fire.

Now, a decade later, enter Spotify (at least, enter the U.S. market). Based on the job of delivering music, Spotify completes the job of delivering music in much the same way as iTunes does. Spotify is conveniently located, has a wonderful selection, is compatible with my computer, smartphone, and tablet (which are in turn compatible with my stereo and car), and is backward-compatible to play music from my existing iTunes library.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


"How to Use Barcodes at Conferences (and Why You Might Want To), by George Williams, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 21, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-use-barcodes-at-conferences-and-why-you-might-want-to/34209?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Audiences for oral presentations and poster sessions at academic conferences often want more information about a particular topic. One way to provide this, obviously, is to create printed flyers or brochures and hope that you’ve brought enough copies for everyone who’s interested. But what if your printed handout doesn’t make it all the way back on your audience member’s trip home?

During the 2011 Digital Humanities conference at Stanford University (currently underway) some people are making use of QR codes, a specific kind of two-dimensional bar code (also known as a matrix code).

For example, Peter Organisciak gave a talk entitled “When to Ask For Help: Evaluating Projects For Crowdsourcing,” and on one of his presentation slides–as you can see in the photo at the start of this post–he displayed this QR code:

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


"8 Simple Ways To Share Data Online," by David Strom, ReadWriteWeb, June 17, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2011/06/8-simple-ways-to-share-data-on.php

If you have to jointly author a spreadsheet with a colleague, what is the first thing that you do? Email it back and forth. This can be painful, particularly as you try to keep track of your partner's changes and hope the emails transit back and forth across the Internet. Add a third or fourth person, and things get worse. Luckily, there is a better way, and a number of Web-based service providers have stepped up with tools to make spreadsheet sharing a lot easier than sending attachments.

We've written about a few of them, including Longjump and Hyperbase (one of our products of the year for 2008), but I have tried a bunch others, and will show you what is involved and how they stack up.

The process is very straightforward: you either copy and paste data or take your spreadsheet and upload it to the service, after creating accounts for you and your collaborators. Then you can make changes via your Web browser, no other software is required. Some of the services allow for more bells and whistles. Setup time is minimal; your data is properly protected by the service and safe from harm. And you don't need to learn any Web/database programming skills either.

For many people, the spreadsheet is still one of the most popular low-end database applications. The rubric of a table of rows and columns is easily understood and can easily be used as a way to view records and fields of a database. Plus, you don't need to design special reports to view your data entries, and you can easily sort your data without having to create data dictionaries or other database structures, just use the appropriate Excel commands. Having a specialized service that can share this data makes it easier to collaborate too, whether your partners are across the office or on the other side of the world. As long as they have an Internet connection, they are good to go.

There are eight different services currently available, in order of increasing cost:

Online Spreadsheet Sharing Services

 

Service

Price

Storage limits

Pagos  Spreadsheetlive.com

Free (for now)

1 MB

Google Docs

Free

Really unlimited

Microsoft Live

Free

50 MB

Smartsheet.com

$10/mo for up to 10 spreadsheets

30 MB

Longjump Database

$19/mo for two users

3 MB

HyperBase

$175 setup plus $44/mo for 5 users

1.25 GB

TrackVia.com

$250/mo for 10 users

4 GB for entry plan

Intuit QuickBase

$299/mo for 10 users

1 GB for entry plan

Pricing and support

When you decide on the particular service, it pays to read the pricing fine print. There are discounts for annual subscriptions on most services, and some such as Smartsheet offer additional discounts for non-profit and educational institutions. All of these services have 14 day or 30 day free trials to get started, so you can get a feel of what is involved in manipulating your data and how easy it is to make changes, produce reports, and receive notifications.

Continued in article

June 18, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar

I find Google docs great for small spreadsheets, but cumbersome for large files.

I set up Dropbox folders for each of my groups in my online class (3-5 students in a group). They post their project spreadsheets in the group folders, and if a student has a question, I can quickly open the spreadsheet to see what is going on. Students contact me by AIM and we discuss the spreadsheet via AIM. Works like a charm for me.

Amy Dunbar

UConn

Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL): Learning Spaces Collaborative --- http://www.pkallsc.org/

"Thanks to Google Plus, Picasa Gets Unlimited Storage for Photos & Videos, Also Better Tagging," by Sarah Perez, ReadWriteWeb, July 1, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/thanks_to_google_plus_picasa_gets_unlimited_storage_for_photos_and_videos.php

With the launch of Google Plus, there may be some confusion as to how the photos uploaded to the social network (Google+) integrate with Google's online photo-sharing service (Picasa), especially in terms of storage limits. The answer provides some great news for Google Plus users - nearly everything you upload to Google Plus won't count towards your storage limits on Picasa, with the only exception being videos longer than 15 minutes.

And there's another nifty feature involving photo-tagging, too - your Google+ friends can now tag your Picasa photos.

Thus far I past my photographs on two Web servers at Trinity University:

Server One
Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Server Two
More of Bob Jensen's Personal History in Pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/

 

Bob Jensen's threads on sending large files across the Internet ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles


"What Google+ (Google Plus) Should Have Been: Bing's Linked Pages," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, February 28, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_google_should_have_been_bings_linked_pages.php

Here's one we missed. Bing launched Bing+ last week, it just skipped all the unnecessary stuff. (It's not really called Bing+.) There's a new feature called Linked Pages that allows Bing users (U.S. only, for now) to connect their various websites and profiles to their Bing identities, using Facebook for authentication. You can also link your Facebook friends to their pages.

Thanks to its relationship with Facebook, Microsoft has the advantage of not needing to build its own identity provider or social network. Everyone's already on Facebook. To build good results for people, Bing will use the same technique Facebook Groups use: get friends to draw their own graph. Just like with Facebook Groups, if a friend connects you to something you don't want, you can remove it permanently. We all thought that feature would suck for Groups, but it worked just fine. Facebook Groups build themselves, and Bing can build identities the same way.

Social Network Overkill

The interesting thing is, this is exactly what Google+ is for, but the product isn't being pitched that way. Google's social layer is all about establishing the Google-presence for people and brands, so they can appear across Google-land, especially in Search, plus Your World. But Google+ is spun as a place for "sharing." It has all these pieces of a social network, but people aren't using them.

It's a shame, because some of these features are absolutely wonderful. What could be more social than Hangouts? Google+ is full of great ideas, but it is struggling to bring them together. The user experience isn't there. And that's all because Google felt the need to build a full-blown social network itself in order to act as an identity service.

Couldn't Hangouts have just been a Gmail feature?

Social Search Is All We Needed

There's no need for a new social network, but there is a reason to put personal identities in search. Searching for people has always been a terrible experience. It's nearly impossible to find the person you're looking for, unless they're famous. Search engines need an identity layer.

Bing is just being honest about that. If you want to control the way you appear in search, you can connect the sites and pages that matter to you via Facebook. Your friends can do it, too. When you use Bing to search for people, now you'll be able to find the content that's related to them. That's what Search, plus Your World does for Google, but Bing does it without requiring this new, extra place to waste time online.

Google could have done that. The Google+ profile works exactly the way Bing's Linked Pages does, allowing users to link their outside sites and pages to themselves. It could have just made a Facebook app, and boom, there are your social search results. But that's not how the business works. Google and Facebook can't cooperate. They have to compete for eyeballs around social content, and Facebook is winning.

Jensen Comment
I've previously written about why I think Bing Maps is superior to Google Maps. Sometimes (horrors) Microsoft really does do a better job when it comes late onto the scene ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Travel


I think it would be great if some of the faculty who teach large classes (say over 50 students) would share some of their teaching tips on the AECM.

"Teaching Extra-Large Classes and the Role of Technology," by Mark Sample, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 24, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-extra-large-classes-and-the-role-of-technology/30046?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
At this point Mark really does not offer answers in the above article. And I never taught a large class on campus or online so I don't have a lot to offer.

It is important to discuss what is meant by a large class. Over 30 years ago I had an economist friend who taught economics via television piped into basements of dormitories at Michigan State University. His classes always had over 1,000 students. But these were not all "his" classes. Students were also part of relatively small recitation sections where they could personally identify with a teaching assistant in Al's television course.

I think a large class is a class of 90 like you find in the Harvard Business School when there are no recitation sections that are also part of the course. I never could figure out how case-method instructors could grade case discussion participation when each student on average got less than one minute of air time in a 90-minute class. I don't think we turn to the Harvard Business School to seek out technology ideas for large classes.

Barry Rice had large basic accounting classes at Loyola College in Maryland. Over 20 years ago his technology of choice was ToolBook and HyperGraphics hand-held clickers (response pads) where he flashed student names on the screen and asked them to recite in front of the class ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads

Steve Hornik teaches extremely large accounting classes at Central Florida and is a pioneer in 3-D Second Life virtual world teaching ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Probably the pedagogy of choice for large courses is video where students outside the classroom can learn asynchronously at their own learning paces and styles. At BYU the basic accounting courses rarely meet face-to-face. The technical learning all takes place via variable-speed video (faculty at other colleges can adopt the specially-recorded BYU DVD disks) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

I think it would be great if some of the faculty who teach large classes (say over 50 students) would share some of their teaching tips on the AECM.



"Most-Popular Education-Technology Articles of 2010," by Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 3, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/most-popular-education-technology-articles-of-2010/28758

We thought we’d begin a new year of Wired Campus with a quick look back at the biggest tech stories of 2010, as voted by you. Items concerning Facebook, iPads, and cheating ranked high in page views. Here are the top 10 headlines from our tech blog:

1. East Stroudsburg U. Suspends Professor for Facebook Posts
2. Seton Hill to Offer iPads to Full-Time Students
3. Colleges ‘Freaking Out’ Over New Facebook Community Pages
4. Hacker Makes the 5th of November One to Remember
5. Students Lack Basic Research Skills, Study Finds
6. What if We Ran Universities Like Wikipedia?
7. Bill Gates Predicts Technology Will Make ‘Place-Based’ Colleges Less Important in 5 Years
8. Cheaters Never Win, at Least in Physics, a Professor Finds
9. Students Retain Information in Print-Like Formats Better
10. Woodbury U. Banned From Second Life, Again

On Tech Therapy, our monthly technology podcast, an interview with Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales scored the most listeners. Here are the three most popular tech podcasts from 2010:

1. Wikipedia’s Co-Founder Calls for Better Information Literacy
2. How Librarians and IT Officials Can Get Along
3. The Case for Digital Scholarship

As for our longer, feature articles about technology, a story about a one-man university on YouTube drew the most readers. Here are the top five technology articles from The Chronicle:

1. A Self-Appointed Teacher Runs a One-Man ‘Academy’ on YouTube
2. High-Tech Cheating Abounds, and Professors Bear Some Blame
3. Is Technology Making Your Students Stupid?
4. To Save Students Money, Colleges May Force a Switch to E-Textbooks
5. Teachers Without Technology Strike Back

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


Open Sharing Tool Library and Networking for Multiple Nations
"OpenScout supports the collaborative reuse and adaptation of Portuguese and Brazilian OER," by Alexander Mikroyannidis, The Financial Education Daily, November 16, 2011 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

The OpenScout Tool Library is a social network of individuals and collectives who are developing or using learning resources and want to share their stories and resources from different countries.

The OpenScout Tool Library is currently hosting the activities of the COLEARN community of research in collaborative learning and educational technologies in the Portuguese language. This group is run by Alexandra Okada (The Open University UK) and consists of learners, educators and researchers from academic institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Their interests focus on collaborative participation through social media, colearning (collaborative open learning) using Open Educational Resources (OER), Social Media and Web 2.0 research. There are 26 research groups from Brazilian and Portugal universities - 115 people currently registered in the Tool Library.

At the moment, this community is developing a book project called "Web 2.0: Open Educational Resources in Learning and Professional Development". From January to February 2012, three workshops will be run in the Tool Library for improving OER skills: image, presentation and audio/visual material. These collaborative activities and workshops aim at engaging people in developing their skills and discussing concepts as well as preparing themselves to be OER users who are able to produce, remix and share open resources and open ideas.

 


Related Links:

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


Problem-Based Learning at the University of Delaware --- http://www.udel.edu/inst/


Blog:  The Pedagogy of Podcasts ---
https://gcci.uconn.edu/2018/05/30/the-pedagogy-of-podcasts/?elqTrackId=a555348f227a42539092cd2622bf75d6&elq=779b7c70b8f741b18acf37e5f6b9d2b8&elqaid=19598&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9015

"Do Podcasts Help Students Learn?" by Tanya Roscorla, Converge Magazine, November 3, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Podcasts-George-Washington-University.html 

Before George Washington University renewed its iTunes U contract, the administration wanted to know how the podcasts impacted student learning and engagement.

In fall 2009, the university's Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning studied a world history class of 262 students to find the answer.

But the answer isn't yes or no — the answer depends on the student's learning style, gender and motivation.

“If your goal is to find a magic bullet that makes all students better, this isn’t it," said Hugh Agnew, a professor from the Elliott School of International Affairs who taught the course. "But If your goal is to reach some students better that maybe you aren’t reaching so terribly well, then I think this is worth trying.”

6 interesting results He created 10-minute podcasts with graphics and audio, as well as a text transcript of the podcasts with visuals to supplement his lecture class. In the first research run, half of the class used the podcasts, and the other half used the text. In the second run, they switched.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on learning and memory are at the following two sites:


Greg Smith, chief information officer at George Fox, said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask and print, and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on their notebooks. "That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent device," he said.
"Classroom iPad Programs Get Mixed Response," by Travis Kaya, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Classroom-iPad-Programs-Get/27046/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

A few weeks after a handful of colleges gave away iPads to determine the tablet's place in the classroom, students and faculty seem confident that the device has some future in academe.

But they're still not exactly sure where that might be.

At those early-adopter schools, iPads are competing with MacBooks as the students' go-to gadget for note taking and Web surfing. Zach Kramberg, a first-year student at George Fox University, which allowed incoming students to choose between a complimentary iPad or MacBook this fall, said the tablet has become an important tool for recording and organizing lecture notes. He also takes the device with him to the university's dimly lit chapel so he can follow along with an app called iBible. "The iPad's very easy to use once you figure them out," he said.

Still, Mr. Kramberg said the majority of students rely on bound Bibles in chapel and stick to pen and paper or MacBooks in the classroom.

Greg Smith, chief information officer at George Fox, said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask and print, and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on their notebooks. "That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent device," he said.

Mr. Smith said that the 67 students—10 percent of the freshman class—that opted for iPads over MacBooks are really excited about the technology but have not been "pushing the capabilities" of the device.

Caitlin Corning, a history professor at George Fox, said it's been hard to meld iPads into the curriculum because only a small subset of her students has the device. Ms. Corning used the iPad as a portable teaching tool during a student art trip to Europe this summer, flashing Van Gogh works on the screen when they were in the places he painted them. Translating that portable-classroom experience into her classroom back in Oregon, however, has not been easy. "It's still a work in progress," she said. "It's a little complex because only some of the freshmen have iPads."

Faculty members at Seton Hill University, which gave iPads to all full-time students, are working with the developers of an e-book app called Inkling to come up with new ways to integrate the iPad into classroom instruction. The textbook software—one of many in development—allows students to access interactive graphics and add notes as they read along. Faculty members can access the students' marginalia to see whether they understand the text. They can also remotely receive and answer questions from students in real time.

Catherine Giunta, an associate professor of business at Seton Hill, said the technology has changed the way students interact with their textbooks and how she interacts with her students. While reviewing the margin notes of a student in her marketing class, Ms. Giunta was able to pinpoint and correct a student's apparent misunderstanding of a concept that was going to be covered in class the next day. "The misunderstanding may not have been apparent until [the student] did a written report," Ms. Giunta said. "I could really give her individualized instruction and guidance."

As students and faculty members around the country feel around for new ways to integrate the iPad into academic life, a handful of programs are taking a more formal approach to finding its place in the classroom. Students in the Digital Cultures and Creativity program at the University of Maryland at College Park will turn a critical eye on the iPad as a study tool while integrating it into their curriculum. "I think [students are] taking a sort of wait-and-see approach," said Matthew Kirschenbaum, the program director and an associate professor of English.

Similarly, the faculty at Indiana University has formed a 24-member focus group to evaluate iPad-driven teaching strategies. The groups have started meeting this month to assess how their iPad experiments are going, with a preliminary report due in January. "It's meant to be a supportive, collaborative, formalized conversation," said Stacy Morrone, Indiana's associate dean of learning technologies. "We don't expect that everything will go perfectly."

Although not entirely related to the substance of the iPad educational debate, a pilot program at Long Island University was thrust into the spotlight over the weekend in an animated e-mail exchange between a college journalist and Apple's founder Steve Jobs. As Gawker reports it, complaints about a few unreturned media inquiries from a deadline-stressed reporter led to a curt "leave us alone" response from the Apple chief executive.

In the e-mail chain, Mr. Jobs said, "Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade."

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm


Cutting-Edge Social Media Approaches to Business Education: Teaching with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, and Blogs, by Charles Wankel ---
http://management-education.net/rmed9/

February 12, 2011 reply from Jagdish Gangolly

Bob, Steve,

The forensic practices at the Big 4 are WAY ahead of the accounting academia in using the technology to cover the dark side of social networking in e-discovery. We in the accounting academia have been too busy regressing to take note.

I know of at least two who used it extensively in fraud examination as far back as 2008. They demonstrated its use to me while I was designing our fraud examination course.

One commercial product that is popular is attenex. See http://www.jurinnov.com/attenex.asp 

Jagdish


Reader Poll: Tech Tool You're Most Excited to Take into the Classroom," by Julie Meloni, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 10, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Reader-Poll-Tech-Tool-Youre/26127/

I'm not sure I've ever said this out loud, but ReadWriteWeb is my absolute favorite blog in all the blogosphere, and has been since they began covering all things technology-related in 2003 or so—it's the emphasis on critical thinking and analysis rather than knee-jerk "first!" responses to news and events that makes me respect them so.

Recently, my most favorite RWW author (Audrey Watters) asked educators for input via Twitter: what's the tech tool you're most excited to take into the classroom with you this fall?. Audrey is collecting responses for use in an upcoming RWW story, so between now and August 15th feel free to help her out.

However, I'm interested in your answers as well. No, I don't aim to write a similar story as Audrey, but I do wonder about the different answers based on the different audiences. Audrey's readership comes from the already highly-technologically-inclined, often found on Twitter. The ProfHacker audience in the CHE is not necessarily so. In fact, I think it is safe to say that the majority of the ProfHacker readership is not on Twitter and is more technology-curious than technology-embedded (or invested).

So, I'd like to hear from you as well. In the comments, please let us know what's the tech tool you're most excited to take into the classroom with you this fall? (anything hardware or software "counts," and I'll even accept analog technologies as valid answers)

Hopefully, given your responses and Audrey's own article from (predominantly) her own audience, there will be some interesting food for thought on the state of technology in higher ed.

Jensen Comment
“Taking into the classroom” is a rather ambiguous phrase that should probably read “taking into the course.” In the latter case, something Camtasia is still on my list of important priorities for things to add to virtually any course whether onsite or online ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

Camtasia --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camtasia
Camtasia can be used by students as well as instructors.

Videos Illustrating How to Make Videos Using Camtasia Version 7.1

October 13, 2011 message from Rick Newmark

Here are three videos that I made to show my colleagues how to use Camtasia to make a class video for when you go out of town, or to create a tutorial for your class. I figured that some of you might be interested, so here they are. Please note that these are not Richard Campbell-quality videos. I shot these quickly and without any script. I made only a couple of minor edits.

Also, please note I used Screencast-O-Matic to make the first part of Part 1 so that I could capture setting up Camtasia Recorder. Pay attention to before and after I press the Record button to see the differences between the two applications.

How to record a class using Camtasia 7

http://youtu.be/PdSsVcLBsMM Part 1 - Setting up Camtasia Recorder and recording a class video.

http://youtu.be/aqUd8kD4VM8 Part 2  - Producing your Camtasia recording for posting in BlackBoard.

http://youtu.be/4KLNlxZOleE Part 3 - Posting your video in BlackBoard.

 

FYI, In Part 1, I used the following to demonstrate different ways to use Camtasia

1.       Running virtual machines on your PC using Virtual Box

·         Apple Snow Leopard 10.6

·         Linux Ubuntu 11.04

2.       Creating a two-table query in Access 2010

3.       Demonstrating how to use Windows Journal with a Tablet PC—also applies to using the Sympodium on a classroom computer.

·         I showed how to use the REA Enterprise Ontology, t-accounts, and journal entries to explain the following

                                                               i.       The nature of accounts receivable and unearned revenue, including the duality imbalance that creates them

                                                             ii.      How to use t-accounts to design database queries to compute accounts receivable and unearned revenue.

 

Rick

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

Richard Newmark
Professor, School of Accounting and Computer Information Systems
Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business

2004 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Winner
University of Northern Colorado
Campus Box 128, Kepner Hall 2095D
Greeley, CO 80639
(970) 351-1213 (office)
(970) 351-1068 (fax)
http://PhDuh.com/unc

Bob Jensen's threads on Camtasia are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Note that I find the F9 toggle key very useful for pausing for periods of rest and preparation during the recording of a relatively long video.

Many of my old videos will not run in Windows 7 because Microsoft dropped an an audio codec.

 

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Reader-Poll-Tech-Tool-Youre/26127/


Update on Lanny Arvan:  From SCALE Experiments to Blogs

Years ago economics professor Lanny Arvan directed the famous in a controlled SCALE experiments comparing resident full-time students at the University of Illinois taking onsite versus online courses from the same instructors using common grade assessment procedures. Thirty courses across multiple disciplines were examined across five years of experimentation ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois
In spite of some technology glitches in those olden days, many students tended to prefer taking the courses online. Typically, many more students moved from B grades to A grades in online courses. However, there tended to not be much difference for D and F students, indicating that lack of motivation and aptitude cuts across online and onsite pedagogies in mostly the same way.

In one of my technology workshops Dan Stone (then from the University of Illinois) gave us an overview that I still serve up his PowerPoint and audio files ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

"Teaching With Blogs, by Lanny Arvan, Inside Higher Ed, July 27, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/07/27/arvan

“It is my impression that no one really likes the new. We are afraid of it. It is not only as Dostoevsky put it that 'taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most.' Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.”
--Eric Hoffer, Between The Devil And The Dragon

I tried the new in fall 2009, teaching with student blogs, (look in sidebar and scroll down) out in the open where anyone who wanted to could see what the students were producing. The blogging wasn’t new for me. I’d been doing that for almost five years. Having students blog was a different matter. I had no experience in getting them to overcome their anxieties, relaxing in writing online, learning to trust one another that way. Normally I believe what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If I could blog comfortably and get something from that, so could they. On reflection, however, I was very gentle with myself when I started to blog. As an experiment to prove to myself whether I could do it, for three full weeks I made at least one post a day, 500 to 600 words, a couple of times 1,100 to 1,200 words. I didn’t tell a soul I was doing this. There was no pressure on me to keep it up. It was out in the open, yet nobody seemed to be watching. After those three weeks I felt ready. In the teaching, however, at best I could ask the students to blog once a week. I gave the students weekly prompts on the readings or to follow up on class discussion. (See the class calendar for fall 2009. The prompts are in the Friday afternoon entries.) If I let them blog quietly to get comfortable as I had done, the entire semester would expire before they were ready to go public. There seemed no alternative but to have them plunge in.

The uncertainty about how best to assist the students once they had taken the plunge created an important symmetry between the students and me; we both were to learn about how to do this well, often by first doing it less well. Though it was an inadvertent consequence, of all my teaching over the past 30 years I believe this course came closest to emulating the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education by Chickering and Gamson. I learned to comment on the student posts, not with some pre-thought-through response based on what I anticipated they’d write, but rather to react to where they appeared to be in their own thinking. (This post provides a typical example. The student introduced time management as a theme. My comment aimed to make her think more about time management.) As natural as that is to do in ordinary conversation, I had never done it before when evaluating student work. Indeed, I didn’t think of these comments as evaluation at all. I thought of them as response. In the normal course of my non-teaching work I respond to colleagues all the time and they respond to me. This form of online interaction in the class made it more like the rest of my interactions at work.

Most of the students were quite awkward in their initial blogging. Good students all, the class was a seminar on "Designing for Effective Change" for the Honors Program, but lacking experience in this sort of approach to instruction, the students wrote to their conception of what I wanted to hear from them. I can’t imagine a more constipated mindset for producing interesting prose. For this class there was a need for them to unlearn much of their approach which had been finely tuned and was quite successful in their other classes. They needed to take more responsibility for their choices. While I gave them a prompt each week on which to write, I also gave them the freedom to choose their own topic so long as they could create a tie to the course themes. Upon reading much of the early writing, I admonished many of them to "please themselves" in the writing. I informed them that they could not possibly please other readers if they didn’t first please themselves. It was a message they were not used to hearing. So it took a while for them to believe it was true. In several instances they tried it out only after being frustrating with the results from their usual approach. This, as Ken Bain teaches us, is how students learn on a fundamental level.

I'm crustier now than I was as a younger faculty member. Nonetheless, I find it difficult to deal with the emotion that underlies giving feedback to students when that feedback is less than entirely complimentary to them. Yet given their awkward early attempts at writing posts that’s exactly what honest response demanded. It’s here where having the postings and the comments out in the open so all can see is so important, before the class has become a community, before the students have made up their minds about what they think about this blogging stuff. Though both the writing and the response are highly subjective, of necessity, it is equally important for the process to be fair. How can a student who receives critical comments judge those comments to be fitting and appropriate, rather than an example of the insensitive instructor picking on the hapless student? Perhaps a very mature student can discern this even-handedly from the comments themselves and a self-critique of the original post. I believe most students benefit by reading the posts of their classmates, making their own judgments about those writings and then seeing the instructor’s comments, finally making a subsequent determination as to whether those comments seem appropriate and helpful for the student in reconsidering the writing.

A positive feedback loop can be created by this process. The commenting, more than any other activity the instructor engages in, demonstrates the instructor’s commitment to the course and to the students. In turn the students, learning to appreciate the value of the comments, start to push themselves in the writing. Their learning is encouraged this way. Further, since the blogging is not a competition between the students and their classmates, those who like getting comments begin to comment on the posts of other students. The elements of the community that the class can become are found in this activity.

Since on a daily basis I use blogs and blog readers in my regular work, one of the original reasons for me taking this approach rather than use the campus learning management system was simply that I thought it would be more convenient for me. Also, given my job as a learning technology administrator, I went into the course with some thought that I might showcase the work afterward. Openness is clearly better for that. However in retrospect neither of these is primary. The main reason to be open is to set a good tone for the class. We want ideas to emerge and not remain concealed.

Yet there remains one troubling element: student privacy. Is open blogging this way consistent with FERPA? As best as I’ve been able to determine, it is as long as students “opt in.” (I did give students the alternatives of writing in the class LMS site or writing in the class wiki site. No student opted for those.) My experience suggests, however, that is not quite sufficient. If most students opt in, peer pressure may drive others to opt in as well. More importantly, however, students choose to opt in when they are largely ignorant of the consequences. Might they feel regret after they better understand what the blogging is all about?

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on blogs are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm


You may want to liven up your accounting, math or history courses by illustrating the art and science of the Abacus Calculator

Abacus: The Art of Calculating with Beads --- http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/index.html

Contents

Introduction

Construction  ·  Basics  ·  Java Applet  ·  Technique  ·  The Abacus Today


History

Timeline  ·  Salamis Tablet  ·  Counting Board  ·  Roman Hand Abacus  ·  Suan Pan  ·  Soroban  ·  Schoty  ·  Nepohualtzitzin  ·  Khipu  ·  Lee Abacus
 

Interactive Abacus Tutor

Sarat Chandran and David A. Bagley's incredible Java abacus with a built-in tutor for counting, addition and subtraction.

Calculations
Addition  ·  Subtraction  ·  Multiplication & Division  ·  Square Roots  ·  Cube Roots

The Lee Abacus

The manual for the Lee Abacus, c. 1958 is available as Text  ·  Images
 

The Abacus as Art

Michael Mode builds exotic abaci as art objects.
 

Abacus: Mystery of the Bead

Abacus Techniques by Totton Heffelfinger & Gary Flom.

Articles, Excerpts and Analysis

The Abacus vs.The Electric Calculator

In 1946, a contest held in Tokyo, pitted an abacus against an electric calculator; the abacus won, of course.
 

Feynman vs. The Abacus

Richard Feynman battles against the abacus; the result is not surprising (if you know Feynman).
 

Comparing the Chinese and the Mesoamerican Abacus

An analysis contributed by David B. Kelley.
 

The Roman Hand-Abacus

An analysis contributed by Steve Stephenson.
 

The Incan Khipu

String, and Knot, Theory of Inca Writing by John Noble Wilford.
Talking Knots of the Incas by Viviano and Davide Domenici.
 

Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge

An article about the dangers of forgetting knowledge learned from the past, by Eugene Linden.

All Things Abacus

Additional Abacus Resources

Purchase  or build an abacus  ·  An abacus for your Palm  ·  Books about the abacus  ·  Java applet source code  ·  The Mesoamerican abacus
 

Resources For Teachers

The abacus in the classroom  ·  Abacus lesson plan  ·  Math and science resources for teachers
 

Photos

High-resolution photos of my abacus collection.

Bob Jensen's threads on early accounting history are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory


Browser Readability Tool and Sunlight Designs

July 16, 2010 message from Bill Ellis [bill.ellis@FURMAN.EDU]

If you want your web pages to only display what you want to read, this is an incredible tool. It strips a web page of all but what you want to read. Go to this web site, check the settings you desire, and drag the Readabiity box to your browser toolbar. When you are viewing a page click on the Readabiity box on your browser toolbar and the page you are viewing is cleaned of all but what you want to read.
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

I found Readabiity at:
http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/

Sunlight is a site promoting cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable.

You’ll enjoy their design contest. I particularly thought the IRS web page redesign, US Passport application redesign and How Laws are made to be excellent examples of clear communications.


http://sunlightlabs.com/contests/designforamerica/

Bill Ellis, CPA, MPAcc
Furman University
Accounting UES
864-908-4743

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled
Plutarch


From the Scout Report on July 23, 2010

Quizlet --- http://quizlet.com/ 

The school year isn't so far away, and educators may want to take a close look at this most helpful web application. Quizlet allows students and teachers to create flashcard sets with little fuss, and they can also share their flashcards with friends via email, Facebook, or MySpace. The site has a great "How do I??" section that provides many answers to how to best use the program. Quizlet is compatible with all operating systems.


Wallwisher http://www.wallwisher.com/ 

Want to make an online notice board? It's never been easier than with Wallwisher, which is a new application that offers a number of excellent features. Visitors can use the application to put up just about any item on their wall, including video clips, audio files, drawings, photographs, and so on. "Walls" can be set so only certain individuals can have access to them, and visitors do not need to sign up an account to get started. This version is compatible with all operating systems.


"Ed Tech Trends to Watch in 2010," by Converge Staff," Converge Magazine, June 14, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/2010-Ed-Tech-Trends.html

School districts and college campuses across the country are trying to grab students' attention and teach them in ways they learn best. That means they're adding social media features to learning management systems, offering more online and blended courses, and taking advantage of mobile devices.

Check out the top  trends in learning management systems, online learning and mobile computing identified in a 2010 Software & Information Industry Association report released this month.
 

Learning management systems

In 2008, 35 percent of the K-12 schools surveyed said they had no plans to buy a learning management system, but lower prices and higher federal accountability requirements will change their minds, according to the report. And when they do change their minds, they'll be looking for digital content and professional development to go along with the systems.

They'll also be looking for tools including curriculum planning and lesson management. These tools allow them to create detailed lesson plans for individual students and assign digital curriculum lessons to students.

In higher education, professors increasingly rely on digital content and use social media to teach their students. They're also adding more online classes and reducing administrative costs. As a result, learning management systems should be incorporating rich Internet applications, social media, user-generated content, mobile devices, Software as a Service and business process management systems.

Faculty members expect to do a number of tasks in learning management systems:

Online learning

The e-learning market has been expanding steadily, and over the next four years, forecasters predict that K-12 online learning will advance at a compound annual growth rate of 17 percent, while higher education will grow at 8 percent.

In online learning, blended or hybrid classes that combine face-to-face and online instruction are popping up, particularly in higher education. And the expansion of open source content on sites such as Flatworld Knowledge, Curriki and CK12 give teachers and professors more options to potentially save money.

Mobile devices, WiMAX technology, podcasts and software tools allow students to learn any time, anywhere. And that mobile computing experience is what they're looking for.

 

Mobile computing

In the past two years, netbooks have arrived on the scene, but their sales are already growing more than 200 percent per year.  K-12 schools adopt them at a higher rate because many of them provide devices for their students. Netbook trends include 10-inch screens, faster processors, longer battery life and built-in wireless wide area networks.

Laptop use is still growing steadily, but not as fast as it was previously. Laptop trends include LED backlights, backlit keyboards, more rugged mechanical designs, larger hard drives, newer processor designs and increased availability of 3G/4G wireless wide area network support.

Meanwhile, tablet computers are becoming more popular in postsecondary education, and companies are creating smartbooks that have long battery lives of about two days.

More people view Web pages through smart phones and cell phones than through computers. Cell phones have become widely accepted in postsecondary education, while many K-12 districts still ban them in the classroom.

As far as operating systems go, Microsoft Windows leads the pack on desktop and laptop systems. But Mac OS X from Apple, Windows Mobile, iPhone OS, Symbian, Linux and Android have entered the mobile market.

On the connectivity side, most postsecondary campuses have robust WiFi, but less than 30 percent of K-12 classrooms have robust WiFi access. While WiFi has been around for more than 10 years, WiMAX is coming on the scenes as a 4G wide area data service in the U.S. And don't forget the cellular 3G and 4G data services for smart phones.

While these are some trends that are happening now and in the next year or two, the report also forecasts what education technology will look like in the future. In the next five years, the report predicts that cloud computing, cell phone use and 3G and 4G data plans will become mainstream in education.

Will these forecasts come true?

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

The dark side of education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm


Evernote --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evernote

"Using Evernote in the Classroom," by Amy Cavender, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 20, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/using-evernote-in-the-classroom/58347?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"A Brief Word from an Evernote Convert," by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 6, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/A-Brief-Word-from-an-Evernote/25291/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

I take notes. A lot of notes. I take notes when I read, when I'm in meetings, when I'm listening to lectures, when I'm figuring out what I need to do any given day. In fact, if I ever tell you that I'm going to do something, but you don't see me make myself a note about it, don't believe me.

Notes are the key to remembering, for me. Or, more precisely: the act of taking notes is the key to remembering. Something about the act of taking notes helps make an idea, or an issue, or a plan more real to me.

I used to take these notes longhand, in various notebooks, some devoted to particular projects, some to more general notetaking. Several years back, though, I began shifting my notetaking to the computer, so that those notes would be more easily searchable and repurposeable.

Originally, I used Word for this purpose, but after one MS Office upgrade too many, requiring that all of my documents be converted (and thus become unreadable to the older version of the software), I decided that I wanted something more lightweight. The purpose of these notes, after all, was the text that went into them, and not their formatting; plain vanilla ".txt" files were likely to remain highly flexible into the future.

But those .txt files started proliferating on my machine, and so did the folders I used to organize them. And while Mac OS X's search capabilities via Spotlight aren't all that bad now, that wasn't always the case. So when I stumbled across Steven Johnson's post about how he used DEVONthink, I was sold.

DEVONthink is an extraordinarily powerful information management system -- a bit too powerful, quite honestly, for what I needed it to do. So back in May, when Shawn Miller guest-posted here on ProfHacker about how he uses Evernote, I was persuaded to give it a try.

One might begin to think I'm too easily swayed, but honestly, I test out a lot of software that doesn't stick with me long. I've been using Evernote for just shy of two months now, though, and I'm fairly sure I'll be using it for a while. A few reasons why:

1. Automatic. I have Evernote installed on my office desktop, my home desktop, my laptop, my iPad, and my iPhone. And each of those instances automatically connects to the Evernote server to keep my notes synchronized across all my devices. I've had one incident in which I accidentally overwrote a more recent version of a note by editing an old version before my iPhone had finished downloading the most recent updates to my notebooks, but now I'm more cautious to be sure everything has synchronized before I start typing in an existing note.

2. Web accessible. My notes are also of course directly accessible from the Evernote server, should I not have one of those five devices with me.

3. Lightweight. The Evernote application itself has a very small footprint, using the teeniest amount of memory and disk space. It's also quite nice in terms of response time. And as most of my notes are just plain text, the database doesn't take up much in the way of space.

4. Flexible. Of course, I don't have to confine my notes to text with Evernote: I can easily capture entire web pages with the Chrome (or other browser) extension, I can import images and PDFs, and any number of other things I haven't even tried yet. And, as Shawn pointed out, images are OCRable, so that the text within them becomes searchable just like the rest of my notes.

5. Free. As I was just experimenting with Evernote over the last two months, I haven't committed to the paid version as yet. But the free version is thus far everything I need. I've never come anywhere near using all of the monthly data allowance of the free version, and the little ad in the corner of the application is inoffensive. At some point, I'll probably upgrade to the paid version, partially for a bit more flexibility in the kinds of files I can attach to notes, and partially to support the team developing a really great project.

I do perhaps wish that my text files were really stored as text files (Evernote saves them in its own proprietary XML-based format, as well as in HTML format), but for what I'm doing, just being able to find and copy the notes is enough. And overall I've had a great experience with Evernote so far, which is allowing my notetaking habit to become more productive and more organized than before.

"Skitch Finds New Life At Evernote With iPhone Version," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, September 19, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/skitch-finds-new-life-at-evernote-with-iphone-version.php

"6 Awesome Evernote Apps That We Guarantee You've Never Seen," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, July 27, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/evernote-announces-6-awesome-apps-as-2012-devcup-finalists.php

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

 


"Ed Tech Trends to Watch in 2010," by Converge Staff, Converge Magazine, June 14, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/2010-Ed-Tech-Trends.html
Bob Jensen's education technology threads
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

"Special Education Students Beat the Odds With Technology," by Converge Staff, Converge Magazine, June 16, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Special-Education-Students-Beat-the-Odds-With-Technology.html
Bob Jensen's threads on technology aids for handicapped learners are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped


"iZepto: Timesheets Made Human," by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog, July 5, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/izepto-timesheets-made-human/

For anyone who spent time in public practice, the “timesheet” was both a good thing and a bad thing!  It helped you keep track of what you accomplished (and what you didn’t).  I have often wondered whether maintaining a timesheet would be a useful exercise for a faculty member.

A couple of years ago, I discovered a personal timesheet program called iZepto developed by Shine Technologies, an Australian company.  I started using iZepto to keep track of my time.  iZepto is particularly useful when preparing my annual faculty activitity report.

iZepto is a Web 2.0 hosted software service.  There is nothing to download except reports that you setup and print periodically.  It is easy to tailor to personal needs.  Classify your activities in ways that make sense to you.

iZepto is free for 1 to 3 users.  Great price!  For iPhone users, there is a free iPhone application that you can download from the iPhone App Store.  What could be more useful?

iZepto is a great personal productivity tool.  Take a look.  Give it a try.

Rick Lillie
(CalState, San Bernardino)

Bob Jensen's on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


"Pulse Smartpen by Livescribe," Rick Lillie's Thinking Outside the Box Blog,  May 9, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/pulse-smartpen-by-livescribe/

While attending a recent accounting education conference, I played with Pulse Smartpen by LivescribeThe Pulse Smartpen records and links audio to what you write.  It provides an interesting way to take notes and capture information that can be played back later for review, study, and/or sharing with others.

I was curious about ways the Pulse Smartpen might be used to create course materials and share them with students.  Livescribe’s website includes a variety of illustrative recordings.  Click this link to view a demo lecture entitled “Crossing the Chasm.”  The demo shows how to use the Pulse Smartpen to record and share a lecture that includes drawing a picture or diagram and supporting the drawing with audio.  [NOTE:  In order to make the viewing screen easier to see, you may wish to click the icon in the upper right-corner of the playback screen to enlarge the viewing screen.]

I see how the Pulse Smartpen can capture a drawing and audio explaining the drawing.  This could be particularly useful for creating a walk-through explanation of a problem or process.  Note that you need to draw the picture from scratch as you put together a walk-through explanation.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of the trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Google Voice (via telephone) --- http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html

Video Summary of Google Voice --- http://www.youtube.com/googlevoice

"Google Voice Helps Students Learn Spanish," by Tanya Roscorla, Converge Magazine, March 1, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/Google-Voice-Helps-Students-Learn-Spanish.html

At Holmdel High School in New Jersey, students speak Spanish in front of their class, but they also practice their language skills on the phone.

This year, Spanish 2 teacher Katy Taylor wanted to find a different way to assess their progress in addition to listening to oral presentations in class. So, she asked them to call her Google Voice number and leave a message.

On their own time, the students read something in Spanish or create a dialogue, which could take up to 1 1/2 minute. Google Voice captures the audio and sends her an e-mail with the recording attached. Then she listens to their recordings and e-mails them feedback — and it's all free.

Google Voice, a telecommunications service by Google launched in March 2009, provides a U.S. phone number, chosen by the user from available numbers in selected area codes, free of charge to each user account.

“It was kind of just fun to experiment and see how it works in the classroom," Taylor said, "and the kids respond really well to it.”

Instead of taking up clas time, they dial in to her phone number, and then she can go online that evening to hear what they've done.

Many students are afraid to make mistakes in front of their peers, so when they do receive a recording assignment, they're more apt to take risks because they have some privacy.

“I’m hoping that the end result will be that students are speaking more and getting feedback," Taylor said. "Every time I think it gets a little better.”


March 11, 2010 message from XXXXX

Bob,

I am wondering if you know of any websites where I can gain access to watch camtasia-style (or narrated powerpoints) videos/lectures of upper level accounting instruction?

My Dean asked me to look into creating an asynchronous, distance/hybrid accounting program. I want to get an idea of what is out there. I think the classes I need are:

AIS Cost Intermediate 1 and 2 Tax Auditing Advanced GNP or NFP Any other advanced accounting, like advanced cost.

Thank you,

XXXXX

March 11, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Firstly, I would begin with the asynchronous way basic accounting is taught at BYU almost entirely with variable-speed videos even to resident students living on campus ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo
BYU sells these video CDs to the public at a reasonable price.


Next I would enter a number of search terms into YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/
Examples include:
Accounting Information Systems
Accounting Ethics
Intermediate accounting
Advanced accounting
Governmental accounting
Hedge accounting
Cost Accounting
Managerial Accounting
Fair Value Accounting
Auditing
SAP or ERP
XBRL

 


"Reader Poll: Tech Tool You're Most Excited to Take into the Classroom," by Julie Meloni, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 10, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Reader-Poll-Tech-Tool-Youre/26127/

I'm not sure I've ever said this out loud, but ReadWriteWeb is my absolute favorite blog in all the blogosphere, and has been since they began covering all things technology-related in 2003 or so—it's the emphasis on critical thinking and analysis rather than knee-jerk "first!" responses to news and events that makes me respect them so.

Recently, my most favorite RWW author (Audrey Watters) asked educators for input via Twitter: what's the tech tool you're most excited to take into the classroom with you this fall?. Audrey is collecting responses for use in an upcoming RWW story, so between now and August 15th feel free to help her out.

However, I'm interested in your answers as well. No, I don't aim to write a similar story as Audrey, but I do wonder about the different answers based on the different audiences. Audrey's readership comes from the already highly-technologically-inclined, often found on Twitter. The ProfHacker audience in the CHE is not necessarily so. In fact, I think it is safe to say that the majority of the ProfHacker readership is not on Twitter and is more technology-curious than technology-embedded (or invested).

So, I'd like to hear from you as well. In the comments, please let us know what's the tech tool you're most excited to take into the classroom with you this fall? (anything hardware or software "counts," and I'll even accept analog technologies as valid answers)

Hopefully, given your responses and Audrey's own article from (predominantly) her own audience, there will be some interesting food for thought on the state of technology in higher ed.

Jensen Comment
“Taking into the classroom” is a rather ambiguous phrase that should probably read “taking into the course.” In the latter case, something Camtasia is still on my list of important priorities for things to add to virtually any course whether onsite or online ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

Camtasia --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camtasia
Camtasia can be used by students as well as instructors.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Reader-Poll-Tech-Tool-Youre/26127/


You can search video and start the video when a particular word crops up
YouTube's Interactive Transcripts --- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/youtubes-interactive-transcripts.html

YouTube added a cool feature for videos with closed captions: you can now click on the "transcript" button to expand the entire listing. If you click on a line, YouTube will show the excerpt from the video corresponding to the text. If you use your browser's find feature, you can even search inside the video. Here's an an example of video that includes a transcript.

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm


I have a few accounting theory Camtasia videos at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/
Links to my other online materials (including PowerPoint presentations) are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm

 

My PowerPoint presentations and Excel workbooks are linked at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/Calgary/CD/

I suggest you contact my good friend Amy Dunbar about how she uses Camtasia videos in her online tax courses ---
Amy.Dunbar@business.uconn.edu

In the future U.S. accounting programs will be building in more and more IFRS. Here there’s a heck of a lot of free educational material available ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#IFRSlearning
There are some good cases available, especially from the Big Four.

There is also a lot of free XBRL material, including some good videos --- http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
Click on “Education and Training”

The AICPA has a library of both fee and free videos --- http://www.aicpa.org/
Enter the search term “video”

Other organizations have some deals on videos for courses, including the IIA, Certified Fraud Examiners, etc.

There’s a ton of free material on ethics and fraud.

Pete Wilson provides some great videos on how to make accounting judgments ---
http://www.navigatingaccounting.com/

The OKI --- http://www.okiproject.org/view/html/site/oki
MIT’s Open Courseware Links --- http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
Click on the Sloan School for accounting, finance, and other business open courseware materials
 

MIT’s Video Lecture Browser (better for the sciences than business) --- http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/


"MIT's Management School Shares Teaching Materials (Cases) Online," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, 2009 ---
Click Here

Though some business schools charge for the “case studies” they develop as teaching aids, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced today that it is making a set of teaching materials available free online.

MIT’s Sloan School of Management has unveiled a set of case studies, videos, interactive teaching tools, and teacher’s notes on a new Web site called MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources --- https://mitsloan.mit.edu/MSTIR/IndustryEvolution/Pages/default.aspx

The announcement comes eight years after MIT created its OpenCourseWare project, which makes instructional materials for courses available online for free.

Other open sharing materials provided by prestigious universities can be found at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Oh my Gosh!

I forgot to mention the AAA Commons where there’s now a great deal of available, including syllabi, tutorials, course materials, videos, and textbook recommendations --- http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home

Soon many of the AAA Commons pages will be available to the world in general and not just AAA members. Among other things this makes the resources available to all of your students

Bob Jensen

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education and training alternatives are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm

Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Augmented Reality --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

Time Magazine (January 5, 2018) Just Released Its First Augmented Reality Edition Edited by Bill Gates ---
http://time.com/5084021/optimism-ar/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018010411am&xid=newsletter-brief

Possible Applications in Education ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality#Education


If you can't fight it live with it in a sensible way!
"Integrating Wikipedia in Your Courses: Tips and Tricks," by Adeline Koh, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/integrating-wikipedia-in-courses/59301?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

Bob Jensen's Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


If you can't fight it live with it in a sensible way!
"Integrating Wikipedia in Your Courses: Tips and Tricks," by Adeline Koh, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/integrating-wikipedia-in-courses/59301?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

Bob Jensen's Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


How 3D Printing Will Revolutionize Our World ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-next-industrial-revolution-is-here-3d-printing-2014-8

I like this 3-D Printing Video ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0EJmBoLq-g

How It Works: 3D Printing with Fused Deposition Modeling --- Click Here
http://thejournal.com/whitepapers/2014/07/stratasys-3d-printing-with-fdm-073014.aspx?pc=e844em01&utm_source=webmktg&utm_medium=E-Mail&utm_campaign=e844em01 

3D Printing Videos --- Search YouTube for 3D Printing --- https://www.youtube.com/ 

Education Technology
Bob Jensen's Threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---

http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's Threads on Education Technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


The power in Excel mapping ---
https://www.intheblack.com/articles/2018/02/13/power-excel-mapping

New features have transformed Excel into a business intelligence tool with some surprising and very powerful applications.

An apple grower in New Zealand has a warehouse stocked with different types of apples stored in crates on shelves.

It would be useful for him to know the location not just of the type of apples and where they are in the warehouse, but also how old they are.

With this information, he could better manage his inventory and improve the speed at which the apples could leave the warehouse and more stock could be added.

New features in Excel

One low-cost solution to this, perhaps surprisingly, lies in Microsoft Excel. It’s not found in the tried and tested spreadsheet which most businesses have used for a decade or more, but in one of the newer features which has transformed Excel from a data entry tool to one offering self-serve business intelligence.

The apple warehouse example was one of the business cases which came across the desk of Excel expert Mynda Treacy, who operates the training site My Online Training Hub.

Treacy, who has the status of a “Most Valuable Professional” (MVP) accredited by Microsoft, is in the business of helping her clients solve data and business intelligence issues with Excel.

When the New Zealand apple grower got in touch, she recognised the problem could be addressed with a new feature called 3D Maps, which is now fully integrated in Excel 2016 as part of the Office 365 suite. 

3D Maps was previously called Power Maps and was available under particular licences as part of Excel 2013, but is now simply a tab which can be accessed on the Excel programs downloaded by hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses as part of their Office subscription.

“It was super easy and very intuitive,” says Treacy. “You just drag and drop from a data spreadsheet onto 3D Maps.”

3D in Excel

Data on the grower’s apples was taken from the spreadsheet and dragged onto 3D Maps, which created a three-dimensional representation of the warehouse with apples marked by location, type and age. 

An added benefit was that the representation was in 3D, giving the location of the apples by height, tracking their position on stacked shelves.

Continued in article


How to Create 3-D Popup Books
May 21, 2010 message from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

Fun for the weekend?  I just came across an interesting site that enables creations of short (up to 10 pages currently) pop-up books.  Whether or not this is useful for delivering basic concepts to our students is debatable but is certainly another technique to try.  It also has the added fun of being an augmented reality book, so you can use the website to read your 3-D pop book as if its resting on your hand - neat in a very geeky way, but pedagogically I'm not so sure.

The website is at:  http://alpha.zooburst.com/index.php and is currently in Alpha stage testing, I wrote up a blog article on it replete with pictures, a video and of course an accounting pop-up book:

http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2010/05/21/zooburst-3d-augmented-reality-story-telling/

 Let me know what you think,

Dr. Steven Hornik
University of Central Florida
Dixon School of Accounting
407-823-5739
Second Life: Robins Hermano
Twitter: shornik

http://mydebitcredit.com
yahoo ID: shornik

Jensen Comment
Steve Hornik is a pioneer in the use of Second Life in his accounting courses ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Digital Animators --- http://animators.digitalmedianet.com/


"Replay Telecorder for Skype: Unique way to bring guest speakers to class," by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside of the Box Blog, May 21, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/replay-telecorder-for-skype-unique-way-to-bring-guest-speakers-to-class/

Watch the Video showing how easy it works
I use Skype with all of my classes (i.e., face-2-face, blended, and online).  At the beginning of each term, I ask students to set up a Skype account and add me to their contacts list.   I then add them to my Skype contacts list.  Using Skype changes the nature of how I connect with students.  We audio and video conference.  Skype messaging archives all messages received and sent throughout a course.  I subscribe to Skype Voicemail which allows me to send voicemail message to students.  Likewise, students can send me a voicemail message.  Skype recently added a new screen sharing featuring, which works great for one-on-one tutoring sessions.  All of these Skype features (and more) changes the nature of instructor-student interaction.

Now, Applian Technologies has created a software tool that takes Skype to a whole new level.  Replay Telecorder for Skype makes it possible to record Skype audio and video calls.  This provides a unique way to bring “guest speakers” to the teaching-learning experience, especially to the blended and online learning environment.  Click the picture below to view a short You Tube recording that demonstrates how to record a Skype call that displays in a side-by-side format.  The presentation is a little silly, but illustrates what you can do with the program.

Continued in article


From the Scout Report on March 12, 2010

WinUtilities Free Edition 9.44 --- http://www.ylcomputing.com/content/view/327/135/ 

Installing and uninstalling various programs can leave behind annoying detritus on a computer, and WinUtilities can help out with this predicament. The application brings together a number of tools designed to free up disk space and improve overall system performance. The application includes a "One-Click Maintenance" feature, and visitors can also use the application to shred files, locate duplicate files, and schedule various maintenance tasks. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2003 and newer.


Courseware 1.1.2 ---  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/scholarpress-courseware/ 

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University is always working on new projects, and their Courseware plug-in for Word Press is worth a look. Visitors can use this latest version of Courseware to publish class schedules, assignments, and bibliographies. Courseware is primarily intended for use by the higher education community, but it could easily be used in high school classrooms or other collaborative environments. This version is compatible with all operating systems, including Linux.


February 23, 2010 message from Ramsey, Donald [dramsey@UDC.EDU]

JAXWORKS.COM FREE EXCEL TEMPLATES

INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACCESSING AND RUNNING

This may vary a bit depending on what version of Excel you have.

You will need to enable macros in your Excel software.

1.  Click on the Office button

2.  Click on Excel Options at the bottom of the screen

3.  Click on Add-ins

4.  Manage:  Excel Add-ins (should be in view);   GO

5.  Check Analysis Tool Pak; Check Analysis Tool Pak VBA

6.  You might want to also check Solver in case you need it some day

7.  Click OK

====================================

8.  Go to www.Jaxworks.com

9.  On the menu, pick DOWNLOADS.

10.  Scroll down to NeoCalc™ Comprehensive Break-Even Analysis

11.  Click on Download

12.  Choose Save if you wish.

13.  You might also want to try their Dynamic Charting download (just above the Neo-Calc).

Best,
Don


Socratic Method According to Hoyle (proudly one of our best and open sharing accounting teachers)

"An Epiphany," by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Financial Accounting Blog, February 10, 2010 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2010/02/epiphany.html

By now, everyone who reads this blog probably understands that I teach by means of the Socratic Method. I give a list of 3-8 questions one day which serve as “conversation starters” for the next class. In addition, our brand new Financial Accounting textbook (published by FlatWorldKnowledge) is written entirely in a Socratic Method fashion. A question is posed followed by an answer followed by the next logical question and so on.

When this process works perfectly, it is because of the questions. You must ask the proper question in order to create an environment for discovery. How do you develop those questions? Don’t the questions have to be something more than “when did Columbus discover America?” or “who won the Civil War?”

I had never thought much about the creation of questions until a few years ago. Then, I had an epiphany. I was reading the wonderful book “What the Best College Teachers Do” by Dr. Ken Bain. Dr. Bain and his team selected a group of outstanding college teachers from around the country and shadowed them for a period of time to discover their secrets. I was reading along and came to page 40 where I found this marvelous passage: “One professor explained it this way: ‘It’s sort of Socratic . . . You begin with a puzzle—you get somebody puzzled, and tied in knots, and mixed up.’ Those puzzles and knots generate questions for students, he went on to say, and then you begin to help them untie the knots.”

You get somebody puzzled, and tied in knots, and those puzzles and knots generate questions for students and then you begin to help them untie the knots.

I cannot think of a better description of what I think a teacher should strive to do. Puzzle students, tie their thinking into knots, and then help them untie the knots.

College teachers often view themselves as conveyors of knowledge/information. If that is the case, then a pure lecture works fine. You convey knowledge; students try to catch it as it flies by. However, if you want understanding, curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm, you have to go beyond that. And, I think the “secret” to working on a higher level is in the idea of puzzling the students, tying their thinking into knots, and then helping them to solve those puzzles.

Let me give you an example. Next week, in my Financial Accounting class, I will start talking about accounts receivable. As far as I can tell, most accounting teachers tell their students to read the chapter and assign one or more problems to work. The students then search (often desperately) through the chapter for a reasonable facsimile and try to duplicate that process to solve the homework assignment. In class, the problem is worked and the students make corrections. How do you rate the learning that occurs? Is it much different than learning to change the oil in your car? Ask yourself: does that process generate understanding, curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm?

Here’s how I might go about starting a discussion about reporting accounts receivable. (My quick answers are included in parenthesis. I obviously don’t give the answers to the students.)

1 – Your company sells 1,000 toasters near the end of December 2009, for $60 each. All $60,000 of these sales are made on account and collection will be in three or four months. A balance sheet is produced on December 31, 2009. What do outside decision makes really want to know about those accounts receivable? (The amount of cash the company will collect.) 2 – What is the problem with what the decision makers want to know in the above question? (Uncertainty—the accountant can only guess at the amount of cash that will be collected.) 3 – Accountants are known for being obsessively accurate. Will the reported number be accurate? (It is only an estimate; no one expects an estimate to be accurate. Things like exactness fly out the window when you start making guesses.) 4 – If the number is not accurate, what is it? (A fair representation according to US GAAP. In other words, the reporting follows the rules.) 5 – If there are $60,000 in accounts receivable, how can you report any other number on the balance sheet? Doesn’t it have to be $60,000? (The company sets up an allowance account to reduce the asset by the amount that is anticipated as being uncollectible.) 6 – Assume you know that $2,000 of the $60,000 will prove to be uncollectible in 2010. Two customers will die, leave town, go bankrupt, or the like. That is an expense for the company. Should the $2,000 expense be recognized in 2009 or 2010? (In 2009. Expenses are recognized according to the matching principle. Revenues from the sale of toasters are recognized in 2009 so any related expenses [such as the bad debts] must also be recognized in 2009.

Okay, I could go on and on but you probably get the idea. Here is my challenge to you on a very cold and snowy Wednesday: are you puzzling your students enough and tying their thinking into knots? Are you helping them solve those puzzles and untie those knots? If not, you might want to consider that strategy as a way to increase their understanding, curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm.

Students warn not to take Joe Hoyle's accounting classes "for fun"
RateMyProfessor --- http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=380444

Student 1
I am confident that taking this class is the most valuable academic experience I will ever have. By far the best professor at Richmond. Go see him after class, become his friend. Try not to get frustrated, you may study 15 hours for a test and get a C. Attendance policy: If you don't go, you're screwed.
 
Student 2
As everyone has said, Great Professor and forces you to learn the material. I worked by far the hardest for this guy but also learned the most. He loves to send out emails about life lessons but some are interesting. Be ready for LOTS of work but lots of learning too.
 
Student 3
Professor Hoyle is indeed the best professor in the business school. His tests are challenging but very fair. If you have any interest in accounting or business in general, then you must take this class. The curve is extremely helpful so making an A is reasonable while getting below a C is almost impossible.
 
Student 4
Attendance is not mandatory, but this class is one that will kill you if you don't come to it. It is an extremely difficult course, but interesting and worth the time. Hoyle is one of those profs you either love or hate, and is also one of those profs that you will remember your entire life.

Joe's free basic accounting textbook (updated)
 

  • Free accounting textbook from a generous accounting professor ---
    http://www.ibtimes.com/prnews/20081218/ny-flat-world-knowldg.htm
    Also see http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/Joe-Hoyle-Podcast 

    --Each chapter opens with a video to explain the importance of the material and get the student interested in reading the chapter before they even start.

    --The material (all 17 chapters) is written in a question and answer (Socratic) format to engage and guide the students through each area.   The subjects are broken down into a manageable and logical size.  Faculty often complain that students do not read the textbooks.  I think this format can change that trend.

    --Embedded multiple-choice questions are included on virtually every page to provide immediate feedback for the students.  CJ and I wrote the multiple choice questions ourselves as we wrote the manuscript to ensure that they would tie together logically.

    --Each chapter ends with a review video where we challenge the students to pick the five most important areas from the chapter.  I firmly believe that students need to learn to evaluate what they are reading.  We then provide our own “Top Five” list so that they can see where we agree and where we disagree.

    Yes, professors do get hard copy versions.

    Joe is also behind the free CPA Review course that was once commercial but then became a freebie to the world.
    Free CPA Review Course
    --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/  


  • Gadgets For People Who Roam the Hard Copy Stacks Rather Than Google

    These gadgets might also be useful for detail tests on audits

    "Pint-Size Peripherals Scan or Print at a Price," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2010 ---
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704820904575055321581158304.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_RIGHTTopCarousel

    It's often said that less is more. If only this were true for computer devices like printers and scanners, which take up a lot of desktop real estate. The reality is that small, stylish, portable versions of these gadgets are often pricey and not as functional.

    This week, I reviewed two products that unfortunately live up to that reality: a portable printer and mini scanner that put a premium on good looks at $300 each. I've been using Fujitsu's newest $295 mini scanner, the ScanSnap S1300 (fujitsu.com), and PlanOn System Solutions Inc.'s tiny $300 PrintStik PS905ME (http://3.ly/6QVS). There are several good printers, scanners or all-in-ones that cost significantly less or offer more functionality than these devices.

    But boy, do these gadgets look good. The Fujitsu ScanSnap collapses down to a small, rectangular box with mirrored buttons. The PlanOn PrintStik resembles a box of aluminum foil in the kitchen drawer—except more compact.

    Both devices are small and lightweight enough to fit in a bag or briefcase, if necessary. Either one of these could be ported around without a problem: The PrintStik weighs 1.5 pounds and the ScanSnap weighs twice as much at 3.08 pounds. Both fit well in a tiny work space or on the desktops of people like me, who don't print or scan much and don't want a device taking up a lot of space.

    As is usually the case with smaller devices that lack display screens and extra buttons, one hopes they come with straightforward software or simply plug in and play. The Fujitsu ScanSnap meets that requirement with software that installs on Macs or PCs and can be used without reading complicated instructions.

    The PlanOn PrintStik uses thermal printing to produce images and characters on scrolls of paper. The PlanOn PrintStik worked adequately as a basic black-and-white printer for Windows PCs (it isn't Mac compatible), but fell short as a wireless printer for smart phones. The PrintStik is meant to receive and print documents sent to it via Bluetooth from BlackBerrys, but I found the BlackBerry program to be clumsy and in the end, it didn't even work despite at least two dozen attempts. PlanOn's tech support said they thought my PrintStik's Bluetooth could be faulty, but couldn't send me a new device in time for this column.

    These two devices offer some interesting design elements. The PlanOn PrintStik PS905ME uses thermal printing—an old technology that has been around for decades—rather than ink cartridges, to produce images and characters by applying heat at tiny points.

    The PrintStik's thermal printing only works with special scrolls of thin, slippery paper. It comes in packs of six rolls for $23; one roll is about 23 feet long and prints roughly 30 sheets of letter-size paper. You can opt to print only as much as a document requires to save paper. But a long document prints out in one continuous scroll rather than separate pages.

    The PrintStik has a rechargeable battery that lasts long enough to print about 30 pages; a wall charger is also included. It can churn out up to three pages per minute. I can imagine tossing this printer into my suitcase for business trips; it would also come in handy for printing boarding passes for use at the airport, among other things.

    Documents that are supposed to be printable from the BlackBerry with a remote-printing app include Web pages, attachments including PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, JPEGs, and PowerPoint presentations. PlanOn representatives say an app will be available for Apple's iPhone and Google's Android phones in about four or five months; they also are working on an iPad application. Though the PrintStik's remote-printing app for the BlackBerry is currently free, the company intends to begin charging $30 annually for its remote-printing service this summer.

    Fujitsu's ScanSnap S1300 can suck in 10 pages at once, and has two cameras that can scan the front and back of printouts. This process can scan as many as eight dual-sided pages a minute. Item sizes range from 2x2-inch cards to legal documents.

    The ScanSnap comes with a wall charger but also runs without being plugged into the wall: It uses a USB cord for charging from a PC in addition to the USB cord that transfers data between the scanner and computer.

    Seconds after I scanned documents into the ScanSnap, colorful icons appeared on my computer screen. Choosing one of these icons let me send the documents to one of the following: email, Word, a printer, Excel, iPhoto or Cardiris—a program that exports contact information from scanned business cards into Address Book or Entourage; CardMinder on Windows exports contact information to Outlook and other programs.

    If you want to scan old or precious documents, you may not like using the ScanSnap's sucking method for scanning, in case a page gets stuck or damaged. For sensitive objects or page scanning, the best bet is to use a flatbed scanner or all-in-one (that prints, scans, and faxes) with a lift-up lid that scans items on a flat surface.

    Though the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 and PlanOn PrintStik PS905ME aren't the least expensive or the most functional devices of their kind, they're easy to move around and take up minimal amounts of space. For some people, that may be well worth the higher cost.

    —Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

     

    Getting Started with the Marrakesh Treaty - a Guide for Librarians
    https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/71175

    The Marrakesh Treaty entered into force in September 2016, faster than any other international copyright text in the last 40 years. It promises to remove some of the key barriers to access to information by people with print disabilities.

    Yet the Treaty will only be effective, where it has been incorporated into national law, when libraries and others are using it. Not all librarians feel confident in dealing with copyright law, potentially leaving users without the access they need.

    This guide, edited by Victoria Owen, and with the welcome support of the World Blind Union, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, Electronic Information for Libraries, and the Unviersity of Toronto, offers answers to frequently asked questions. It can also be adapted by national actors to their own laws - IFLA encourages this, in order to get the largest possible number of libraries involved. 

    Continued in article

    eSight is a wearable medical device designed to improve the functional vision of those living with low vision or legal blindness.---
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESight
    Also see
    https://www.esighteyewear.com/next-steps?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI07LEprnf1wIVDgFpCh3Y_A7BEAEYASAAEgIGI_D_BwE

    Audio Reading Service Podcast (for visually impaired learners) ---
    http://audioreadingservicepodcast.com/

    Question
    What hand-held device can photograph close up and read aloud from books, price labels, receipts, and newspapers?

    Hint:
    This device has far more uses beyond being a helper for sight impaired people.
    For one thing, auditors might make use of this when detail testing.


    Speech-to-Text
    Microsoft adds transcription feature (multiple speakers' voices to text) to MS Word ---

    https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-microsoft-transcription-feature-word.html

    Text-to-Speech
    How to Use Text-To-Speech on Discord ---
    https://www.howtogeek.com/687997/how-to-use-text-to-speech-on-discord/


    Intel Reader --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Reader

    The Intel Reader, powered by an Atom processor, is a handheld device with a five-­megapixel camera that can read aloud any printed text it is pointed at, including product labels, receipts, and pages from books and newspapers. Previously, visually impaired or dyslexic people required a desktop scanner connected to a computer to convert print into speech.
    "Scan and Listen," MIT's Technology Review, December 17, 2009 ---
    http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/24198/?a=f
    Also see
    https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2009/20091110corp.htm

    New Helpers for Sight Impaired and Even Totally Blind Readers

    "Software Captions Complex Images," by Tom Simonite, MIT's Technology Review, November 18, 2014 --- Click Here
    http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532666/googles-brain-inspired-software-captions-complex-images/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20141119

    . . .

    The new software is the latest product of Google’s research into using large collections of simulated neurons to process data (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013: Deep Learning”). No one at Google programmed the new software with rules for how to interpret scenes. Instead, its networks “learned” by consuming data. Though it’s just a research project for now, Vinyals says, he and others at Google have already begun to think about how it could be used to enhance image search or help the visually impaired navigate online or in the real world.

    Google’s researchers created the software through a kind of digital brain surgery, plugging together two neural networks developed separately for different tasks. One network had been trained to process images into a mathematical representation of their contents, in preparation for identifying objects. The other had been trained to generate full English sentences as part of automated translation software.

    When the networks are combined, the first can “look” at an image and then feed the mathematical description of what it “sees” into the second, which uses that information to generate a human-readable sentence. The combined network was trained to generate more accurate descriptions by showing it tens of thousands of images with descriptions written by humans. “We’re seeing through language what it thought the image was,” says Vinyals.

    After that training process, the software was set loose on several large data sets of images from Flickr and other sources and asked to describe them. The accuracy of its descriptions was then judged with an automated test used to benchmark computer-vision software. Google’s software posted scores in the 60s on a 100-point scale. Humans doing the test typically score in 70s, says Vinyals.

    That result suggests Google is far ahead of other researchers working to create scene-describing software. Stanford researchers recently published details of their own system and reported that it scored between 40 and 50 on the same standard test.

    However, Vinyals notes that researchers at Google and elsewhere are still in the early stages of understanding how to create and test this kind of software. When Google asked humans to rate its software’s descriptions of images on a scale of 1 to 4, it averaged only 2.5, suggesting that it still has a long way to go.

    Vinyals predicts that research on understanding and describing scenes will now intensify. One problem that could slow things down: though large databases of hand-labeled images have been created to train software to recognize individual objects, there are fewer labeled photos of more natural scenes.

    Microsoft this year launched a database called COCO to try to fix that. Google used COCO in its new research, but it is still relatively small. “I hope other parties will chip in and make it better,” says Vinyals. 

     

    Jensen Comment
    It's a bit like captions for the hearing impaired in television shows only this time the captions are for the blind regarding images in computer screens.

    Of course authors could probably do a better job by merely describing aloud the images they insert in there text. Some publishers now have audio versions of their textbooks. But do they also describe each image in the page?

    Intel developed software for reading hard copy text aloud, but the software cannot describe images.

     

    For Dyslexics, A Font And A Dictionary That Are Meant To Help ---
    http://lisnews.org/for_dyslexics_a_font_and_a_dictionary_that_are_meant_to_help


    Education Technology Award Winners

    "Teaching Toolbox: 57 Ways to Upgrade Education," by Tanya Roscorla, Converge Magazine, January 4, 2010 ---
    http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/The-2009-Edublog-Awards.html?elq=4768d02be55741bb9e3e0bc860e41996

    This year, spruce up your teaching toolbox with some of the top education blogs, tweets, wikis and more, as voted on by educators in the Edublog Awards.

    On these sites, you'll be able to connect with other educators, see what's going on in classrooms around the world and find out what technology tools you can use in your classroom.

     

    Best individual blog

    1. Winner: Free Technology for Teachers
      Google certified teacher Richard Byrne reviews free technology resources and shows educators how they can integrate those resources into their teaching. He also won the best resource sharing blog award.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch
      Technology administrator Kathy Schrock covers ed tech tools, techniques and tricks of the trade.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: Larry Ferlazzo's Websites Of The Day For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL
      Larry Ferlazzo teaches English Language Learners and native English speakers in Sacramento, Calif.. He provides links to sites that help educators teach English to non-native speakers. He also won best resource sharing blog award.

     

    Best individual tweeter

    1. Winner: web20classroom
      From Winston-Salem, N.C., technology educator Steven W. Anderson interacts with other educators by sharing links to online resources and participating in conversations about real issues in education.
       
    2. First Runner Up: russeltarr
      Russel Tarr teaches history in Toulouse, France.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: courosa
      Alec Couros teaches educational technology and media in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

     

    Best group blog

    1. Winner: MacMillian Dictionary Blog
      As the English language constantly changes, five authors take the pulse of the living language and share how it is used around the world.
       
    2. First Runner Up: I.N.K.: Interesting Nonfiction for Kids
      Authors and illustrators give readers a behind-the-scenes look at how they research, write and integrate art into their books. 
       
    3. Second Runner Up: SCC English
      The English Department of St. Columba's College in Whitechurch, Dublin 16, Ireland posts news, poems, drama, essays, podcasts, book recommendations and more. 

     

    Best new blog

    1. Winner: Kirsten Winkler
      Kirsten Winkler started blogging about online education in January and takes readers on a quest to find better education.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Look At My Happy Rainbow
      A male kindergarten teacher shares stories from his classroom in Maine. As for the blog title, one of his students shouted, "Look at my happy rainbow!" one day after he drew a rainbow with four or five crayons in one hand.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: Teach Paperless
      Shelly Blake-Plock shows educators how to teach with interactive technology and provide real-world learning opportunities for their students.

     

    Best class blog

    1. Winner: Billings Middle School Tech Class Blog
      From Seattle, Technology Integration Coordinator Jac de Haan shines a spotlight on students' adventures with digital tools and discussions about the social, political, environmental and moral impacts of technology.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog
      Third graders from Linda Yollis' class learn and share what they're learning on their blog.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: English With Rosa
      Rosa Fernández Sánchez helps her students from Coruńa, Galicia, Spain, practice English.

     

    Best student blog

    1. Winner: Civil War Sallie
      A Boyd's Bear named Sallie Ann travels to classrooms, museums and battlefields to learn about the United States Civil War, and then shares what she learns on her blog. The person who created Sallie Ann is a student from St. Patrick School in Carlisle, Pa.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Universo
      Eighteen-year-old Néstor Aluna Maceda Pacheco writes about botany from Rio Blanco, Veracruz, México.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: Moo
      A college student majoring in photography shares photos and commentary. She also happens to be the daughter of The Scholastic Scribe, which earned first runner up in the best teacher blog category.

     

    Best resource sharing blog

    1. Winner: Free Technology for Teachers
      Voted the best resource sharing blog for the second straight year. Google certified teacher Richard Byrne reviews free technology resources and shows educators how they can integrate those resources into their teaching. He also won the best individual blog award.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day
      Larry Ferlazzo teaches English Language Learners and native English speakers in Sacramento, Calif.. He provides links to sites that help educators teach English to non-native speakers.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day
      Social learning consultant Jane Hart features an ed tech tool each day.

     

    Most influential blog post

    1. Winner: "Heads in the Cloud" from Anseo.net
      This post shows how one school uses cloud computing through Google Apps as a communication tool for the staff and board of management.
       
    2. Joint First Runners Up:
      "This, This, That" from Dear Kaia and Skyelar
      Three-year-old Kaia explored the desert near her home in Qatar, took photos of what she saw and created a photo essay that she posted on her blog. She wrote the post with her dad, teacher Jabiz Raisdana, who then sent it out to his Twitter network. 

      The link made its way into the Twitter stream of technology teacher William Chamberlain, who asked the eighth grade students in his class to comment on the blog post.

      The story doesn't end there. The eigth-graders had some questions about Kaia and her dad's life in Doha, Qatar, so Raisdana skyped into their class. The students also created video comments that they sent to Kaia (read the complete story on Raisdana's blog).

      On top of that, professor John Strange from the University of South Alabama saw the post and passed it on to the students in his educational media class. They commented on Kaia's photo essay as well and wrote more than 50 blog posts in response to the photo essay (read this part of the story in Raisdana's words).


      "Tech addiction 'harms learning' ... really??? $24.99 and I am no wiser" from Wishful Thinking in Medical Education
      After seeing tweets about a BBC News Education story in her Twitter stream, general practitioner and clinical lecturer Ann Marie Cunningham checked out the research that prompted the above headline.

      She had to pay to find out what was in the report "Techno Addicts: Young Person Addiction to Technology, and what she found was 'poor research.' She gives her analysis in this blog post.
       

    Jensen Comment
    My threads on educator use of Twitter are at  
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

    Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet-based discussion

    1. Winner: #edchat
       Through Twitter, educators discuss real education issues on Tuesdays at noon EST and 7 p.m. EST using the hashtag "edchat."
       
    2. First Runner Up: Blogworthy Tweets
      English teacher Claudia Ceraso from Buenos Aires, Argentina, publishes some of her tweets on the blog ELT notes.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: #teachertuesday
      Every Tuesday on Twitter, educators and others recommend teachers to follow through the hashtag #teachertuesday.

     

    Best teacher blog

    1. Winner: Two Writing Teachers
      Ruth Ayres and Stacey Shubitz share their tools, ideas and experiences with educators who teach kids how to write.
       
    2. First Runner Up: The Scholastic Scribe
      A high school journalism teacher writes about life inside and outside of her District of Columbia classroom. She is the mother of the college student behind Moo, who earned first runner up in the best student blog category.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: Cool Cat Teacher
      Vicki A. Davis from Camilla, Georgia, shares her experiences with technology as well as how students are collaborating globally through activities including the Flat Classroom Project

     

    Best librarian / library blog

    1. Winner: Never Ending Search
      Joyce Valenza writes about technology, research, search engines and more from Springfield Township High School in Oreland, Pa. Check out the school's cool virtual library.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Bright Ideas
      The School Library Association of Victoria run this blog, where school library staff can share how they use the latest research tools in their libraries.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: Library Media Tech Musings
      Gwyneth A. Jones passes on education links and resources, among other things, with a sprinkle of snark, as she puts it.

     

    Best educational tech support blog

    1. Winner: iLearn Technology
      Technology teacher Kelly Tenkely wants to help teachers "fall in love with technology the way that their students have," and she does that by giving them ideas for how to integrate new technology into their classrooms.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Langwitches
      This blog follows Silvia Tolisano as she discovers the magic of learning on her journey as a technology integration facilitator.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: Life Feast
      Ana Maria Menezes shares what she's learning about using Internet tools to enhance her classes and change up the daily routine for her EFL students in Brazil.

     

    Best elearning / corporate education blog

    1. Winner: MPB Reflections — 21st Century Teaching and Learning
      From Teaching Without Walls, co-owner and educational consultant Michelle Pacansky-Brock posts her thoughts about changes in higher education, with an emphasis on online learning.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Angela Maiers
      After a 20-year career in education, Angela Maiers became an independent consultant who focuses on literacy education, and through her blog, she encourages teachers to be great learners.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: e-learning, conocimiento en red y web colectiva
      This blog covers e-learning, network knowledge and the collective Web.

     

    Best educational use of audio

    1. Winner: Xyleme Voices Podcasts
      A podcast library on the evolution of training, featuring interviews with top industry analysts, consultants and practitioners in the field of learning.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Musical Blogies
      Ignacio Valdés posts audio and video of his students, who play music from a secondary education institution in the Spanish principality of Asturia.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: My Audio School
      Children can download more than 150 classic books and listen to more than 200 radio and television broadcasts on My Audio School. While this Web site was originally designed to help dyslexic students, it can be used for any students.

     

    Best educational use of video / visual

    1. Winner: Bitácora de Aníbal de la Torre
      Aníbal de la Torre compiles short educational videos on his blog from Palma del Rio, Cordoba, Spain.
       
    2. First Runner Up: The Longfellow Ten
      Middle school students create and share stop-motion films that depict academic terms and concepts. They're definitely not boring.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: Inanimate Alice
      Through text, sound, images and games, writer Kate Pullinger and digital artist Chris Joseph tell the story of a girl named Alice and her imaginary digital friend, Brad. Pullinger teaches creative writing and new media for De Montfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom.

     

    Best educational wiki

    1. Winner: Greetings From The World
      Teachers and students tell others about their countries by sharing glogs on this wiki.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Soar 2 New Heights
      A fourth-grade class shares books and themes that they enjoy.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: HUMS3001: Censorship and Responsibility
      From the University of South Wales, the students in Ben Miller's class on censorship and responsibility work together to build the pages in this wikispace.

     

    Best educational use of a social networking service

    1. Winner: English Companion Ning
      English teachers help each other on this network, which high school English teacher and author Jim Burke created.
       
    2. First Runner Up: EFL Classroom 2.0
      This Ning provides a space for English language teachers and students to ask questions, share answers and find resources to help them learn. 
       
    3. Second Runner Up: RSC Access and Inclusion Ning
      The Regional Support Centre for North and East Scotland allows educators to discuss, share and join with other colleagues as they work with learners who need additional support in higher education.

    Jensen Comment
    My threads on educator social networking are at 
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

    Best educational use of a virtual world

    1. Winner: Virtual Graduation at the University of Edinburgh
      While some education students graduated at McEwan Hall in November, other students graduated online in Second Life. Those students completed their Master of Science in E-learning, which is a distance learning program.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Virtual Round Table Conference
      This Ning is dedicated to a virtual conference on language learning with technology that LANCELOT School coordinated.
       
    3. Joint Second Runners Up:
      ISTE's Second Life Island
      Second Life Education New Zealand

    Jensen Comment
    My threads on Second Looks and virtual learning are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

    Lifetime achievement

    1. Winner: Karl Fisch
      Karl Fisch has been teaching for 21 years and is currently director of technology at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo. He was previously a middle and high school math teacher.
       
    2. First Runner Up: Will Richardson
      Will Richardson is the "learner in chief" at Connective Learning and author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.
       
    3. Second Runner Up: Larry Ferlazzo
      Larry Ferlazzo teaches English Language Learners and native English speakers in Sacramento, Calif. On his blog, he provides links to sites that help educators teach English to non-native speakers.

     

    For more ways to learn online, check out these resources:

    Bob Jensen's threads on educator blogs, social networks, and tweets are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    Cloud Computing --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

    "How Cloud Computing Can Transform Business," by Bernard Golden, Harvard Business Review Blog, June 4, 2010 ---
    http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/06/business_agility_how_cloud_com.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE

    You're in a meeting. You and your team identify a great new business opportunity. If you can launch in 60 days, a rich new market segment will be open for your product or service. The action plan is developed. Everything's a go.

    And then you come down to earth. You need new computer equipment, which takes weeks, or months, to install. You also need new software, which adds more weeks or months. There's no way to meet the timeframe required by the market opening. You are stymied by your organization's lack of IT agility.

    Or, you could have the experience the New York Times had when it needed to convert a large number of digital files to a format suitable to serve up over the web. After the inevitable "it will take a lot of time and money to do this project," one of their engineers went to the Amazon Web Services cloud, created 20 compute instances (essentially, virtual servers), uploaded the files, and converted them all over the course of one weekend.

    Total cost? $240.
    This example provides a sense of why cloud computing is transforming the face of IT, with the potential to deliver real business value. The rapid availability of compute resources in a cloud computing environment enables business agility — the dexterity for businesses to quickly respond to changing business conditions with IT-enabled offerings.

    Notwithstanding the fact that IT seems to always have the latest, greatest thing on its mind, cloud computing has the entire IT industry excited, with companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and others investing billions of dollars in this new form of computing. And in terms of IT users, Gartner recently named cloud computing as the second most important technology focus area for 2010.

    But what is cloud computing exactly? Why is it different than what went before? And why should you care? While there are many definitions of cloud computing, I look to the definition of cloud computing from the National Institute of Standards and Testing (NIST), part of the US Department of Commerce. In its cloud computing definition, NIST identifies five characteristics of cloud computing, which include:

    To offer a concrete example of how cloud computing agility enables organizations to respond to business opportunity, let me share the experience of one of our clients, the Silicon Valley Education Foundation. Its Lessonopoly application allows 13,000 teachers throughout Silicon Valley to collaborate on lesson plans. NBC approached SVEF just before this year's Winter Olympics with science-focused lesson plans centered around the science behind the experience of Olympic athletes (e.g., the loads placed on a skier's legs as she swerves around a slalom gate).

    One concern SVEF had was whether or not Lessonopoly could handle the likely application load increase. There were only a few days before the start of the Olympics, which would initiate heavy use of these lesson plans. The group had migrated the application to Amazon Web Services a few months earlier, and they were able to quickly shut down the small machine Lessonopoly was running on and bring it back up on a larger instance with three times the computing capacity of the original.

    It's a cliché to say that business is changing at an ever-increasing pace, but one of the facts about clichés is they often contain truth. The deliberate pace of traditional IT is just not suited for today's hectic business environment. Cloud computing's agility is a much better match for constantly mutating business conditions. To evaluate whether your business opportunities could be well-served by leveraging the agility of cloud computing, download the HyperStratus Cloud Computing Agility Checklist, which outlines ten conditions that indicate a business case for taking advantage of the agility of cloud computing.

    Bernard Golden is CEO of HyperStratus, a Silicon Valley-based cloud computing consultancy that works with clients in the US and throughout the world. Contact him at bernard.golden@hyperstratus.com

    Winner: "Heads in the Cloud" from Anseo.net
    This post shows how one school uses cloud computing through Google Apps as a communication tool for the staff and board of management.


    "Thinking About Teaching," by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Financial Accounting Blog, February 28, 2010 ---
    http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2010/02/thinking-about-teaching.html

    You may have seen the video below (it is four minutes long). It had a lot of impact on me when I was creating our new Financial Accounting textbook. The video was apparently created by the students you see and really made me think about the state of education today. As far as I am concerned, education is expensive and, too often, both boring and inefficient. I wanted to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. As a result, I helped design and create this new type of Financial Accounting textbook.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
    **

    As I have mentioned previously, a few years ago I wrote a free on-line teaching tips book (https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~jhoyle/). I was lucky, a few people read it and told other people and then I got a very nice review in the Chronicle of Higher Education. As a result, I started getting emails from around the world about teaching. That was wonderful.

    One day I received an email from a professor in London who said something like: “you don’t know me but I have read your teaching tips book and have a quote that I think you are going to love.” And, he was absolutely correct—this is one of my two or three favorite quotes about teaching. Whenever I give a teaching presentation, I always use this quote to explain what I believe is the true secret for becoming a better teacher. It is the best piece of advice that I can give any teacher who wants to improve.

    "Teaching does not come from years of doing it. It actually comes from thinking about it."

    I get pretty decent teaching evaluations from my students and I have won a few awards. Whenever anyone asks me how I managed to do that, I always say: “I think about this stuff a lot. Whether it is 6:00 a.m. when I wake up or 10:30 p.m. when I go to bed, teaching and my students and how to help them learn is always floating around in my head.”

    So, today, I decided to tell you about what has been floating around in my head recently.

    It seems to me that college education in my lifetime has focused on the conveyance of information. One content expert (the teacher) conveys information to a group of individuals who want (or are required) to gain a bit of that expertise. Despite what we might say, that process has not changed too radically in the last four decades since I was a college student.

    However, with the Internet, Google, Bing and the like, information is readily available to most individuals at any time. It is hard to find a factual question that you cannot answer in less than one minute using a search engine. What then is the future purpose of a college education (other than the acquisition of a very expensive diploma)? If there is no longer a huge need for the conveyance of information from one generation to the next because it is so readily available, what are we doing? Don’t we need to know that before we even start the first class?

    Do we who teach in college think about that question enough or just try to ignore it as best we can?

    When I give teaching presentations, we work on developing “fly-on-the-wall” philosophies. What the heck is that? I ask the members of the audience to picture the course that is their favorite to teach. Then think of the final day of the semester when the students file out of the room for the last time. I ask each of the teachers to pretend they are a fly on the wall right above the door. If you were that fly on the wall, what would you want to hear from your students as they exited for the final time?

    --The teacher sure conveyed a lot of information??
    --I certainly took some great notes this semester??
    --I memorized a lot of material so I could pass a test??

    From my experience, a lot of teachers teach as if that is their goal. But, surely that cannot be the reason we became teachers. In 2010, doesn’t it have to be something more than that? And, if the answer is Yes, then what is the purpose of a college course?

    I can tell you my own personal fly-on-the-wall philosophy but I am not sure that I am not ready for some change in it. So, if you have suggestions, let me know.

    Here is my mine. On the last day of class, I would love to hear by students say:

    “I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”

    What is yours?


    Continued in article


    "How to Teach with Tech Tools," by Tanya Roscoria, Converge Magazine, February 9, 2010 ---
    http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/82633067.html

    In Western Civilization class at The John Carroll School, freshmen grab plastic chairs from a stack against the wall, gather around the room in different areas and jump online with their tablet PCs.

    Using a class hashtag, they respond to questions that teacher Shelly Blake-Plock posts on Twitter. He projects their discussions on the classroom wall so that everyone can easily track what's going on.

    Then, instead of pulling out textbooks to study ancient Rome, the students check out primary sources online such as BBC's interactive history section or the Metropolitan Museum of Art timelines that integrate text and artwork. As jazz music plays in the background, they pull up a document and use Diigo to annotate the text as well as share annotations.

    They'll keep scouring the web for sites on ancient Rome and share the links they find on Twitter, then pick the best ones to post on their class wiki. Afterward, students look for correlations between the history they're studying and current events that media sources post on Twitter.

    At the end of the 45-minute class, Blake-Plock throws out another question on Twitter that the students use as a guide to write a post on their personal blogs that night. The next day, they read and comment on their classmates' blogs and start the process all over again.

    These students are learning through technology and directing their own learning in the process. Here's how educators around the country are empowering their students to do the same.

    Focus on education At Charlotte Country Day School in North Carolina, Technology Integration Specialist Tim Moxley works with teachers to incorporate smartboards, document cameras and netbook computers into their lessons. To successfully blend tech tools into their instruction, teachers need to have a combination of technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK), which is a model that Punya Mishra and Matthew J. Koehler of Michigan State University researched.

    Educators took on the job of providing a quality education, and a piece of that quality education is teaching kids how to use and become comfortable with tech tools.

    "When you work in education, the end goal is what’s best for the student," Moxley said. "If using a piece of technology is gonna improve the student outcome in some way, then it’s worth it.”

    Students are turned on 24 hours a day, whether they're surfing the web, watching TV or playing the Nintendo Wii, said Technology Integration Specialist Susan Jenkins, and they need to be engaged in order to learn. Engaging students often means using technology to teach, if it can help meet a learning goal.

    “We don’t want to put it out there just because it’s a cool thing to have," said Jenkins, who works in Bullitt County Public Schools in Shepherdsville, Ky. " We want a purpose for it.”

    Learn about the tools Jenkins helps teachers find that purpose by providing in-service training once a month as well as meeting with them on an appointment basis. While she does show them how new tools work, she also gives them ideas about how they can use them to help students learn.

    “As we’re training them to use the tool, we try to train them with the integration side mixed in," Jenkins said.

    In addition to learning from other people in their school district, teachers can learn from people they're connected to on Twitter, said Kyle Pace, an instructional/consumer technology specialist with Lee's Summit School District in Missouri. He finds plenty of resources from educators, particularly those who use the hashtag edchat, and shares them with co-workers and teachers in his area.

    “If you start to think, ‘Well, I’ve seen all there is to see with this kind of tool,’ something new comes out or the next day you learn about something new,” Pace said. “We’re fortunate in our district that instructional technology is a huge focus, and I think it just has to remain a huge professional development focus at the district and at the building level.”

    Back in North Carolina, some teachers tell Moxley that they are computer-illiterate and are horrible with technology. He reminds them that they wouldn't accept that response from a child who tells them he isn't good at math, so he won't accept that as a response for them. When he puts it in those terms, they are more receptive to learning about new tools.

    He sits in on grade-level planning meetings, and based on what he hears, he looks for resources that might work with the lessons that teachers have coming up.

    “I try to deemphasize the technology itself and just try to get them to see it as a tool that hopefully will enhance the lesson in some way,” Moxley said.

    Mix tech into lessons When language arts teacher Heather Mason plans a lesson, she starts by figuring out what she wants her students to learn in her class at Jefferson Middle School in Merritt Island, Fla. Then she thinks about what tools could help accomplish her goal.

    And as she wrote on her blog, the technology doesn't have to be new to work. She uses tools such as Post-it notes, highlighters and personal whiteboards to engage her students.

    Pencils are also effective tools, and they're the focus of John Spencer's blog Adventures in Pencil Integration. Set in 1897, the blog posts tell the story of a fictional character named Tom Johnson, whose small school district starts paper and pencil integration initiatives to prepare students for the 20th century.

    Through satire, he paints a picture of the hype and the paranoia that comes with new technology. Back in his classroom at Raúl Castro Middle School in Phoenix, he teaches his students to identify with both extremes.

    “I want them to be both absolute critics of technology and also people who absolutely embrace it," Spencer said. "And I know that’s a really idealistic kind of view to have, but I want them to be both.”

    He helps them become both by starting conversations in his multimedia authoring/publishing class that force students to think critically about what they're doing and why they're doing it.

    Continued in article


    Datawatch's Monarch data mining software --- http://www.datawatch.com/_products/monarch_pro.php
    "Kean and Emory Introduce Students to Data Mining," by Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, April 6, 2009 ---
    http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/04/06/kean-and-emory-introduce-students-to-data-mining.aspx
    Link forwarded by Ed Scribner

    Two universities--Kean University in Union, NJ and Emory University in Atlanta, GA--have gone public with their use of Datawatch's Monarch data mining software to teach students how to perform business intelligence work.

    Kean professor Beth Brilliant introduced Monarch to graduate students of her accounting information systems (AIS) and auditing information system classes.

    "I have been using Monarch for years as a [certified public accountant] and swear by it," said Brilliant. "For example, I use Monarch to quickly find any bank discrepancies. As I work for a law firm with client trust accounts, this is extremely important, as all accounts must balance to the penny. I am able to reconcile all the accounts in minutes thanks to Monarch, picking up differences in checks from pennies to hundreds of thousands of dollars."

    Brilliant added, "My department has also become more efficient with the use of Monarch, saving hours by importing data into the accounting system electronically vs. manually. Reports that I receive from vendors are saved as PDF files, which are mined using Monarch. The data is then extracted and imported into our accounting system. This not only saves time but it removes the risk of manual data input errors."

    "I rely on Monarch to ensure data quality and to ensure I know exactly where company data is coming from, with no need to rely on the company's accounting and IT departments," she explained. "Monarch is an excellent resource for auditors and accountants, and well worth including Monarch within my AIS coursework."

    Robert Gross teaches a graduate course on managing healthcare databases at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory. The course is part of the curriculum for the university's master of public health degree.

    "Most of my students are physicians and other working healthcare providers, middle managers and public health agency leaders," said Gross. "The students are non-technical, yet must understand how to independently gather, sift, sort, and work effectively with public and private healthcare information sources. We address issues including effective data access strategies, how to ensure data quality, comply fully with HIPAA, and actively work with healthcare data using Excel, Access, and several statistical analysis products."

    Continued in article

     


    Bentley College Students Will Make Microloans to Small Businesses
    P
    erhaps this is also an opportunity for accounting students to advise loan recipients on accounting, software, and taxes. There is precedent here for students in colleges that used to administer Small Business Administration grants. Years ago at the University of Maine I supervised some students who in turn were assisting grant recipients with accounting. In one humorous instance, the students could not find the recipients. The SBA had given a grant to a startup company to make patio furniture in much the same manner as birch-bark canoes are made using ash wood and birch bark. Once the recipients got the money for their chain saws and trucks, they were nowhere to be found. Turns out all they wanted the money for was to help them steal wood to sell to the paper companies. Such will also be the risk of microlending by college students.

    "Bentley University Class Creates Local Microfinance Fund," Market Watch, October 28, 2008 --- Click Here

    New Student-Run Initiative Brings Microlending to the Greater Boston Area An honors finance class at Bentley University has paved the way for an innovative financing initiative: a domestic microcredit organization that will fuel economic and community development by providing loans of $1,500 to $6,000 to local entrepreneurs at or below the poverty level.

    The Bentley Microcredit Initiative (BMI) is the result of a course, Seminar in Micro Lending, which debuted in spring 2008. The mission of the BMI is to integrate microfinance into the Bentley community and to promote community development through education and innovation in microlending activities. The class and the BMI are the brainchild of Finance Professor and BMI Director Roy Wiggins. "The fund is something I really thought could be viable here at Bentley," says Wiggins. "Since it's student-run, it will provide hands-on banking experience while also furthering the Bentley mission to send future business leaders into the world who are socially responsible."

    Microcredit or microlending refers to modest-sized loans for poverty-level recipients who may not qualify for funds at traditional financial institutions. The practice gained public attention in 2006, when Grameen Bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in microfinance.

    Students enrolled in Seminar in Micro Lending developed a working model for the BMI after researching microfinance successes and failures both abroad and domestically to create a framework that could operate in Greater Boston. The fund is being financed by donations from alumni and parents and has an initial equity line of $100,000 on its way to a total loan portfolio of $300,000. The Bentley Microcredit Initiative will identify potential loan applicants by tapping into existing Bentley relationships with community organizations. "One of the attractive things about this venture is that it will be utilizing Bentley's academic resources," says Bentley President Gloria Larson. "We are essentially marrying Bentley's foundation in service and business to help address a societal issue. We hope the Microcredit Initiative will become a part of Bentley's legacy." BENTLEY UNIVERSITY is a leader in business education. Centered on teaching and research in business and related professions, Bentley blends the breadth and technological strength of a university with the core values and student focus of a close-knit campus.

    SOURCE Bentley University

     


    Epsilen Environment from Purdue University appears to have brought together the latest technology in a course authoring, course management, and e-learning package  --- http://www.epsilen.com/Epsilen/Public/Home.aspx

    The Epsilen Environment is the result of six years of research and development within the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI. Epsilen Products and Services are commercially available through BehNeem LLC, the holding company created in Indiana to commercialize, market and further develop the Epsilen Environment. The New York Times is an equity and strategic partner in the company.

    I maintain a site on the history of course authoring and course management technology at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

    A 2008 addition to the above history site came to my attention in a loose-card advertisement for Epsilen Enviroment that came in the November 3, 2008 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

    Free ePortfolios 
     
    Basic ePortfolio accounts are free for all registered students and faculty of U.S. colleges and universities.  An Epsilen ePortfolio can be created in minutes and be used throughout one’s academic career, during professional life, and even into retirement.  The free Epsilen ePortfolio account offers tools and resources enabling members to:

    If your campus is, or becomes, a licensed Epsilen institution (see below), your free ePortfolio will integrate dynamically with more sophisticated tools and services listed below that accompany the paid license. Visit www.epsilen.com to create your personal ePortfolio and begin exploring the Environment. 

      
    Exploratory Institutional Memberships
     
    The Exploratory Membership is an easy and cost-effective option for colleges and universities, schools, districts and state systems to explore and experience the features of Epsilen, the next generation of learning and networking software.  Upon payment of an annual membership fee, the following features are available to Exploratory Members: 

    Annual Exploratory Memberships begin at $5,000 for campuses with up to 2,000 students.  Click here for more pricing information and order application. 
     
     

    New York Times Knowledge Network

    New York Times Knowledge (NYTKnowledge Network) offers New York Times content to complement faculty-designed courses served dynamically in customizable templates through Epsilen’s Global Learning System.  New York Times content is aggregated by subject and easily selected and incorporated into lessons by faculty and the interactive learning environment. NYTKnowledge Network provides access to a repository of Times archives back to 1851 Times articles, special issues sections, multimedia features, and synchronous and asynchronous contact with correspondents, resulting in an extraordinary integrated learning environment that supports hybrid or online offerings.
     

    The New York Times Knowledge Network also offers the opportunity to participate in Webcasts with the Times correspondents and other subject matter experts. These can be included in traditional courses, or offered by your institution as stand-alone life-long learning experiences with comprehensive continuing education programs designed by the New York Times. 


    NYT Knowledge Network Provides:

    • A rich repository of archived content back to 1851
    • Access to other major content providers
    • Multimedia news content
    • Interactive maps and graphs
    • Webcasts, chats with correspondents
    • A comprehensive range of content aggregated by subject and easily integrated to support your teaching objectives.
    • NYTimes Knowledge Network marketing of your continuing education courses.  

    Visit http://www.nytimes.com/knowledge for further information and pricing (will be released in mid August 2007).
     

    Student Learning Matrix 
     
    Programs, departments, and schools within a campus may create unlimited student learning matrices to be used by students through an automated learning outcome assessment tool for both summative and formative learning assessment.  Features include:

    • Creation of unlimited student learning matrices for program- or campus-level learning outcome assessment (Each axis includes attributes defined by the program/campus.)
    • Ability for students to upload their learning outcomes according to predefined rubrics
    • Access by faculty and academic advisors to each student learning matrix for assessment, advisement, and certification
    • Program- and campus-level assessment reports for internal and external accreditation reviews
    • A hosted Web-based solution that requires no institutional IT support

    The annual Student Learning Matrix membership fee is based on the number of students in the program or institution.  Click here for more information and online membership application.
     
     

    Global Learning System (GLS)
     
     

    Epsilen offers the Global Learning System (GLS), a new Web-based learning framework developed as the next generation of eLearning and networking. In contrast to current legacy learning management systems, the GLS offers true global learning collaboration by connecting students and instructors on campuses in the U.S. and around the world in an interactive and intuitive Web 2.0 learning environment.  The GLS complements existing licensed or open source CMS products.  The GLS features include:

    • Global learning management system that enables students and instructors to easily register or be invited to courses and learning collaboration
    • Cross listing of class rosters of two or more courses within various campuses, or across institutions
    • Innovative tools using professional and social networking to enhance learning, encourage collaboration, and utilize peer review technology
    • The ability to easily archive courses and working groups for continued engagement
    • A hosted Web-based solution that requires little, or no institutional IT support

    The annual GLS membership fee is based on the number of students and courses within the institution. Click here for more information and online membership application.
     
     

    Charter Membership
     

    Experience the full suite of the Epsilen “Environment” and resources with unparalleled access to NYTKnowledge Network content. Charter members receive special pricing for unlimited use of ePortfolios, the Student Learning Matrix, courses through the Global Learning System, and interactive Webcasts with correspondents.  With charter membership, two university administrators will be invited to participate in the Epsilen - New York Times charter council, with meetings and events scheduled at The New York Times.  Benefits include:

    • Single sign-on environment featuring a toolbox of services for ePortfolio, social networking, Learning Matrix, GLS, object repository, and NYTKnowledge Network
    • Totally hosted turnkey solution with no need for local servers or local technical staff
    • Cost effectiveness for both small and large campuses
    • Collaboration on designing the next generation of eLearning through networking with other members of the Epsilen - New York Times charter council

    The Epsilen Charter membership fee is based on the total number of students within the institution.  Click here for more information and online membership application. 
     
     

    Technical Support and System Integration
     

    Epsilen offers consulting and technical support through both internal and third-party sources for the integration of Epsilen with local campus databases and existing licensed technology.  This provides a seamless, single sign-on, portal approach to all resources and services supporting the learning and teaching initiatives of a campus.  Click Here for more information and online membership application.

    I maintain a site on the history of course authoring and course management technology at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm


    Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence: Tools for Teaching and Learning --- http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/Tools/

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    Search Engine, ChunkIt, Marketed to College Students


    Questions
    How can you turn your email messages into free video messages?
    How can you video conference calls?

    For those of you in the American Accounting Association, I call your attention to a new Teaching Resource called TokBox submitted to the Commons by accounting professor Rick Little. You do not need to go to the Commons for some of Rick’s links passed on below. I thank Rick for sharing this teaching resource.

     AAA Members

    Please go to the AAA Commons at least once each day --- http://commons.aaahq.org
    For Teaching and Research Resources, Click on the menu bar item called “Roles”
    Rick’s posting is called “Thinking Outside the Box”
    You might want to clidk on Rick’s picture to see his interesting profile (e.g., with Grant Thornton and as a local CPA before getting his PhD in accounting)

     

    Links for Non-Members

    Rick’s TokBox Blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/using-tokbox-to-communicate-with-your-students/

     

    Rick’s introductory video is at http://www.tokbox.com/vm/b056ued8rnau#vmail=b056ued8rnau

    TokBox --- http://me.tokbox.com/ 

    If you are trying to gather a group of people for a conference or chat, TokBox may be just the perfect thing. Visitors can use the video chat feature to include up to 20 participants in a call, import contacts from Gtalk and Facebook, and also text chat with other people during the call. Also, visitors can share YouTube videos and files. This version is compatible with all computers running Windows 2000 and newer.

    Jensen Comment
    TokBox dropped its free video conference software --- http://www.tokbox.com/blog/?p=1701
    However, it commenced OpenTalk that allows groups to have live video conversations --- http://www.tokbox.com/opentok/showcase

    February 12, 2011 message from Rick Lillie

    Hi Bob,

    Last year, TokBox decided to drop the video messaging feature of its service and focus on multi-party video conferencing and chat. I told them that I felt they were making a big mistake with this service change.

    I replaced TokBox with two other services (i.e., Eyejot and YouTube). Eyejot is a video email messaging service. YouTube added an option that makes it possible to upload a video and keep it private but shareable.

    I'm using Eyejot with all my students. It's working very well and students really like it. I've been able to integrate Eyejot into Blackboard. Students can send me a video message of up to 5 minutes in length. Soon, Eyejot is supposed to increase the message time from 5 minutes to 10 minutes.

    Tokbox went its way. I went mine. Life continues.

    Rick Lillie
    CalState San Bernardino

     


    Accounting Quiz Archives

    August 21, 2008 message from Rob Nance [rnance@accountingweb.com]

    Submitting 10-question accounting quizzes is great exposure for your accounting program. Check out the archives:

    http://www.accountingweb.com/quiz/ 

    If you would like to submit a quiz, reply to this message and I will send you the Excel template.

    *****

    Coming later this year: information on a scholarship program for your accounting students. AccountingWEB will be bestowing a load of money on three U.S. accounting students.

    Rob

    The AccountingWeb student zone (including humor) is at http://www.accountingweb.com/news/student_zone.html


    "15 Tools to Make Your PC a Multimedia Powerhouse:  Enjoy your video and audio collections to the fullest with the help of these free and low-cost downloads," by Preston Gralla, PC World via The Washington Post, October 30, 2008 --- Click Here

    Your PC has become the greatest entertainment device ever created, but you wouldn't know that judging by the software that ships with the machine. Bundled media players, and related software for playing and managing audio and video, tend to be underwhelming at best.

    We've assembled 15 of our favorite video and audio applications, all of which can handle just about any job you can throw at them. The vast majority of these downloads are completely free, and the others offer no-cost trials.

    They'll help you download YouTube videos to your PC, or convert videos to formats that you can view on handheld devices. They'll play any audio and video formats you can find. They'll make you into a DJ and allow you to create your own customized mixes, too. So if you want to get the most out of the entertainment device on your desk, read on--and start downloading. (And if you want to access all of these tools in one convenient place, hop to our audio and video downloads collection.)

    Video

    Want to download YouTube videos to your computer, convert video files to formats that you can view on portable players, find the best videos online, or watch TV from around the world? We have software that does all that, and a lot more.

    TubeMe

    How many times have you watched a YouTube video and wished that you could save it to your hard drive for future viewing? With this free software, you can save YouTube videos as .flv files; afterward, you can watch the videos in any multimedia software that supports the .flv format (such as FLV Player or VLC Media Player, both discussed below). Before downloading the videos, you get a full description of them, as well.

    Be aware that using this program can be a bit confusing. Make sure to click the Download path button, at the bottom of the screen, to tell the program where to download your videos. And to download the video, you'll have to copy and paste the YouTube URL into the program. After that, click the icon with a small plus sign; it looks grayed-out, as if it were nonfunctional, but it does work. Once you've added the link, you can download the video. You can also put multiple videos in a list, and download them all at once.

    Download TubeMe| Price: Free

    FLV Player
    If you've downloaded YouTube videos using TubeMe or another downloader, or if you've collected other files in the .flv format, you may run into a problem: Many media players, including Windows Media Player, can't handle them. FLV Player is a straightforward media player designed to play .flv files exclusively. To access a video, press , browse to the file, and open it, or else double-click the .flv file from inside Windows Explorer. You can also drag and drop files into the player. The software even handles multiple .flv files: Simply drag several files to the program, and the app plays each video in its own window.

    You can control video playback through the usual controls, or with a variety of keyboard shortcuts. You can also toggle between full-screen mode and normal mode. Note that you may run into problems installing the software on Windows Vista. If that happens to you, right-click the installation file and choose Run as Administrator. That should solve the problem.

    Download FLV Player| Price: Free

    Any Video Converter Free Version

    Playing video these days is no longer confined to your PC--countless other devices can play video as well, including handheld devices and music players, mobile phones, and the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The problem, though, is that if you've downloaded videos to your PC, they might not be in the formats your devices require.

    Continued in article

     


    Do It Yourself Interactive Whiteboard (about $60 instead of over $1,000)

    October 27, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker [lister@BONACKERS.COM]

    Mr. Lee encourages innovators to ask themselves, "Would providing 80 percent of the capability at 1 percent of the cost be valuable to someone?" If the answer is yes, he says, pay attention. Trading relatively little performance for substantial cost savings can generate what Mr. Lee calls "surprising and often powerful results both scientifically and socially."

    As evidence, he might point to a do-it-yourself interactive whiteboard, another of his Wiimote innovations. Interactive whiteboards, which in commercial form generally sell for more than $1,000, make it possible to control a computer by tapping, writing or drawing on an image of the desktop that has been projected onto a screen. Mr. Lee's version can be built with roughly $60 in parts and free open-source software downloadable from his Web site.

    Some 700,000 people, many of them teachers, have downloaded the software, Mr. Lee says. Much more expensive whiteboards may offer more features and better image resolution, but Mr. Lee's version is adequate for most classroom applications.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/business/26proto.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin 

    This seemed like it might be of interest, if not useful

    Scott Bonacker CPA
    Springfield, MO


    Maple's Document Management System

    October 30, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker [lister@BONACKERS.COM]

    This came as part of a subscription to a technology newsletter, I haven't tried this product myself.  Scott Bonacker CPA, Springfield, MO]

    As an IT professional, chances are good that you have lots of detailed information that you have to keep track of in order to do your job effectively and efficiently. You probably have a multitude of documents stored in a multitude of folders on your hard disk. Using a series of documents and folders to store all your information is a pretty logical way of doing things, especially when used in combination with Vista’s Search tool and Saved searches feature, keeping track of all that information is pretty easy. However, it could be better — especially if all that information could be made available in one place.

    Well, I recently discovered a very nice document manager called Maple from Crystal Office Systems that runs perfectly on Windows Vista and produces what is essentially a document database. In this edition of the Windows Vista Report, I’ll introduce you to Maple and show you how to use it manage your document collection.

    This blog post is also available in the PDF format in a TechRepublic Download.

    Getting Maple

    You can download Maple from the Crystal Office Systems Web site. Once you download it, installation is a snap and you’ll be ready begin creating you custom document database in no time. You can download and try Maple for 30 days at no cost. A single-user license is $21.95.

    When you access the Crystal Office Systems Web site, you’ll also notice that there is another version of this document manager called Maple Professional, which provides a set of advanced features. You’ll also find free reader called Maple Reader that will allow other users to view any document database created with either Maple or Maple Professional.

     

    Read the rest at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=802&tag=rbxccnbt

    Bob Jensen's threads on accounting software are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#AccountingSoftware

    Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

     


    August 19, 2008 message from MERLOT Webmaster [barb@merlot.org]

  • Dear Learning Material Author,

     We are sending you this email because you are an author of material in the MERLOT collection (www.merlot.org).  As you know, MERLOT is an international consortium of higher education institutions, professional societies, digital libraries, and corporations who support educational improvement through technology.  Last year, MERLOT had more than 1,000,000 visits from people searching for reusable learning materials to incorporate into their teaching and learning.  As MERLOT continues to grow (over 20,000 materials accessed by more than 62,000 members, growing at 1200+ new members monthly), participants are increasingly concerned about legal issues related to the reuse of online materials. 

     We recognize the efforts of people like you who have created learning materials and have agreed to share your work through MERLOT.  To protect and guide members of the MERLOT community, we have adopted the intellectual property policies of the increasingly popular consortium, Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org).  We are doing this to:

    ·         Encourage creators of online materials to share their work with others who might wish to reuse the materials.

    ·         Ensure that contributions of online materials by MERLOT members are protected from misuse and abuse.

    We would like to encourage you, as a developer of online materials, to declare Creative Commons licenses for all your material so that others don’t use your work in ways counter to your intentions. Creative Commons provides an easy process for defining licenses; it also provides HTML code you can copy directly to your website to let others know what license applies to your work. To easily select the license of your choice, go to www.creativecommons.org/license.

    If you wish to have a Creative Commons license displayed with your MERLOT digital content and you are the original contributor of your material to the MERLOT collection, you may add the Creative Commons information yourself.  You may also send an email to the MERLOT Webmaster (webmaster@merlot.org), indicating the title of your material in MERLOT and the Creative Commons license you would like to display with the description of your material. If you aren’t sure which license to use, we suggest the Creative Commons license that allows others to reuse and alter your work, but only if they provide attribution to you as the author and only if they reuse it for non commercial purposes (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license)

    For more information about Creative Commons, please visit www.creativecommon.org or view their video at http://youtube.com/watch?v=2BESbnMJg9M.  You can also review MERLOT’s policies regarding Creative Commons licenses at: http://taste.merlot.org/acceptableuserpolicy.html

    - MERLOT Webmaster --- webmaster@merlot.org

  •  


    Question
    What does a student's blinkless stare signify?

    a. Daydreaming
    b. Confusion
    c. Anger
    d. Stoned

    "Facial-Recognition Software Could Give Valuable Feedback to Online Professors." Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 27, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3126&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Many professors who teach online complain that they have no way of seeing whether their far-away students are following the lectures — or whether the students have fallen asleep at their desks. But researchers at the University of California at San Diego say they have a solution. They recently tested a system that can detect facial expressions of online students and determine when they find the material difficult, so that cues could be sent to the professors telling them to slow down.

    Jacob Whitehill, a doctoral student at the university working on the research, presented results from the experiment this week at the Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2008 conference in Montreal.

    In the experiment, eight subjects were shown short video clips of lectures while a Web cam tracked their facial expressions — looking for smiles, blinks, raised eyebrows, and the like. The subjects were then asked to report how difficult they found each section, and to take a quiz on the material. Mr. Whitehill says that the system correctly detected when students were having trouble (the most reliable indicator: students blinked less when they were struggling to understand).

    The system could be used to give valuable feedback to professors teaching online, says Mr. Whitehill. “It’s not going to be perfect by any means,” he says, but it’s better than no student feedback at all. “Professors say that they can’t see the students. This could do it for them automatically.”

    Visualization of Multivariate Data (including faces) --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm

    Video:  Augmented 3-D Sketching --- http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/24253/?nlid=2446&a=f
    Bob Jensen's threads on data visualization --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm


    May 4, 2008 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

    I have placed a (Camtasia) video online on omnisio.com, which allows comments to be placed OVER the video.

    http://www.omnisio.com/v/49zPDUbdjhG/the-basic-accounting-equation 

    This is a video that I have on youtube and just linked it to Omnisio.

    Jensen Comment
    There are some other cool things to do with video at http://www.omnisio.com/


    "Microsoft Ramps Up Its Free College E-Mail Program," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 27, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3032&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Microsoft has decided to enlarge a service of keen interest to colleges, even as the company last week dumped another offering used by higher education, its Live Search Books program. Now Live@edu, the free Web-based e-mail and online collaboration program for students and alumni, is getting much larger inboxes, the ability to handle bigger attached files, true shared calendars, and the chance for colleges to block student e-mail containing words they deem offensive, the company announced today.

    Tired of the 5 gigabyte inbox? Live@edu now offers accounts with 10 gigabytes, and the capacity to handle attachments up to 20 megabytes in size, says Bruce Gabrielle, senior product manager for the service. The boost is because the company has decided that, in addition to handing campuses Microsoft Hotmail accounts (with university-based e-mail addresses), it will offer accounts on the more powerful Microsoft Exchange Web access system. That gives users access to Windows programs like Outlook, with e-mail, full calendars, and a contact list.

    It’s a solution used by many businesses, and Microsoft has been quietly offering it, in a form called Exchange Labs, to a few educational institutions since last fall. Drexel University, Hinds Community College, and the Colorado Community College system are some that have tried it.

    With Exchange Labs, users at the same university can see one another’s calendars to set up meetings. E-mail tracking is enabled, so students can see whether a term paper was delivered to a professor’s inbox. They can also push e-mail to cell phones. (And they can use Exchange to wipe data from those phones if they happen to lose them.) Exchange Labs also gives university officials the ability to set up filters, like spam filters, for offensive terms in e-mail, though Mr. Gabrielle says he wasn’t sure what words, if any, that universities have tried placing on a “do not type” list.

    At this point the service is not being offered to faculty members or administrators. “I think it’s a business model decision,” Mr. Gabrielle said, noting that the company may need to figure out whether it wants to allow ads on Web pages seen by those users; the student and alumni service is ad-free.


    "SketchCast: a New Blogging and Teaching Tool," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 14, 2008 --- Click Here

    Want to preserve that lesson you did at the blackboard today in class and share it with students online? Try SketchCast, a free blogging tool that allows users to record a digital drawing (and contemporaneous audio), and then embed the animated video onto a Web site. It’s essentially an easy form of animation.

    Watch the video demo --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2998&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Comment from Charles

    What a nice tool to capture and share ideas informally! I have been trying to capture tools and concepts for opening up collaborative learning on my blog www.collaborativenetworkedlearning.blogspot.com 

    — Charles May 14, 08:50 PM #


    David Pogue is one of my technology heroes --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pogue
    Vidya Ananthanarayanan called my attention to his recent keynote speech at the
    Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference
    "Five ways to improve technology in education," by Todd Ritter, DownloadSquad, February 12, 2008 --- Click Here

    Stay informed
    Use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to keep up with technology news and events. To use RSS you'll need an RSS reader like
    Google Reader, NetNewsWire (Mac), or FeedDemon (Windows) to read RSS feeds. An RSS feed is basically a dynamic link that updates your RSS reader when new content is posted to a website (click the "RSS Feeds" button under our search bar to see examples).

    You can also subscribe to technology newsletters, and talk to students about websites and web services they use on their own. A majority of teachers do not know what
    Stickam or Meebo are, yet these sites are used daily by many of their students.

    Focus on the learning process, not the end product
    When little Susie uses iMovie to create a video of her class field trip to Cape Canaveral, she should be evaluated on what she's learned through the creative process, not how many wipes and sound effects she used in her final movie file. The quality and relativity of the still pictures she took by learning how to use a digital camera, or video footage from a well-designed storyboard are better barometers of a successful project.

    Work with IT professionals who understand education
    I work on the IT side of education daily, and I know it's important to unfetter technology at a school to stimulate the learning process. IT staff must be willing to bend on certain security measures and trust students with equipment so that they can be creative and not boxed in. We let students take laptops home to work on approved projects, which ultimately motivates their peers to do the same. We also have a dedicated instructional adviser who helps teachers integrate technology into their lesson plans. This often helps ease the teachers' modification of antiquated lessons.

    Become a user
    Make a
    Facebook account so you can understand the allure of social-networking sites. Add some information about yourself. Locate former school pals. Join some groups. This will let you see sites like Faceook from a student's perspective.

    To collaborate and share course materials, you can create a
    Moodle site for your class, or start a class blog. Students benefit more from teachers who collaborate and less from teachers who force-feed lectures. Also, it's much easier to teach about something that you've actually used in depth. It's time to break the stigma of "those that can, do; those that can't, teach."

    Don't be afraid of change
    Some teachers think that upgrading from Office 2003 to 2007 is using the latest technology. However, a Word document is still words and formatting meant for someone to read. Instead of being satisfied with word processing in a new version of software, why not let students create a school "newspaper" on something like
    Joomla. The news could be updated in seconds, it could be interactive (comments, updates, etc.), and it could be include user-submitted media. Google Earth could be used to give an elementary student global perspective by flying in from a world view down to the roof of his home.
     

    Jensen Comment
    There are other things that I would recommend. I think joining listserv of other educators is important, especially educators in your discipline --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

    It is exceedingly important to know what knowledge is being freely shared by professors and universities --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
    I hope that you will one day share your own knowledge with us.

    I think becoming a user of important technologies is important, especially video recording using Camtasia --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
    Also see the 50Camtasia.ppt file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/

    Following the tools of technology in education in general is important --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

     


    "TextMeTV Is Either Future of Television or Beginning of Its End," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 13, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3240&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

    Late at night on a television station in Lansing, Michigan, a new kind of program tries to make the audience the main attraction. It's called TextMeTV, and it goes like this: One or two young hosts, some of them college students, sit on a couch and read text messages being sent in live from viewers, and those messages are also posted on a box in the corner of the screen. Sometimes the hosts encourage those texters to debate topics of the day, other times they offer free iPods or other prizes to viewers who can answer trivia questions. The show looks more like a YouTube page than a television show. Though moderators do edit the text messages that come in before they post them to the screen, the show is live with no tape delay, says Helena Kirby, a producer for the show and one of its 7 rotating hosts. "There's no swearing and no sexual talk -- we keep it pretty clean," she adds. Viewers pay a small fee per text message to participate. Ms. Kirby says the show's best moments have been when viewers sparred about race issues or politics. "People get fired up," she says. But this January the show -- which has been on since last year -- began focusing more on games and contests, like trivia challenges, than on debates. One entertainment blogger recently called the show "the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard," noting that the show seems empty of substance. But Ms. Kirby argues that it represents a revolutionary new format. "I think some people are just afraid of it -- that this new concept is going to do something big, and they don't want it to," she says. "I say, Out with the old, in the with the new." Amariee Woods, another host of the show who is a senior at Michigan State University, says that younger audiences want to participate, not just passively consume media. "People want to put their comments on everything, and the faster they can do that, the better." A similar show in Texas called Subtext, which features students from the University of Texas at Austin, uses a similar format but focuses on dating. The shows are essentially trying to turn television into something more like the Internet. In fact, the shows would probably work better as interactive Web pages where people could put aside their cell phones and interact with their computer keyboards. But then the show's producers would not be able to make a cut of the text-messaging fees, as they do now. Do younger viewers now see one-way broadcast television as dull? Or are these interactive shows a sign that media companies are trying to mix many kinds of media formats? Use your computer keyboard to let us know what you think.

     

    TextMeTV (watch the video) --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3240&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


    "Making a Big Point (in class) With Your PC," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 23, 2008 ---
    http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2932&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Pen Kenrick J. Mock says he loves recording lectures for his classes using his tablet PC. And the associate professor of computer science at the University of Alaska at Anchorage also loves projecting computational problems using PowerPoint or the writing program OneNote.

    What Mr. Mock does not love is the inability to point to a specific part of the problem for his class. “It’s always bothered me that the pen cursor is a tiny little dot,” he writes in his blog on technology and teaching. “The problem is that I like to use the pen to “point” at things as I give the lecture, but it doesn’t help if the class can’t see it.”

    He looked, in vain, for a program that would enlarge the cursor. And finally he gave in, remembered he was a computer scientist, and wrote a program himself.

    The result is PenAttention, and it turns that minuscule dot into a minuscule dot with a big colored spotlight around it. It’s a little more distracting to write with this kind of cursor, but his class can finally see what he is doing.

    The program is free, works on tablet PCs running XP and Vista, and can be downloaded from a link in Mr. Mock’s blog post describing it.

    See http://www.math.uaa.alaska.edu/~afkjm/techteach/?q=node/52


    "Microsoft Opens Free Online Workspace for Student Collaborations," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 5, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2795&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Microsoft wants to help students get their lives together (their learning lives, at least), and Tuesday it rolled out a product to help. As part of Live@edu, the company’s free Web-based email and calendar suite, Microsoft unveiled Office Live Workspace, which lets students access their work online and share it with others. Live@edu is in use at more than 600 colleges.

    “The most visible new feature is the activity panel,” said Guy Gilbert, a Microsoft group product manager, in an interview with The Chronicle Monday. “Suppose you are in a work group with other students. You can look at the panel and see everything that anyone has done since you last logged on. And links in the panel take you right to that object,” whether it is a document, a spreadsheet, contact list, or database.

    Users can also set up e-mail alerts that notify them any time an item is changed.

    The service has been running in beta for several months, and of its estimated 100,000 users, 20 to 30 percent are in higher education, Mr. Gilbert says. Microsoft has worked with 13 colleges to fine-tune the service, including Florida Community College at Jacksonville, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Wisconsin at Parkside.

    And if the new service doesn’t seem familiar to users of Google Docs, don’t worry. Microsoft’s arch rival also promises real-time collaboration, and the two companies seem to be running neck and neck in the education marketplace.


    AtGentive:   New software platforms that incorporate artificial intelligence and social networking into their approach toward e-learning.

    February 20, 2008 message from Glen L Gray [glen.gray@CSUN.EDU]

    Attention Please! Next-Generation E-Learning Is Here ICT Results (02/14/08)

    European researchers working for the AtGentive project have developed two new software platforms that incorporate artificial intelligence and social networking into their approach toward e-learning. AtGentive coordinator Thierry Nabeth says the first generation of e-learning platforms focused on replicating the classroom experience, but student's often had difficulty staying motivated and the learning program failed to keep their attention. To overcome this problem, one of the AtGentive platforms uses techniques similar to those found on Web sites such as Facebook that make them so popular as a means of staying in touch with others. The platforms also use artificial intelligence to keep students interested. "Artificial agents are autonomous entities that observe users' activities and assess their state of attention in order to intervene so as to make the user experience more effective," Nabeth says. "The interventions can take many forms, from providing new information to the students, guiding them in their work, or alerting them when other users connect to the platform." The artificial intelligence agents provide a smart form of proactive coaching for students by assessing, guiding, and stimulating them. The agents can alert students when others have read their articles, or when they receive feedback on their contributions to a collaborative project. The agents are also able to detect when students are not interacting with the system and try to get them to rejoin the lesson.

    Click Here to View Full Article

    http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/89524

    Glen L. Gray, PhD, CPA
    Accounting & Information Systems, COBAE
    California State University, Northridge
    Northridge, CA 91330-8372
    818.677.3948
    818.677.2461 (messages)

    http://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f


    Notes on the Smart Pen
    The smart pen that Wired Campus flagged back in May was unveiled last week at a technology conference in Palm Springs, Calif. The company behind it, LiveScribe, has been aggressively marketing the device to college students with the slogan "Never miss a word." It's basically a combination recording machine and camera. Users take notes while a minirecorder, embedded in the pen, records whatever is being said. Later, to clarify the written notes, the user can touch the pen to a specific passage and listen to a recording of the instructor speaking those words. A tiny camera links what is being written to what is being recorded. In a takeoff on television commercials for pharmaceuticals, the smart-pen advertisement below features a student who suffers from "restless mind syndrome." The pen is offered as a panacea. Livescribe has set up a Facebook page to push the pen, and offers to pay college students to promote the device on their campuses. It's also advertised on the Web site ThePalestra, where Andy Van Schaack, a senior lecturer at Vanderbilt University, who is an adviser to LiveScribe, is seen praising the pen. Will the pen, which sells for about $200, take off with college students? Will it be used as a crutch for students who are too tired or distracted to listen to their professors?
    Andrea L. Foster, "Notes on the Smart Pen," Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 2008 ---
    http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2719&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology


    Questions
    Will we soon be able to lecture without opening our mouths?
    Can you send a "relational" database file to a friend by simply shaking hands?
    Is this the beginning of a whole new definition of human "relationships?"
    Can the message of a hug be digital and unambiguous?
    New magic in a kiss or two?
    Does your database have halitosis or dirty fingernails or a flu virus?
    I'd better stop asking questions about this before I get in trouble!
     

    Japanese firm harnesses the power of human touch
    They say you can tell a lot from a handshake. But while it's usually guesswork, the power of human touch will soon be used in Japan to transmit data. Telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) is planning a commercial launch of a system to enter rooms that frees users from the trouble of rummaging in their pockets or handbags for ID cards or keys. It uses technology to turn the surface of the human body itself into a means of data transmission. As data travels through the user's clothing, handbag or shoes, anyone carrying a special card can unlock the door simply by touching the knob or standing on a particular spot without taking the card out. "In everyday life, you're always touching things. Even if you are standing, you are stepping on something," research engineer Mitsuru Shinagawa told AFP. "These simple touches can result in communication," said Shinagawa, senior research engineer at the company's NTT Microsystem Integration Laboratories. He said future applications could include a walk-through ticket gate, a cabinet that opens only to authorised people and a television control that automatically chooses favourite programmes.
    PhysOrg, February 21, 2008 --- http://physorg.com/news122793751.html

    Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm

    The Five Senses of the Future:  Threads on the Networking of the Five Senses (Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, and Taste) --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/senses.htm  

    Barbra Streisand - He Touched Me (1967) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO-wPOgVtqg

     


    Question
    What are real time virtual office hours?

    Hint:
    They operate a bit like a course chat room with some added features like microphones, and an instructor or teaching fellow is in the room at all times.

    As reported in The Harvard Crimson on Monday, teaching fellows (Harvard parlance for TAs) for the course this semester will begin holding real-time, online help sessions for students this week. Using free, Java-based software, students can log on, chat with each other (via text or microphone) and even “raise their hands” with the click of a button, which adds them to a queue on the teaching fellow’s computer.
    Andy Guess, "Office Hours: Coming to a Computer Near You," Inside Higher Ed, September 18, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/18/officehours

    A tools PowerPoint file is included at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/

     

    Question
    What are the supposed Top 10 and the Top 100 e-Learning tools, at least in England?


    Answer
    Top 100 --- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html
    Various experts list their Top 10 --- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/index.html

    Jensen Comment
    I totally disagree with the rankings of the Top 100 and the Top 10.

    Where is Blackboard and WebCT? --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard

    Where are the many important tools for handicapped learners? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

    Where is Camtasia? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

    Where are the edutainment and learning game alternatives? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

    Where is Matlab (used in virtually every U.S. university) --- --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB

    Like it or not, Wikipedia is one of the most sought out sights in the world by e-Learners --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
    There are risks, but the odds are high that users will get helpful learning information and links.

    Where are HTML and related XML/RTF and XBRL markups?  --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm  

    Where are the many huge and free online libraries? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

    Where are the important blogs and listservs? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

    I could go on and on here!

    Bob Jensen

    August 3, 2007 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

    Bob:
    I agree with you that the list is flawed - Toolbook should be #1

    Richard J. Campbell

    mailto:campbell@rio.edu

    The Idiotic Top Tools for Learning Compiled by Jane Hart

    "Top 100 Tech Tools for 2010," by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog, October 20, 2010 ---
    http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/top-100-tech-tools-for-2010/

    Each year, I look forward to the “Top 100 Tools for Learning” list compiled by Jane Hart (Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, UK).  This year’s tools were recommended by 545 learning professionals from around the world.  You may recognize many of the tools on the list.  Some have been around for a while.  Pay particular attention to tools shaded in “blue.”  These are new to the 2010 list.  Click the picture below to access the Top 100 Tools for Learning web page.

    Jensen Comment
    In the past I've been very critical of this supposed "Top 100 Tools for Learning." I'm still not impressed in 2010, but there are a few improvements ---
    http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100-2010.html

    Where is Blackboard and WebCT? --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard
    In 2010 this was added at Rank 68 (far too low)

    Where are the many important tools for handicapped learners? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
    Jane seems to never find some of this great learning software for the disabled.

    Where is Camtasia? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
    In 2010 this was added at Rank 27 (finally)

    Where are the edutainment and learning game alternatives? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

    Where is Matlab (used in virtually every U.S. university) --- --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB

    Like it or not, Wikipedia is one of the most sought out sights in the world by e-Learners --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
    There are risks, but the odds are high that users will get helpful learning information and links.
    In 2010 this was finally added at Rank 16. It should've been Rank 1.

    Where are HTML and related XML/RTF and XBRL markups?  --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm  

    Where are the many huge and free online libraries? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
    In 2010 various Google sites are mentioned, but not the vast Google Library Project ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/electronicliterature.htm#OnlineBookFinders

    Where are the important blogs and listservs? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

    I could go on and on here! Jane is not a pain, just a yawn!

    Bob Jensen

    August 3, 2007 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

    Bob:
    I agree with you that the list is flawed - Toolbook should be #1

    Richard J. Campbell

    mailto:campbell@rio.edu

    Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring, management, and presentation technologies are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.ht

     

    August 3, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Richard

    ToolBook should’ve been number 1 but it fumbled the ball. What proportion of e-Learners are now learning, today, from ToolBooks? My guess is that much less than one percent. A negligible proportion of instructors are developing learning materials using ToolBook dhtml files relative to FrontPage and Dreamweaver htm files.

    The biggest innovation for e-Learners and authors was Adobe Acrobat’s tremendous development of online pdf files that could be read and electronically searched for free but not be tampered with by readers. Now major commercial publishing houses are putting new books on line as pdf files.

    One of the biggest innovations I forgot to mention was the unknown (at least to me) date in which MS Office files (particularly ppt, doc, and xls files) could be downloaded and read from Web servers that at one time only could handle htm markups. In terms of e-learning htm, pdf, doc, xls, and ppt files are overwhelmingly the main files for e-Learning, although they are now joined by such files as xml files.

    Another huge e-Learning innovation that I forgot to mention is the unknown (at least to me) date in which the above learning and research files could be attached to email messages. This made it easier to have private distributions (say to students in a class) without having to put files on Web, Blackboard, or WebCT servers. Anybody with email can not send files back and forth.

    There is still a great risk of macro viruses when downloading MS Office files from the Web or email messages. However, most e-Learners are doing so from trusted Web sites and/or email senders such as files from their course instructors.

    ToolBook could fade away and the world would hardly know about it or miss it.

    Bob Jensen

     


    Zotero software for  storing, retrieving, organizing, and annotating digital documents --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zotero

    Zotero is a free, open source extension for the Firefox browser, that enables users to collect, manage, and cite research from all types of sources from the browser. It is partly a piece of reference management software, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. On many major research websites such as digital libraries, Google Scholar, or even Amazon.com, Zotero detects when a book, article, or other resource is being viewed and with a mouse click finds and saves the full reference information to a local file. If the source is an online article or web page, Zotero can optionally store a local copy of the source. Users can then add notes, tags, and their own metadata through the in-browser interface. Selections of the local reference library data can later be exported as formatted bibliographies.

    The program is produced by the Center for History and New Media of George Mason University and is currently available in public beta. It is open and extensible, allowing other users to contribute citation styles and site translators, and more generally for others who are building digital tools for researchers to expand the platform. The name is from Albanian language "to master".

    It is aimed at replacing the more cumbersome traditional reference management software, originally designed to meet the demands of offline research

    "Mark of Zotero,"  by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, September 26, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/26/mclemee 

    Zotero is a tool for storing, retrieving, organizing, and annotating digital documents. It has been available for not quite a year. I started using it about six weeks ago, and am still learning some of the fine points, but feel sufficient enthusiasm about Zotero to recommend it to anyone doing research online. If very much of your work involves material from JSTOR, for example – or if you find it necessary to collect bibliographical references, or to locate Web-based publications that you expect to cite in your own work — then Zotero is worth knowing how to use. (You can install it on your computer for free; more on that in due course.)

    Now, my highest qualification for testing a digital tool is, perhaps, that I have no qualifications for testing a digital tool. That is not as paradoxical as it sounds. The limits of my technological competence are very quickly reached. My command of the laptop computer consists primarily of the ability to (1) turn it on and (2) type stuff. This condition entails certain disadvantages (the mockery of nieces and nephews, for example) but it makes for a pretty good guinea pig.

    And in that respect, I can report that the folks at George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media have done an exemplary job in designing Zotero. A relatively clueless person can learn to use it without exhaustive effort.

    Still, it seems as if institutions that do not currently do so might want to offer tutorials on Zotero for faculty and students who may lack whatever gene makes for an intuitive grasp of software. Academic librarians are probably the best people to offer instruction. Aside from being digitally savvy, they may be the people at a university in the best position to appreciate the range of uses to which Zotero can be put.

    For the absolute newbie, however, let me explain what Zotero is — or rather, what it allows you to do. I’ll also mention a couple of problems or limitations. Zotero is still under development and will doubtless become more powerful (that is, more useful) in later releases. But the version now available has numerous valuable features that far outweigh any glitches.

    Suppose you go online to gather material on some aspect of a book you are writing. In the course of a few hours, you might find several promising titles in the library catalog, a few more with Amazon, a dozen useful papers via JSTOR, and three blog entries by scholars who are thinking aloud about some matter tangential to your project.

    Continued in article

    October 12, 2011 reply from Steve Hornick

  • I've used both Endnote and Zotero but now use a Mac product called Papers - if anyone has a Mac I'd highly recommend looking into it: http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/

  • Bob Jensen's threads on how scholars search are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars


    How to Avoid Expensive Adobe Software for Converting MS Office Documents to PDF Files

    "Creating Documents for All to Read Inexpensive Ways To Convert a Variety Of Content to PDFs," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2007; Page D9 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118652753636390978.html

    For years, people have accessed a variety of digital content in one of the most universally accepted formats: Adobe's Portable Document Format, better known as the PDF. A PDF holds images and text without altering a document's original fonts and layout. It can be searched, protected with a password, disabled from printing and enriched with bookmarks and hyperlinks that make it more navigable.

    But while Adobe provides a free reader for viewing PDFs, creating PDFs yourself can be costly and confusing, even though the format is great for saving and sharing documents of almost any kind including images, Web pages, Word documents and emails. For users who want higher-end PDF creation and collaboration software, Adobe Systems Inc. offers its $450 Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional software program. But that's pricey for most casual users. So this week I tested some inexpensive or free methods for making PDFs.

    There are plenty of Windows programs available for download online that will help you create basic PDFs. On Windows computers, I tried three programs, starting with the $20 standard version of deskPDF from Plano, Texas-based Docudesk Corp. (www.Docudesk.com). I tested a stripped-down and less-expensive version of Adobe's program called Create Adobe PDF Online, which works by uploading your document at www.CreatePDF.com and costs $10 monthly or $100 annually. And I also used a free program called CutePDF from Acro Software Inc. (www.CutePDF.com).

    If you own a Mac, things are even simpler. Macs come out of the box with the ability to turn documents into PDFs, and I tested that function as well.

    DeskPDF and CutePDF worked roughly the same way, though deskPDF costs $20 and CutePDF is free. Adobe's less-expensive program offered a few more features than deskPDF and CutePDF, such as the ability to add password encryption to a document or to make it unprintable by others. Making PDFs on the Mac was a cinch, including options to compress or encrypt a PDF. None of these methods allowed me to add extra features to PDFs like bookmarks and hyperlinks; for that, you'll need a more serious program.

    When Microsoft's Office 2007 program shipped early this year, many people expected that it would have the built-in ability to save documents in PDF format; it didn't. Users can find a patch that fixes this on Microsoft's Web site.

    Apple's operating system has long been known for the ease with which it can create PDFs using built-in tools. Put simply, any document that can be printed from a Mac can also be turned into a PDF. Users follow the normal steps necessary to print a document or Web site (usually File, Print), but can choose a button on the Print screen labeled "PDF" that converts the document.

    In seconds, I turned all types of documents on my iMac into PDFs, including images in JPEG and TIF formats, emails, Word documents and Web sites. This last conversion was helpful for saving not just a view of the current screen, but the entire site from the top of the page to the bottom.

    Options labeled "Compress PDF" and "Encrypt PDF" can be chosen in this Print screen. I chose Encrypt PDF and protected a PDF using a password in one quick step. The option to compress a PDF will decrease the size of an image in a document, but won't decrease the size of a text-only document.

    Two of the three Windows programs use a method similar to Apple's, letting me send documents or Web sites into print mode and converting them into PDFs. Downloading and installing deskPDF or CutePDF adds a virtual printer driver to the computer. Rather than choosing a separate button labeled "PDF," the conversion program is selected from a list of printers, and hitting the Print button saves the document as a PDF file. The first time I did this, I thought my document was printed rather than saved because a printer icon appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, as if the document was printing. But a screen appeared asking where I wanted to save the new PDF, and I specified a location.

    Docudesk offers free 24-hour technical support with all of its deskPDF programs, even trial versions. The company also touts its $40 deskUNPDF program, which restores PDFs to Word documents for editing purposes, one of the features also found in Adobe's $450 product.

    CutePDF writer and deskPDF must be used with separately installed converter programs, but these are small and free, and their installation is prompted after each of the core programs is downloaded. Both programs are also offered in upgraded versions that cost $50 for CutePDF Pro and $30 for deskPDF Pro, enabling advanced features like hyperlinks, encryption, password protection and printing restrictions.

    Adobe's Create Adobe PDF Online program offers a few more features than the others, but feels a bit disconnected because it uploads documents to the Web for PDF conversion rather than converting documents in an installed program.

    An option called Create Adobe PDF Online Printer installs a printer driver on your PC, like deskPDF and CutePDF. But this saves your PDF online forcing you to retrieve it via Adobe's Web site, an emailed link or an emailed attachment.

    After registering to use Adobe's online conversion product, users must select the file or Web page intended for PDF conversion. Security features are optional with each document, such as requiring a password to view it or not allowing others to print it. I tried both successfully. Once converted, a document can be delivered to you via email in a link or attachment. It can also be retrieved from a Conversion History section on the site or converted directly on the site.

    Most of these conversion programs are available in some free capacity. DeskPDF can be used five times free of charge in the standard and professional versions before it starts adding a watermark to each PDF, which is intrusive. Adobe's program can be used five times for each email that you register before you must subscribe to its conversion service.

    If you need to save a document in a format that has the greatest likelihood of being viewable by all of your recipients, PDFs are the way to go, and they aren't difficult to make.

    "Pandoc Converts All Your (Text) Documents." by Lincoln Mullen, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 2012 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/pandoc-converts-all-your-text-documents/38700?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

     


    Is Facebook the New MySpace?
    MySpace has an impressive lead today, but things can change quickly in the fluid world of mass-market social networking sites. Just ask Friendster. First Friendster was everybody's favorite social networking site. Then Friendster fell out of vogue--precipitously--and people stopped going there. In its place, MySpace became the darling of the Web. MySpace provided not only a free place to host your own online identity, but a full set of tools for meeting and interacting with others. Now everybody is talking about Facebook, which fits the same description, but in a very different way. Will Facebook become the next MySpace? I think so, and here's why.
    Mark Sullivan, PC World via The Washington Post, July 20, 2007 --- Click Here

    From the University of Chicago
    BiblioVault: An Alternative for Long-term Storage of Digital Book Files

    BiblioVault helps scholarly publishers preserve and extend the value of their books. We provide long-term storage of digital book files for our member presses, as well as a wide range of scanning, printing, transfer, and conversion services. Launched in late 2001 by the University of Chicago Press, BiblioVault operates under the umbrella of Chicago Distribution Services, which also oversees a digital printing center, the Chicago Digital Distribution Center (CDDC). The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supported the development of BiblioVault and the CDDC with three grants totaling $3.2 million.
    http://www.bibliovault.org/BV.index.epl

    Digital Production Strategies for Scholarly Publishers, by Denise Nitterhouse, BiblioVault from the University of Chicago, 2005 --- http://www.bibliovault.org/docs/digital_prod_strategies.pdf

    SCHOLARLY BOOK PUBLISHING

    Production

    Offset versus Digital Printing

    Specifications, Processes, and Quality

    Cost and Quantity Trade-offs

    Schedule

    Additional Considerations

    Production Decisions

    Scholarly Book Sales Patterns

    Scholarly Press Overprinting and Storage Costs

    Production Decision Making and

    Management Processes

    DIGITAL PRODUCTION STRATEGY EXAMPLES

    Paperback Reprints

    Hardcover Digital Reprints

    Hardcover Digital Frontlist Printing

    CHANGING PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION MODELS

    Integrating and Automating Production and Fulfillment

    Short-Run Digital Printing (SRDP)

    An Oldie but Goodie

    An Oversize Classic

    Saved by SRDP

    Impact of CDDC SRDP

    Harvard University Press: Ultra-Short Inventory-Replenishment Program (USIRP)

    MIT Press Classics Series: Bringing Books Back into Print

    Print-on-Demand (POD)

    Electronic Distribution (E-books)

    CHOOSING PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION ALTERNATIVES

    Effects of Digital printing

    Outstanding Issues


    From Carnegie-Mellon University: How to Turn Your Photographs into 3-D Photographs

    "A New Dimension for Your Photos Web service Fotowoosh wants to be the Flickr of 3-D," by Wade Roush, MIT's Technology Review, April 27, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18596/ 

    Looking at the photo prints from your Washington, D.C., vacation can prompt memories of being at real, three-dimensional places like the Lincoln Memorial. But what if you could actually walk into your photograph and stand at Lincoln's feet all over again--or at least zoom inside a 3-D version of your image on a computer screen? A new Web service called Fotowoosh promises to deliver such an experience, courtesy of computer-vision researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh.

    Derek Hoiem, a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, has spent the past year and a half figuring out how to get software to convert flat images into 3-D virtual-reality models that can be manipulated on-screen. Working with faculty members Alexei Efros and Martial Hebert, Hoiem came up with a machine-learning system that identifies various surfaces and their orientations based on what it has learned from examining previous photos. In essence, Fotowoosh frees the person viewing a photograph from the photographer's point of view so that he or she can explore perspectives other than the one the camera actually captured.

    Continued in article

     

    Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of education technology are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

     


    Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft Office

    From the University of Illinois Issues in Scholarly Communication Blog on December 13, 2006 --- http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/

    Microsoft has created a free add-in that enables you to embed a Creative Commons copyright license into a document that you create using the Microsoft application Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. With a Creative Commons license, authors can express their intentions regarding how their works may be used by others.

    To learn more about Creative Commons, please visit its web site, www.creativecommons.org. To learn more about the choices among the Creative Commons licenses, see http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses.

    Download the Creative Commons Microsoft Office add-in from the Microsoft website. For a short URL to this resource, use this tinyURL:
    http://tinyurl.com/y9y634

    Installation of the Creative Commons Microsoft Office add-in will add an option to your File menu whereby you can easily add the CC logo and usage statement to your document.


     

    Video Capturing, Editing, Compression, and Playback
    (With Links to UserView for Viewing and Capturing Remotely Located Computer Screens and Audio)

    More than 100 colleges have set up channels on YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/edu
    Many universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
    Search for words like “accounting”


    Overcoming Mistakes of Early Efforts in Online Teaching During the 2020 Pandemic

    Five Common Mistakes in Online Teaching (based upon student feedback)---
    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3634399

    1. Over-Assigning Work
    2. Recording Long Video Lectures
    3. Not Engaging Students in Multiple Formats of Learning
    4. Being Disorganized
    5. Not Engaging with Students

    Eight Mistakes in Online Teaching ---
    https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/2020/04/the-8-most-common-mistakes-when-teaching-online/

    1. Trying to "translate" a classroom course to the online environment. While I'd argue that there's no such thing as "online pedagogy" (there's only good pedagogy and poor pedagogy), classroom and online are different experiences that require attention to the conditions of learning distinct to each. Attempts to re-create the classroom learning experience, methods, and modes to the online environment is a basic error. Teaching online requires a "start over" in your course design, though not necessarily a change in student learning outcomes.

       
    2. Applying wrong metrics to the online experience. For example, many professors are wondering how to take attendance, or figuring out what counts for attendance. Attendance is a rather archaic and almost meaningless metric left over from the industrial age model of schooling. A better metric is student engagement.

       
    3. Becoming a talking head. It's bad enough students have to put up with a lot of poor classroom lectures. Now they have to suffer through countless hours of talking heads as professors videotape themselves "lecturing." I've been teaching online for 22 years. I've never once used Zoom in an online course or posted taped lectures. Forcing students to watch a taped disembodied talking head almost guarantees student disengagement, especially if we fail to appreciate the liability of transactional distance in the online environment. If the content of your lecture is that important, give your students a manuscript or your lecture notes to study.

       
    4. Posting video lectures over seven minutes long. The lecture method takes on a different function in the online environment. When instructors ask me how they can video tape and post their lectures online I ask, "Why would you want to duplicate the most maligned and least effective teaching method and pretend the online environment is a ‘classroom’ when it offers so much greater opportunity for student engagement?" The question to ask is, "What is the pedagogical function of this video?" The most effective functions are: a short introduction, an explication, or a demonstration.

       
    5. Assessing the wrong thing. I see some schools wanting to assess whether students "like" the online experience. What students "like" is beside the point of the educational. A common student comment on course evaluation for online courses is, "I would have preferred to have taken this course in the classroom." The response is, "How do you know?" Ask those students if they learned what the course was intended to provide, and they'll likely say, "Yes!" Assess the right thing: evidence of student learning and achievement of the course student learning outcomes. One can also evaluate the effectiveness of the course design: structure, scope, flow, alignment with program goals, etc.

       
    6. Ignoring aesthetics and design when creating an online course. Figuring out your course should not be an assignment. Your course should be designed so intuitively and aesthetically pleasing so the student perceives, intuits, and understands immediately what they are seeing and what is expected of them. Your students don't read a user manual or instructions when playing complex video games—they can immediately perceive what the game is about and what they are supposed to do. A well-designed website does not provide an orientation to new visitors. Your course should be clean, intuitive, and logical in design (and that includes not adding anything that does not directly support the learning outcomes).

       
    7. Attempting to go for coverage rather than depth. Many classroom instructors fail to appreciate that because online learning requires a higher level of student engagement, they need to reduce the amount of coverage they usually attempt in a classroom course—-which usually is way too much as it is. A good rule of thumb: cut the content coverage by half and focus on student engagement that (1) helps students achieve a learning outcomes and (2) provides evidence of learning.

       
    8. Failing to ask for help. Most faculty members are used to the silo-oriented isolated nature of academia. Traditionally, they develop their courses alone. At most they may share their course syllabi with colleagues on their faculties or departments, though more often than not they are seen mostly by the dean, registrar, and library services. Teaching online, especially for first time instructors, is a great opportunity to be more collaborative in our approach to teaching. Ask for help. Experienced online instructors, your school's instructional designers, and numerous online teaching support groups are ready and happy to help you make your online course the best it can be.

    Common Mistakes in Online Teaching ---
    https://www.tboxplanet.com/en/2020/05/12/common-mistakes-of-online-teaching/

    Mistake 1: Preferring quantity over quality
    Mistake 2: Lack of planning and organization
    Mistake 3: Using too many assumptions
    Mistake 4: Being monotonous
    Error 5: Little feedback

    Jensen Comment
    Nothing is more boring than watching talking heads or endless PowerPoint slides on a computer screen or inside classrooms.

    Students prefer live-action asynchronous and even interactive videos.
    Exhibit A is the hundreds of wonderful tutorials available free from Khan Academy ---
    https://www.khanacademy.org/
    For example sample the math videos ---
    https://www.khanacademy.org/math

    Exhibit B is at Brigham Young University where the first two semesters of basic accounting is taught via asynchronous videos to students living on campus.
    There are only a few times where students meet in a classroom ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

    Exhibit C is when I flipped my own classrooms
    In the last ten years of my 40 years of teaching full time I flipped my classrooms. I prepared hundreds of short Camtasia videos on the most technical parts of my accounting and AIS courses. Before class meetings students viewed these videos over and over until they saw the light. In class I then had students demonstrate in front of the class what they had learned. Student teams can even make their own videos as term projects.

    Camtasia videos or related screen capture videos from other software vendors are really quite easy to make and don't take much more time than preparing a lecture. They work best where what you are trying to teach can be shown in successions of computer screens. Students watch your cursor move about and listen to you explaining what is happening --- you use a microphone to put your voice into the videos. In Camtasia you can even make the videos interactive to keep students engaged.

    Camtasia Free Trial --- https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html
    Ask you campus educational technology experts about Camtasia and competing software for preparing Camtasia-like videos.

    You can use Zoom to bring your videos into remote classrooms, although there are other ways to bring these videos to students on and off campus.

    How a Flipped Classroom, Journal Clubs, and “Ad-Lib” Conversations Kept Students Engaged in Brian Gibbs' biology and chemistry courses ---
    https://narratives.insidehighered.com/covid-19-forced-him-to-teach-online/index.html?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=1f9c3dc283-DNU_2020_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-1f9c3dc283-197565045&mc_cid=1f9c3dc283&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

    How to Look Better on Zoom (and Other Video-Calling Apps) ---
    https://www.howtogeek.com/673264/how-to-look-better-on-zoom-and-other-video-calling-apps/



    "YouTube Creates New Section to Highlight College Content," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 27, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3684&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    TeacherTube (all topics for teachers to use and share) --- http://www.teachertube.com/

    There are now nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of which are in very basic accounting.
    But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
    There are nearly 70 videos on XBRL

    YouTube Education Channels --- http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

    Teaching Channel --- https://www.teachingchannel.org/

    MIT Video (150 channels and over 12,000 videos) --- http://video.mit.edu/

    "10 Faculty Perspectives on What Works in Lecture Capture," Chronicle of Higher Education, November 4, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/10-Faculty-Perspectives-on/129268/

    2014: The Year in Interactive Storytelling, Graphics, and Multimedia --- http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/29/us/year-in-interactive-storytelling.html

    New Handbook  for Educators Explains How to Produce & Distribute Free Video for the World ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2016/10/new-handbook-for-educators-explains-how-to-produce-distribute-free-video-for-the-world.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    YouTube now has 1.9 billion (with a ‘b’!) monthly, active users. Learning and educational content alone drives over a billion views a day on YouTube.---
    https://www.techsmith.com/blog/youtube-for-learning-videos/?utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=dnl110&utm_campaign=tsc&spMailingID=58004815&spUserID=MTQ4MzE0MDYwOTcxS0&spJobID=1541528497&spReportId=MTU0MTUyODQ5NwS2
    Jensen Comment
    I don't know how many users are double counted, but the number of users is undoubtedly enormous, some of whom are watching more than junk/entertainment videos.


    From the Scout Report on July 17, 2015

    TubeChop --- http://www.tubechop.com/ 

    For those of us who give presentations, write blogs, or post on social media, we often want to offer a snippet of a longer video to make a point, get a laugh, or otherwise spice things up. Enter TubeChop. The platform is beautiful for its simplicity. Just find the YouTube, Vimeo, TedTalk, or other video that you would like to sample and paste the link into TubeChop. Then use the end bars to choose the exact second when your clip will begin and end, select "chop it," and copy or embed the generated link.


    Free TechSmith Smart Player for Office --- https://www.techsmith.com/techsmith-smart-player-for-office.html
    Thank you Richard Campbell for the heads up

    With TechSmith Smart Player for Office, you can seamlessly integrate interactive content made with TechSmith products like Camtasia and Snagit into your PowerPoint and Excel documents right from OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online. To truly make your content measurable and collaborative, you can also add quiz and survey questions at any point in your video to make your content a two way communication tool.

    Then use our preview version of TechSmith Results to see your quiz and survey results and measure how well your message is received. Instead of back and forth questions via email and meetings, clarify document expectations or instructions with visual communication.


    Advanced video production for your touch screen computer or mobile---
    Http://www.touchcast.com
    Thank you Richard Campbell for the heads up on March 22, 2014.

    So if you have an IPad, go to the above link to view their sample content.
    Also you can download the free app to create content on your IPad.

    Camtasia --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/whatsnew.asp

    Videos from the company that developed Camtasia for the PC and the Mac
    Revolutionary Ideas in Learning:  News, stories, and training from TechSmith ---
    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4321D8B4B19EAE9F

     


    An Absolute Must Read for Educators
    One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert. Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you at
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

    This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

    My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of work that they are now sharing with us

    Screencasting
    ScreenCast from TechSmith is a leading storage/server alternative for your Jing and Camtasia videos ---
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechSmith

    However, there are quite a few other screeencast video capturing alternatives and hosts ---
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software
    This is a pretty impressive Wikipedia comparison site!

    Bob Jensen's video helpers ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

    Technology in the Arts --- http://www.technologyinthearts.org/

    "625 Free Movies On Line," MAAW's Blog, January 29, 2014 ---
    http://maaw.blogspot.com/2014/01/625-free-movies-on-line.html


    "University of Leeds Plans to Capture 50,000 Hours of Video Annually With Mediasite," by Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology, February 10, 2014 ---
    http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/02/10/university-of-leeds-plans-to-capture-50000-hours-of-video-annually-with-mediasite.aspx?=ct21

    The University of Leeds in the United Kingdom is deploying Sonic Foundry's Mediasite Enterprise Video Platform for lecture capture and multimedia management. The Mediasite system automates the capture, management, delivery and search of live and on-demand videos and rich media.

    "This is a significant investment which will transform teaching and learning here at Leeds," said Neil Morris, director of digital learning at the university, in a prepared statement. "Not only can we capture all our audio and video assets, but Mediasite will allow us to store, manage and publish content across multiple channels."

    While the university had previously captured lectures on a limited scale, it wanted to scale up its efforts with a single video platform that integrates with its Blackboard learning management system. Expecting to capture about 50,000 hours of content annually, the school plans to record lectures and other teaching activities to give students a flexible and personalized approach to learning. All content will be searchable, secure and managed in one place via Mediasite.

    "We know our students learn in different ways, so as well as attending lectures, this gives them the opportunity to engage with the materials wherever they may be and at their own pace," continued Morris. "Whether that's going over topics that are particularly complex or using recordings to help with revision, this new system will provide over 30,000 students with outstanding resources to support their learning."

    Continued in article

    Also note that BYU teaches the first two accounting courses almost entirely on video with only infrequent classroom meetings ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

     


    Camtasia v7.1
    Closed Captioning for Camtasia Videos

    October 12, 2010 message from Richard Campbell

    The primary new feature is speech-to-text recognition for closed captioning.

    This facilitates section 508 compliance for the hearing impaired.

    http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/ 

    Richard J. Campbell
    mailto:campbell@rio.edu

    Bob Jensen's threads on technology for the hearing disabled are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

     


    Question
    What other ways can I use my new sunglasses with a built-in Camcorder?

    Here are a few starting thoughts:

    Unfortunately and truthfully, my wife's favorite cable TV channel is QVC ---
    http://www.qvc.com/
    QVC generally has high quality merchandise. Erika mostly buys clothes, gifts, and gadgets for me that I can never find on those rare occasions where a gadget might be useful.

    Her latest purchase is four pairs of sunglasses with a built-in camcorder --- Click Here
    She intends to give them away as gifts this holiday season.
    Here is a site with a picture and the following description ---
    http://nugossips.com/eagle-i-built-in-videoaudio-recording-camera-sunglass

    Eagle-I Built-in Video/Audio Recording Camera
    Sunglass is designed with polarized lenses that provide UV protection. The Eagle-I Camera Sunglass comes with built-in video camera to record video and audio content for up to three hours on the internal memory. The camera is positioned over the bridge of the nose for minimal visibility, while still providing a wide recording range. It is very easy to use, just push a button to start recording. A slot on the arm of the glasses allows you to input your own MicroSD memory card for more recording time up to eight hours with a 2GB MicroSD card, not included. QVC offers Eagle-I Built-in Video/Audio Recording Camera Sunglass for $79.20

    Interestingly, the price above is stated as $79 whereas the QVC site has them with a crossed out $96 price that makes you think you're getting a special deal for $87. Erika falls for that every time. What's worse is that the QVC site also claims the "retail value" is $192. That's stimated the same way banks are now estimating the value of poisoned loan portfolios.

    My cool sunglasses plug into a USB port for battery recharging and video downloading. Video playback works on either Quicktime software or my favorite free video software called VLC Media Player --- http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
    My favorite would be Camtasia Producer if this software was not so limited with respect to what codecs it will play.


    You can search video and start the video when a particular word crops up
    YouTube's Interactive Transcripts --- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/youtubes-interactive-transcripts.html

    YouTube added a cool feature for videos with closed captions: you can now click on the "transcript" button to expand the entire listing. If you click on a line, YouTube will show the excerpt from the video corresponding to the text. If you use your browser's find feature, you can even search inside the video. Here's an an example of video that includes a transcript.

    Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm


    Here is my first video capture, to date, with my cool sunglasses ---
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/VideoCoolSunglasses/Vid0000.3gp

    To be honest I would probably use my cool sunglasses more if they only captured still photos since it's a bit more convenient for me to put still photos on the Web, and readers of things like Tidbits probably prefer viewing pictures rather than having to download my home videos.

    But now I'm watching each and every day for Lon to drive across my lawn and crash into a tree. Actually its more likely to be a partying golfer in a golf cart on Lon's golf course behind my back lawn. The Sunset Hill House golf course is owned and operated by Lon and Nancy Henderson. Fortunately, the golf course was placed into a New Hampshire Conservatancy so that it can never be developed into anything other than a golf course. The golfers are really friendly folks.

    We have a son Mike in Yuba City, California who owns a pro shop. He sent me a sign that reads as follows:

    "When I die bury my balls beside my old bag."  
    (His mother doesn't care for that sign.)

    I nailed the sign to the side of my barn so that golfers can read it while moving toward the third tee.
    Erika has not yet discovered that I tacked it on the barn.

    December 3,  2009 reply from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@TERRY.UGA.EDU]

  • Bob,

    This cool new product reminds me of a GAAP issue of many years ago. I was in the national office of E&Y and we were discussing the amortization of film costs for one of the major movie studios. Those costs are amortized based on total expected revenue per film. At that time, domestic revenues were still the major part of a film's total expected gross, but foreign revenues were also quite large and sales to both broadcast and cable television were becoming larger. More importantly, video rentals were becoming a much larger source of revenue and the client in question was predicting that this would increase substantially in estimating future revenue. Our practice office auditors were naturally skeptical and asked for advice from "national." As we discussed this issue, I observed that if we had had the same conversation several years earlier we wouldn't have even thought of sales to broadcast television, much less video rentals, so perhaps it was reasonable to assume expanding sources of revenues. Then I went on to speculate that sometime in the future there could even be a product where individuals could watch movies on the backs of their glasses while commuting on trains into New York City, for example! It turns out that my prediction came true!

    Denny Beresford


    Pete Wilson provides some great videos on how to make accounting judgments ---
    http://www.navigatingaccounting.com/


    The “Professional Judgment” Problem: Do the ends justify the means?

    "The “Professional Judgment” Problem," by David Albrecht, The Summa, February 11, 2010 ---
    http://profalbrecht.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/the-professional-judgment-problem/

    There’s quite a discussion going on over at AECM now, centered around whether or not corporate disclosures via XBRL tagged data will be audited, and therefore receive some sort of assurance blessing.

    One professor whom I respect a great deal is arguing that it is in the best interest of companies to make the best and most honest disclosures as they seek to raise capital, and it is in the best interest of auditors to associate themselves with only those companies that make the best and most honest disclosures via XBRL (and presumably via financial statements, also).

    To which I say: hogwash!

    I’ve seen enough corporate reporting shenanigans, and auditor “nod-and-wink” assurance, that I have concluded that there are indeed sufficient incentives in place for corporate agents to try to game the system by mis-reporting financial results. I don’t see why, if there is substantial non-compliance with GAAP, that XBRL tagging would be a refuge of purity. Moreover, there are incentives in place for auditors to fail to object to minor transgressions. Some of the times, the incentives are sufficiently large so that auditors fail to object to major transgressions. I guess I don’t see why assurance on XBRL reporting will be any different.

    I certainly don’t trust corporate executives or auditors, as classes, to properly exercise “professional” judgment. Oh, proper judgment may be exercised more than half the time of the time, but given the risk averse nature of many investors, it is enough for a few bad apples to give the rest a bad name. It is the many examples of bad reporting and bad auditing (while admittedly in the minority) that are enough to destroy trust.

    A spouse only need go wayward one time in order to destroy any trust the other felt. From that point on, the wayward spouse may be preceived to be untrustworthy even though a majority of days end without an unsanctioned hookup.

    I believe it is not always in a company’s best interest to make an honest disclosure, and it is not always in an auditor’s interest to demand proper accounting. That is because many costs to misbehaving are long-term, but the rewards for transgressing are short term in nature. When making certain decisions, sometimes the focus of either corporate executive or auditor can shift to the short-term on a moment’s notice.

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    David has entered into the very controversial "little white lie" rationalization of deception. The truth should stand on its own in financial reporting, because once we start rationalizing little white lies we never no when to stop. Pretty soon a thousand dollar white lies here and a hundred dollar white lies there begin to accumulate until we have over a billion dollar accumulation of lies --- which is exactly what happened in Worldcom.

    If you really want to take up the debate of whether the ends justify the means, then have your students first watch the video of how Worldcom's Controller, David Meyers, at the time of the infractions justified his illegal actions on the premise that the ends justified the means --- because investors and employees in Worldcom would be better off by deceptive rather than honest accounting in the "short term."

    June 15, 2009 message from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@TERRY.UGA.EDU]

    I apologize if this is something that has already been mentioned but I just became aware of a very interesting video of former WorldCom Controller David Meyers at Baylor University last March - http://www.baylortv.com/streaming/001496/300kbps_str.asx 

    The first 20 minutes is his presentation, which is pretty good - but the last 45 minutes or so of Q&A is the best part. It is something that would be very worthwhile to show to almost any auditing or similar class as a warning to those about to enter the accounting profession.

    Denny Beresford

    Jensen Comment on Some Things You Can Learn from the Video
    David Meyers became a convicted felon largely because he did not say no when his supervisor (Scott Sullivan, CFO)  asked him to commit illegal and fraudulent accounting entries that he, Meyers, knew were wrong. Interestingly, Andersen actually lost the audit midstream to KPMG, but KPMG hired the same same audit team that had been working on the audit while employed by Andersen. David Myers still feels great guilt over how much he hurt investors. The implication is that these auditors were careless in a very sloppy audit but were duped by Worldcom executives rather than be an actual part of the fraud. In my opinion, however, that the carelessness was beyond the pale --- this was really, really, really bad auditing and accounting.

    At the time he did wrong, he rationalized that he was doing good by shielding Worldcom from bankruptcy and protecting employees, shareholders, and creditors. However, what he and other criminals at Worldcom did was eventually make matters worse. He did not anticipate this, however, when he was covering up the accounting fraud. He could've spent 65 years in prison, but eventually only served ten months in prison because he cooperated in convicting his bosses. In fact, all he did after the fact is tell the truth to prosecutors. His CEO, Bernard Ebbers, got 25 years and is still in prison.

    The audit team while with Andersen and KPMG relied too much on analytical review and too little on substantive testing and did not detect basic accounting errors from Auditing 101 (largely regarding capitalization of over $1 billion expenses that under any reasonable test should have been expensed).

    Meyers feels that if Sarbanes-Oxley had been in place it may have deterred the fraud. It also would've greatly increased the audit revenues so that Andersen/KPMG could've done a better job.

    To Meyers' credit, he did not exercise his $17 million in stock options because he felt that he should not personally benefit from the fraud that he was a part of while it was taking place. However, he did participate in the fraud to keep his job (and salary). He also felt compelled to follow orders the CFO that he knew was wrong.

    The hero is detecting the fraud was Worldcom's internal auditor Cynthia Cooper who subsequently wrote the book:
    Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. ISBN 978-0-470-12429) http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0470124296/ref=sib_dp_pt#

    Meyers does note that the whistleblower, Cooper, is now a hero to the world, but when she blew the whistle she was despised by virtually everybody at Worldcom. This is a price often paid by whistleblowers --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#WhistleBlowing

    Bob Jensen's threads on the Worldcom fraud are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#WorldcomFraud

    Pete Wilson provides some great videos on how to make accounting judgments ---
    http://www.navigatingaccounting.com/

    Other possible source material for ethics, independence, and professionalism courses is available at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Professionalism


    Bob Jensen's video helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
    This includes software for capturing still screens of streaming video and capturing of streaming video as video.

    Internet users can view video either as video file downloads (that may or may not be stored on a hard drive) or as streaming video (that does not entail downloading a media file but can be captured with streaming media software).

    Update from the AAA Accounting Commons --- http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home
    I thank Rick for sharing his expertise in the new VoiceThread multimedia education and communication technology.
    Accounting Professor Rick Lillie Uses VoiceThread to Create Streaming Video --- http://iaed.wordpress.com/
     

    If you have not yet discovered VoiceThread, I strongly recommend that you click on the link below and explore the VoiceThread website. You are in for a real technology treat!

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VOICETHREAD WEBSITE

    I use VoiceThread to create streaming video lectures, to create tutorials explaining how to solve problems, to explain answers to quiz and examination questions, and more. VoiceThread is easy to use, is similar to PowerPoint (but much more robust), and is web-hosted which makes it easy for you to share VoiceThread presentations with your students and colleagues.

    During a presentation that I gave at the recent 2008 American Accounting Association (AAA) Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California, I talked about VoiceThread. To help participants to see how easy it is to create and share dynamic presentations with VoiceThread, I put together a short presentation that explains how to use VoiceThread. Click on the link below to view the short tutorial program.

     

    I encourage you to sign up for a free account.  Learn to use VoiceThread.  If you like what you create, then you can upgrade to the “Pro” version, which is very inexpensive. To get the full benefit of using VoiceThread, you need a headset/microphone and webcam.  To begin, use the tools included in VoiceThread. If you have questions about VoiceThread, use the “Contact Me” option on the right side of the screen.  Send me a message.  Include your email and/or telephone number.  I will be happy to work with you.

    Enjoy!
    Rick Lillie


    Jensen Comment
    VoiceThread has an advantage in allowing a community of users to comment (in multimedia) comments on an instructional video.
    It's drawback is that it uses a lot of storage and bandwidth for talking heads.

    Some VoiceThread pricing information is given at http://voicethread.com/pricing/pro/
    It is possible to get small amounts of video file storage free, but it can get really expensive when the community goes on and on with long commentaries.
    In the pro version, file sizes are limited to 100 Mb. This is about one tenth the size of a 10 minute YouTube video. YouTube generally limits file sizes to 1 Gb or 10 minutes of compressed video such as mpg compression --- http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hlrm=en&answer=57924
    Colleges can stream much larger videos on YouTube such as the courses that UC Berkeley makes available on YouTube with over one hour of video for each lecture in a course.

    VoiceThread makes it possible to have somewhat longer videos in a 100 Mb file by using small video screens. Note how Rick does this at http://voicethread.com/#q.b173180.i923368

    YouTube also allows any users to comment in text format such that commentaries can accompany videos on YouTube. The huge advantage of YouTube is that videos can be uploaded, viewed, and even downloaded for free. VoiceThread, for an annual fee, has more features.

    Although I've not tried VoiceThread, it would seem that cost and file size limits make this less attractive than YouTube.

    Other video streaming alternatives are summarized at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

    Camtasia users should note that TechSmith will serve up streaming videos in a utility called ScreenCast --- http://www.techsmith.com/screencast.asp

    You can read the following at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

    However, in most instances open sharing videos are streaming (using the term loosely here) videos for which there is no file to download. In that case the video must be captured in total or in part by software designed for such purposes. The software I like for video capturing is called Camtasia Recorder --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/record.asp
    Also see http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/education.asp
    This is cheaper alternative than many more specialized products for streaming video capture. You can download my PowerPoint file about Camtasia at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/
    Links to examples are given in this slide show.

     

    Most faculty serve up video from their university's servers, YouTube, and Tech Smith's Screencast, but there are other alternatives

    "How to Choose the Right Host For Your Online Video," By Robin Miller, ReadWriteWeb, July 25, 2011 ---
    http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/07/how-to-choose-the-right-host-f.php

    Bob Jensen's video helpers are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm

    Also see
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

    Other streaming media alternatives are summarized at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

    August 31, 2008 reply from Rick Lillie at the AAA Accounting Commons --- http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home

    Hi Bob,

    Thank you for your comments about VoiceThread.  I would like to expand on several points that you raised.

    Regarding the way VoiceThread works

    VoiceThread is a hosted service that can be used in a variety of ways.  For example, VoiceThread may be used to create

    Currently, VoiceThread is offered in both free and low-fee options.  The pricing screen needs a little more explanation.

    Pros vs Cons of VoiceThread

    IN CLOSING

    There are lots of ways to create rich-media instructional materials.  I use them extensively in my accounting courses.

    Personally, I do not like Camtasia, Adobe Presenter, Camtasia Recorder and similar software programs.  For me, these programs are too complex to use.  I like processes to be as simple as possible.  This is why I prefer VoiceThread.

    VoiceThread allows me to focus on creating the slides, pictures (jpeg files), Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) files, etc., that I want to include in a streaming presentation.  VoiceThread makes it easy to go from slides to streaming video with embedded commentary.  VoiceThread saves the file and gives me a URL to the program or the html code for embedding a player into course materials.

    The overall process is simple and easy to use.

    Many accounting faculty that I have talked with seem hesitant to include technology in their courses and to use technology tools when creating course materials.  When I find something that will make life easier, I share the information.

    Thank you for your comments.  I enjoy this type of discussion.

    Best wishes,

    Rick Lillie

    August 31,  2008 reply from Bob Jensen at the AAA Accounting Commons --- http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home

    Hi Rick,

    I  really appreciate your detailed elaboration on video creation alternatives. Thank you so much! Please keep them coming at the AAA Commons. You obviously have unique technology skills.

    The one area where I disagree with you is on Camtasia. I personally learned how to use Camtasia in less than an hour and then recorded many technical videos for my students to use outside the classroom. It cut down on the traffic through my office door by about 95% from students who just did follow the technical details in class. More importantly these videos (especially the ones about MS Access technicalities) helped me explain things that I forgot how to do over time. Examples of my Camtasia videos can be found at the following links:

    ACCT 5342 (AIS videos) --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

    ACCT 5341 (Accounting Theory videos) at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/ 

    I even prepared a tutorial on how to record (capture) computer image videos and produce (compress) them into smaller files for storage and delivery --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
    (I suggest clicking on the CamtasiaTutorial.wmv file)

    I hope accounting professors and students will not be scared away from Camtasia before even trying it out. A limited and free version may be attempted first. It is called Jing --- http://www.jingproject.com/ 

    But an even better suggestion is to download Camtasia Studio itself on a free trial basis --- http://www.jingproject.com/ 

    Another interesting product from TechSmith is called UserView. Suppose a student is located somewhere else in the world. UserView allows a professor to both see and record what is happening on a student's computer screen such that the professor can analyze the moves and suggest to the student how to do something better. Similarly, the student can see what is happening on a professor's computer while he/she narrates.  Good stuff --- http://www.techsmith.com/uservue.asp 

    But for me, the best thing since grapefruit is Camtasia Studio for producing videos for my own servers, YouTube, and possibly even VoiceThread. For YouTube I suggest choosing mpg compressions after recording a wmv video.

    Bob Jensen's video helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

    Thanks Rick,

    Bob Jensen


    XtraNormal --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xtranormal

    Xtranormal is a website which hosts text-to-speech based computer animated videoclips which can be created by any user and uploaded by a downloadable program or created directly online. It has had little online advertising and has spread by word of mouth and by being uploaded to Facebook and other social media sites.One website refers to controversy about an employee from Best Buy being fired for uploading an animated video complaining about customer service.

    The website offers either a free trial program to be downloaded to the computer with a fairly userfriendly interface, though limited to simple animation or creating a video while logged into the website. Popular user-created animations are available to watch.

    A growing collection of amateur animators use a do-it-yourself Web site called Xtranormal to vent comically about the academic life. And to teach.
    The online animation site they use has become a tool for teaching as well as satire

    "So You Think an English Professor's Life Is a Cartoon," by Mark Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/So-You-Think-an-English/125954/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


    March 11, 2010 message from XXXXX

    Bob,

    I am wondering if you know of any websites where I can gain access to watch camtasia-style (or narrated powerpoints) videos/lectures of upper level accounting instruction?

    My Dean asked me to look into creating an asynchronous, distance/hybrid accounting program. I want to get an idea of what is out there. I think the classes I need are:

    AIS Cost Intermediate 1 and 2 Tax Auditing Advanced GNP or NFP Any other advanced accounting, like advanced cost.

    Thank you,

    XXXXX

    March 11, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

    Firstly, I would begin with the asynchronous way basic accounting is taught at BYU almost entirely with variable-speed videos even to resident students living on campus ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo
    BYU sells these video CDs to the public at a reasonable price.


    Next I would enter a number of search terms into YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/
    Examples include:
    Accounting Information Systems
    Accounting Ethics
    Intermediate accounting
    Advanced accounting
    Governmental accounting
    Hedge accounting
    Cost Accounting
    Managerial Accounting
    Fair Value Accounting
    Auditing
    SAP or ERP
    XBRL

     

    I have a few accounting theory Camtasia videos at
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/
    Links to my other online materials (including PowerPoint presentations) are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm

     

    My PowerPoint presentations and Excel workbooks are linked at
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/Calgary/CD/

    I suggest you contact my good friend Amy Dunbar about how she uses Camtasia videos in her online tax courses ---
    Amy.Dunbar@business.uconn.edu

    In the future U.S. accounting programs will be building in more and more IFRS. Here there’s a heck of a lot of free educational material available ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#IFRSlearning
    There are some good cases available, especially from the Big Four.

    There is also a lot of free XBRL material, including some good videos --- http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
    Click on “Education and Training”

    The AICPA has a library of both fee and free videos --- http://www.aicpa.org/
    Enter the search term “video”

    Other organizations have some deals on videos for courses, including the IIA, Certified Fraud Examiners, etc.

    There’s a ton of free material on ethics and fraud.

    The OKI --- http://www.okiproject.org/view/html/site/oki
    MIT’s Open Courseware Links --- http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
    Click on the Sloan School for accounting, finance, and other business open courseware materials
     

    MIT’s Video Lecture Browser (better for the sciences than business) --- http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/


    "MIT's Management School Shares Teaching Materials (Cases) Online," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, 2009 ---
    Click Here

    Though some business schools charge for the “case studies” they develop as teaching aids, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced today that it is making a set of teaching materials available free online.

    MIT’s Sloan School of Management has unveiled a set of case studies, videos, interactive teaching tools, and teacher’s notes on a new Web site called MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources --- https://mitsloan.mit.edu/MSTIR/IndustryEvolution/Pages/default.aspx

    The announcement comes eight years after MIT created its OpenCourseWare project, which makes instructional materials for courses available online for free.

    Other open sharing materials provided by prestigious universities can be found at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Oh my Gosh!

    I forgot to mention the AAA Commons where there’s now a great deal of available, including syllabi, tutorials, course materials, videos, and textbook recommendations --- http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home

    Soon many of the AAA Commons pages will be available to the world in general and not just AAA members. Among other things this makes the resources available to all of your students

    Bob Jensen

    Bob Jensen's threads on distance education and training alternatives are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm


    Question
    What types of students benefit most versus least from video lectures?

    "Video Lectures May Slightly Hurt Student Performance," by Sophia Li, Inside Higher Ed, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 21, 2010 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Video-Lectures-May-Slightly/24963/

    No clear winner emerges in the contest between video and live instruction, according to the findings of a recent study led by David N. Figlio, a professor of education and social policy at Northwestern University. The study found that students who watched lectures online instead of attending in-person classes performed slightly worse in the course over all.

    A previous analysis by the U.S. Department of Education that examined existing research comparing online and live instruction favored online learning over purely in-person instruction, according to the working paper by Mr. Figlio and his colleagues, which was released this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

    But Mr. Figlio's study contradicted those results, showing that live instruction benefits Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students in particular.

    Colleges and universities that are turning to video lectures because of their institutions' tight budgets may be doing those students a disservice, said Mark Rush, a professor of economics at the University of Florida and one of the working paper's authors.

    More research will be necessary, however, before any definite conclusions can be drawn about the effectiveness of video lectures, said Lu Yin, a graduate student at the University of Florida who worked on the project. Future research could study the effectiveness of watching lectures online for topics other than microeconomics, which was the subject of the course evaluated in the study, Ms. Yin said.

    Jensen Comment
    Studies like this just do not extrapolate well into the real world, because so very, very much depends upon both how instructors use videos and how students use videos. My students had to take my live classes, but my Camtasia video allowed them to keep going over and over, at their own learning pace, technical modules (PQQ Possible Quiz Questions) until they got technical things down pat ---
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/
    Students who did not use the videos as intended usually paid a price.

    However, some outcomes in the above study conform to my priors. For example, Brigham Young University (BYU) has very successfully replaced live lectures with variable-speed video lectures in the first two basic accounting courses ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

    However, BYU students most likely have mostly high achieving students to begin with, especially in accounting. It would be interesting to formally study the use such variable-speed video in colleges having a higher proportion of lower-achieving students. My guess is that the variable-speed video lectures would be less effective with lower-achieving students who are not motivated to keep replaying videos until they get the technical material down pat. The may be lower achieving in great measure because they are less motivated learners or learners who have too many distractions (like supportingchildren) to have as much quality study time.

    And live lecturing/mentoring is hard to put in a single category because there are so many types of live lecturing/mentoring ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching

    In conclusion, I think much depends upon the quality of the video versus lecture, class size, and student motivation. Videos offer the tremendous advantage of instant replay and being able to adjust to the best learning pace of the student. Live lectures can, and often do, lead to more human interactive factors that can be good (if they motivate) and bad (if they distract or instill dysfunctional fear).

    The best video lectures are probably those that are accompanied with instant messaging with an instructor or tutor that can provide answers or clues to answers not on the video.


    Flipped Teaching ---- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom

    Jensen Comment
    By now you are probably weary of articles about flipped classrooms. This one is a bit more interesting, however, since it entails flipping the large lecture courses in a famous Ivy League university (Columbia University) ---
    http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/10/22/flipping-the-lecture-hall.aspx

    There's no question that the flipped classroom model has become all the rage at colleges and universities across the country. In fact, in the most recent Horizon Report, the New Media Consortium (NMC) called the flipped classroom one of the most important emerging trends in educational technology for higher education, noting, "The model is becoming increasingly popular in higher education institutions because of how it rearranges face-to-face instruction for professors and students, creating a more efficient and enriching use of class time."

    Yet with all the flipped classroom's potential for active, collaborative learning and increased interaction between professors and students, there's still one bastion of higher education that has resisted the trend: the large lecture course.

    With the large lecture format, said NMC Senior Communications Director Samantha Becker, "it's really hard to personalize the material so that a student can feel like they have ownership over their own learning process." And, she added, "It's hard to speak up. There's always the fear of being ostracized by other students or feeling like asking stupid questions."

    Maurice Matiz, executive director of Columbia University's (NY) Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, agreed: "Sitting in one of these 180-student classrooms is a very passive situation," he said. "We've found that students aren't really learning very much."

    Matiz and his colleagues are out to change that — by finding ways to adopt the flipped classroom model to traditional large lecture courses.

    The Big Flip

    They started last year with Associate Professsor Brent Stockwell's biochemistry class of 180 students. Stockwell was discouraged by the number of students who were not completing the required reading assignments before coming to class and, thus, were unprepared to get the most out of his lectures.

    So, in the fall 2013 semester, he began creating weekly slide presentations using PowerPoint and the screen-recording application ScreenFlow. He would upload the videos to YouTube, then embed them into the syllabus section of the online learning management system and invite students to watch. Stockwell also placed a link to a short quiz underneath the video player on the syllabus page. Since the quiz results counted toward students' grades, he was assured that most students would watch the video and come to the following day's class prepared.

    "[The quiz] is something we learned to do with our MOOCs, and then applied to what we do on campus," said Matiz, who helped Stockwell organize the flipped class.

    The flipped format allowed Stockwell to delve deeper and in new directions with the live content he presented in class. He also incorporated a polling service called Socrative that students could access on their mobile devices. Students could respond to questions anonymously in real time, giving him a sense of whether they understood the concepts presented to them, allowing him to revisit a difficult topic or move on to other material.

    Then he divided the class of 180 into groups of five and, for part of each class, he would give them problems to work on together, such as how a specific fatty acid should be labeled or how to predict the mechanism of an action of a drug based on the results of an experiment.

    The group work led to livelier discussions and forced students to synthesize and apply information from the textbook, videos and classroom discussion.

    "What I particularly appreciated about Professor Stockwell is the way he wove all the different components together," NMC's Becker said. "He countered the size of the class by grouping people together and allowing for anonymous polling through the response feature."

    Deciding to try an even larger class, Matiz moved on to Professor Rachel Gordon's Body, Health and Disease class of 250 in Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons. Gordon also used short video lectures students could view before class, reserving class time for discussions of case studies with an audience response system. She would poll students after covering a concept and, if less than 50 percent of students chose correct answers, she would ask them to break into small groups to discuss their choices.

    Typically, she said, the peer discussions would lead to increases in accuracy when students were polled a second time.

    "On many levels it was more satisfying than lecturing, where you don't really know if the students are 'getting it,'" Gordon said. "I hope that more teachers will take the plunge. It's worth it."

    Challenges

    One challenge that Matiz and Stockwell encountered with applying the flipped classroom model to large courses: the physical limitations of spaces that are not inherently designed for small group work.

    "This is an old university," Matiz said, "over 250 years old. A lot of the classrooms are traditional classrooms. Many of them even still have desks that are bolted to the floor."

    Nevertheless, Stockwell made it work. "If you're willing to deal with those issues, you can still do it," Matiz said.

    Fortunately for Gordon, the Columbia medical school has a relatively new campus and entire sets of classrooms that were built with collaboration in mind.

    Stockwell also noted that the biggest challenge he had in the first year was running out of difficult, thought-provoking problems and case studies to give his students when they broke up into small groups. To resolve that challenge in this, his second year of using the flipped classroom model with the biochemistry course, he has called on other biochemistry professors in the New York area to build a repository of problem sets that can be shared.

    Despite the difficulties, Matiz said, the command of material by students during and at the end of the course was so obvious to Stockwell and Gordon that he is convinced of the benefits of the flipped classroom in college and university courses.

    "There are so many advantages," Matiz said. "The course really becomes just for the student."

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    I was flipping my classes in an electronic classroom at Trinity University before somebody coined the phrase "flipping the classroom." I forced students to study technical content in my Camtasia videos before coming to class. In class I made them show what they had learned from those videos. This is a great way to help students learn technical content and to not put off learning until examinations. The chronic complaint was that my courses demanded more time than their other courses.


    "Inside the Flipped Classroom," by Katherine Mangan, The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 30, 2013 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Inside-the-Flipped-Classroom/141891/?cid=wc

    Sara Infante listens intently and scribbles notes as her chemistry professor describes how to identify the masses and atomic numbers of two isotopes of carbon. When it's time to fill in a table showing that she understands the lecture so far, she clicks her mouse, and the lecture, which is being delivered online, freezes on the computer screen.

    The questions that Ms. Infante and her classmates at Southwestern University ask their professor, Maha Zewail-Foote, will help shape the next day's session in the classroom. There, moving on to more-complex topics, she'll help them tackle the kinds of problems that used to be given as homework.

    It's Ms. Infante's first experience with the flipped classroom, where traditional classwork is done at home and homework is done in class.

    "I like this because when you're listening to the lecture at home and you don't get something, you can rewind and replay it as many times as you need to," says Ms. Infante, 19, a sophomore majoring in animal behavior who hopes to become a marine-mammal trainer.

    "And when you're working through problems," she adds, "you aren't sitting in your room pulling your hair out because you didn't retain the information from the lecture."

    The video for the semester's first flipped class, with its accompanying tables and diagrams, lasted just under 10 minutes. They're usually five to seven minutes, which Ms. Zewail-Foote describes as the attention span of most students. But in her opinion, a well-crafted, concise, 10-minute video that students can pause and replay as many times as they want packs more teaching in than a 20-minute lecture.

    The course Web site include outlines that students fill in while they're listening to her recorded lessons, each of which ends with a short quiz.

    "Between the lecture outline and video, they should come to class ready," Ms. Zewail-Foote says. "They understand how to calculate average atomic mass, so we can jump right in."

    At colleges nationwide, more and more professors are inverting homework and classwork this way, using technology to give students a head start on classroom sessions where they can be active participants and not just listeners.

    The flipped classroom is not for everyone. Many students feel lost without a traditional lecture to get them started, and some instructors are reluctant to give up the podium for a role on the sidelines, says Carol A. Twigg, president of the National Center for Academic Transformation.

    Since 1999 the center has helped redesign about 300 courses on 159 campuses, often in a flipped format, using technology to cut costs and improve learning. (Southwestern did not work with the center on the revamped chemistry course, but it did consult with other proponents of the technique, as part of a project, supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, aimed at making Southwestern's science curriculum more hands-on.)

    Many of the national center's course redesigns have been in remedial math, financed by $2.2-million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The center has also helped flip courses in subjects as diverse as Spanish, psychology, nutrition, and anatomy.

    "The traditional classroom typically consists of a lecture of some kind where students are listening or watching the professor," Ms. Twigg says. "Then they do the hard work, solving problems, on their own. The notion is, flip that experience so the professor can help students when they need the help."

    Switching from the role of "sage on the stage" to "guide on the side" requires a professional and cultural shift that many faculty members resist, she says. "It's easier to stand up and give the same lecture you've been giving for 20 years than it is to rethink your course, come up with new activities, and really engage your students."

    The problem-solving and personalized interaction that take place face-to-face sets these classes apart from massive open online courses, or MOOCs, which too often consist mainly of recorded talks, she says, explaining that flipping the classroom requires more than simply moving lectures online.

    Teaching to the masses is tempting, but it's not the same as offering a flipped course, she says. "Let's say I am the most brilliant lecturer of intelligent design, and now I'll have an audience of 200,000 instead of 200.

    "The problem is, the success rates are awful," she adds, in a not-so-subtle jab at Sebastian Thrun, the former Stanford University professor who co-founded the MOOC platform Udacity last year, after his online "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" course attracted more than 160,000 students worldwide. About 23,000 of those students completed the course.

    While MOOCs can be effective at delivering content, flipped classrooms make students active participants in their education, says Southwestern's new president, Edward B. Burger. The former mathematics professor at Williams College has created more than 3,000 instructional CD-ROMS and videos in math that are used in classrooms from kindergarten through college. Instead of having students struggle to figure out problems in their dorm rooms at 2 a.m., he says, "I want to be there when students hit those roadblocks."

    Although he didn't call it a flipped classroom at the time, Mr. Burger cultivated the technique of "inverting the roles of homework and classwork," an approach that contributed to his winning a national teaching award in 2010.

    Back in the common room of her dormitory suite at Southwestern, Ms. Infante has finished listening to the online lecture and asks her roommate, who's curled up in an armchair across the room, for a scientific calculator so she can take the quiz.

    Her roommate's own chemistry professor, Emily Niemeyer, offers the format once a week, on what she calls "flipped Fridays."

    Ms. Infante aces the quiz and doesn't have any questions for her professor. Other students were stumped by a few questions, Ms. Zewail-Foote notes the following morning as she prepares for class. One student asked: "Will there ever be a time when an atom is not neutral and the number of protons and electrons don't balance each other out?"

    The explanation would normally come up in Chapter 4, but Ms. Zewail-Foote decides to work the answer into today's classroom problem-solving session. Reviewing the quiz results, she can tell that students generally understand the material, so she is comfortable accelerating the pace a bit.

    There's little danger that students are going to nod off in her class, because she peppers it with questions that they must answer using their hand-held clickers. If 29 students have clicked their answers, she pauses before moving on until all 30 have weighed in.

    Shortly after the class begins, students cluster their desks into groups of three or four to work on problems as she walks around, occasionally crouching next to those who seem stuck.

    When the semester's first flipped-classroom session is over, at least one student isn't yet sold. "I'm going to fail this class," says Alex Petrucci, a 20-year-old sophomore. The pre-class video didn't adequately prepare her for the problems she was asked to solve in class, she complains, and even with a cluster of classmates to confer with, she felt lost.

    That kind of reaction isn't uncommon when classes are flipped.

    An aeronautics-engineering professor at Mississippi State University who taught a course in statics, in a flipped format, encountered similar resistance from some students who couldn't get used to online lectures.

    Masoud Rais-Rohani, who worked with the National Center for Academic Transformation to revamp the statics course, says having students watch videos, take quizzes, and reflect on what they learned before each class session made it possible to spend class time doing hands-on projects that the course had never before had room for, like working with physical models of bridges and calculating the loads they can carry.

    Continued in article

     
    "Report: The 4 Pillars of the Flipped Classroom," by David Nagel, T.H.E. Magazine, June 18, 2013 ---
    http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/06/18/report-the-4-pillars-of-the-flipped-classroom.aspx?=THENU

    Though all classrooms are different, there are four critical elements that successful flipped classrooms have in common, according to a new report developed by the Flipped Learning Network, George Mason University, and Pearson's Center for Educator Effectiveness.

    The report, "A Review of Flipped Learning," is designed to guide teachers and administrators through the concepts of flipped classrooms and provide definitions and examples of flipped learning in action. Among those concepts are four "pillars" that are required to support effective flipped learning.

    1. Flexible environments: Teachers must expect that class time will be "somewhat chaotic and noisy" and that timelines and expectations for learning assessments will have to be flexible as well.
    2. Culture shift: The classroom becomes student-centered. According to the guide: "Students move from being the product of teaching to the center of learning, where they are actively involved in knowledge formation through opportunities to participate in and evaluate their learning in a manner that is personally meaningful."
    3. Intentional content: Teachers are required to evaluate what they need to teach directly so that classroom time can be used for other methods of teaching, such as "active learning strategies, peer instruction, problem-based learning, or mastery or Socratic methods, depending on grade level and subject matter."
    4. Professional educators: The instructional videos used for flipped classrooms cannot replace trained, professional teachers.

    The report also identified challenges and concerns about flipped classrooms, including:

    • The fear that flipped classrooms will further standardize instruction and lead to "further the privatization of education and the elimination of most teachers";
    • Unequal access to technology among students; and
    • An inability to engage students immediately when instruction is being delivered.

    The guide provides references to research supporting the teaching methods used in flipped classrooms and includes three case studies focusing on flipped classrooms in action at the high school and college level. The complete report can be downloaded in PDF form on the Flipped Learning Network site.

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's threads on learning and education technology ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


    The History of Teaching Machines --- http://teachingmachin.es/timeline.html
    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology history --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    Flipped (Interactive) Video

    This may flip you out!
    "New TED-Ed Site Turns YouTube Videos Into ‘Flipped’ Lessons," by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2012 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-ted-ed-site-turns-youtube-videos-into-flipped-lessons/36109?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    YouTube holds a rich trove of videos that could be used in the classroom, but it’s challenging to transform videos into a truly interactive part of a lesson. So the nonprofit group TED has unveiled a new Web site that it hopes will solve this problem—by organizing educational videos and letting professors “flip” them to enhance their lectures.

    The new Web site, unveiled today, lets professors turn TED’s educational videos—as well as any video on YouTube—into interactive lessons inspired by the “flipped” classroom model. The site’s introduction is the second phase of an education-focused effort called TED-Ed, which began last month when the group released a series of highly produced, animated videos on a new YouTube channel.

    The TED-Ed site is both a portal for finding education videos and a tool for flipping them. On one page, videos are organized by themes, such as the pursuit of happiness and inventions that shaped history. Instructors who want to use videos that are directly related to the subjects they teach can visit another page, where videos are organized in more traditional categories such as the arts and health.

    TED’s videos are displayed on lesson pages that include multiple-choice quizzes, open-ended questions, and links to more information about the material. Professors who don’t want to rely on the premade content can press a button to flip the videos and customize some of the questions. With each flipped video, professors receive a unique Web link that they can use to distribute the lesson to students and track their answers.

    And instructors don’t have to rely only on TED’s educational videos to make their lessons. A special tool can flip any video on YouTube, adding sections to a lesson page where professors can write free-form questions and create links to other resources.

    Logan Smalley, TED-Ed’s director, noted that this feature is truly open—instructors could flip viral videos of cats if they wanted to, he said. He said his group wanted to leave the possibilities of flipped videos up to the people building the lessons.

    “We didn’t want to limit what people might want to use to teach,” he said. He added that designers provide a way for users to flag any published lesson that they feel is inappropriate.

    Michael S. Garver, a professor of marketing at Central Michigan University, has been testing the site and called it a tool to improve teaching that will bring more voices into the classroom. For the last seven years, Mr. Garver has been making his own videos, and he said the site will allow professors to turn videos created by experts into fresh lessons for class discussions.

    “It’s kind of a way to showcase the talent around the country,” he said.

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


    Screencast --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencast

    I flipped my classrooms largely by preparing hundreds of short Camtasia how-to video on technical aspects of my accounting theory and AIS courses --- especially on technical aspects of FAS 133 and MS Access relational database accounitng. My students just were not getting some of this technical I explained in class, and I grew weary repeating the same material over and over and over again in my office. The Camtasia videos were a huge relief to my students and me. They could play each Camtasia video repeatedly until they mastered the topic. I rarely had to explain those topics during office hours when Camtasia explanations were available to students.

    The Camtasia videos also meant I did not have to devote so much class time to teaching technical procedures. This made more free time for class quizzes to verify that students were really mastering those technical opics.

    "Data on whether and how students watch screencasts," by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 4, 2013 --- Click Here
    http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2013/04/04/data-on-whether-and-how-students-watch-screencasts/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Bob Jensen's screencasting helpers ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm


    title:
    YouTube's Interactive Transcripts (Video, Search)
    author-source:
    description:
    You can search video and start the video when a particular word crops up
    YouTube's Interactive Transcripts --- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/youtubes-interactive-transcripts.html

    YouTube added a cool feature for videos with closed captions: you can now click on the "transcript" button to expand the entire listing. If you click on a line, YouTube will show the excerpt from the video corresponding to the text. If you use your browser's find feature, you can even search inside the video. Here's an an example of video that includes a transcript.

    Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm


    Hollywood Movies Featuring Accountants

    From Jim Mahar's Blog on November 20, 2009 --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

    YouTube - Other People's Money speech by Danny DeVito:
    "Other People's Money speech by Danny DeVito"

    If you want to feel old, mention this movie in class, virtually no one has heard of it. Fortunately some of it is still online. Here is Jorgy's speech, and here is Danny Devito's ---
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL7STmWZ1c

    "Is It Possible To Invent An Investment Product (purely fake satire) Too Stupid To Find Buyers?" by Jim Carney, Business Insider, November 19, 2009 --- Click Here
    Jensen Comment
    And as academics we question how Wall Street could get away with gimmicks all these years.

    "There's a sucker born every minute second ."

    Makes you sort of wonder if auditors with their SOX on are just wasting time and money.

    November 21, 2009 reply from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

    Other People's Money is my favorite business movie. I've viewed it a dozen times or more. I think it is the best movie for showing students what is involved with a proxy fight.

    The Deal, starring Christian Slater, is my recommendation for a movie focused on due diligence investigations.

    The Devil Wears Prada is my recommendation for a movie dealing with an ethical dilemma. Although The Contender (Joan Allen), Dave, Working Girl (Melanie Griffith) aren't bad.

    Only Devil will be familiar to today's students. Doesn't mean they can't learn from an old movie.

    Stranger Than Fiction might be the best movie about an accountant. The Harold Crick character evolves through three of the stereotypes discussed in Dimnik and Feldon.

    Dave Albrecht

     

    November 21, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

    Of course let's not forget Hollywood's Enron fraud documentary Enron:  The Smartest Guys in the Room.
    And there's the best Enron movie in a sense that it's a home movie featuring the real Enron bad guys ---
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/windowsmedia/enron3.wmv
    Jeff Skilling plays himself when introducing HFA --- Hypothetical Future Accounting

    In Carnal Knowledge Jack Nicholson plays a deeply dysfunctional CPA in this racy and depressing movie having zero accounting or business education but some education about Ann Margaret's body.

    And there's Suze Orman's video The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life (also a 2003 book)

     

    Click on the category "Movies and TV" at Amazon.com and feed in the search word "accounting."
    It was at the above site that I stumbled on many non-Hollywood movies, including

    ?         Accountant with Jeff Gardner
     

    ?         Enhanced April with Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson, Alfred Molina, and Neville Phillips
     

    ?         The Incredible Mr. Limpet with Don Knotts, Carole Cook, Jack Weston, and Andrew Duggan
     

    ?         The Producers with Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Christopher Hewett, and William Hickey
     

    ?         Midnight Run with Charles Grodin, Robert De Niro, Danielle DuClos, and Dennis Farina
     

    ?         Secretaries with Kelly Brown; Dale Rutter; Alana Evans
     

    ?         Frontline:  The Madoff Affair
     

    ?         1945 Financial Accounting & Bookkeeping Vocational Film DVD: Accountant Career History
     

    ?         Lean Accounting ($255 to buy so it's better to rent)
     

    ?         Fair Value Accounting: A Critical New Skill for All CPAs ($379.95)
     

    ?         Standard Deviants (multiple volume accounting education modules)
     

    ?         CBS News (multiple volumes somehow linked to accounting)
     

    ?         Many others at Amazon under "accounting" Movies and DVDs

     

    And of course there are Bob Jensen's exciting free accounting tutorials on Excel, MS Access, Swap Valuations, XBRL. Camtasia, etc. --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/

     

    Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
    Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
    Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
    Open Sharing Courses --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


    Tardy Students

    "Professor's Epic Email Response To a Tardy And Entitled Student," by the Unknown Professor, Financial Rounds Blog (which is mostly inactive this semester), February 14, 2010 ---
    http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/search/label/A Day In The Life

    Like most faculty, students coming late to class bothers me - it disrupts the class, interrupts my train of thought, and in general causes a negative externality. In previous years, the problem seems to have gotten worse - in some classes, 15% would wander in after class has started. So this semester, I borrowed a page from a colleague's book. He teaches law for our B-School, and is a former partner for a major Wall Street Law firm. He's very formal in class, is known throughout the school as a fantastic professor, and a bit of a hardass (formal, but a hardass).

    So now, whenever a student walks into class late, I merely stop talking in mid sentence. I then quietlty wait until the student is seated. At this point, they're usually embarrassed. I continue waiting they have their book AND pencil out. Of course, the spotlight on them makes them extremely uncomfortable. I don't ream them, don't make any faces, comments, or do anything else - merely ask "Are you ready now?" Then I take up right where I left off. It's kind of fun, and I don't have to come off like my usual sarcastic self. It seems to work pretty well - late arrivals have really dropped off this semester.

    But
    this guy (Scott Galloway at NYU) just throws them out if they come in late. A student got the treatment recently and sent him a (to my ears) somewhat entitled email. Galloway give him an epic reaming.

    Read the responses - they're classic (particularly the David Mamet references). If you have any favorite techniques for dealing with late students, feel free to share.

    Of course, as they say in the ads, "your mileage may vary".


    HT: Craig Newmark (who gets it)

    Jensen Comment
    I heard about an instructor who stretched construction zone tape across both doorways to the classroom before closing the doors. The tape was not to be crossed for any reason. Some instructors lock the doors, but this is acceptable only when the doors can be opened from the inside in case of fire.

    But a professor needs a Plan B for the occasional student that is late for reasons beyond that student's control. Perhaps the student really was mugged or had an epileptic seizure on the way to class. Then there are the unacceptable excuses such as the student that was held up by traffic congestion or a traffic cop. I always considered those to be excuses and not valid reasons since students could've allowed more time for such contingencies.

    Plan B might be instigated outside of class rather than by allowing class to be disrupted for any valid reason for lateness. But Plan B should be stated clearly in the syllabus.

    Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


    This tutorial includes how to edit video in Windows 7
    "Manage All Your Media in Windows 7 From online streaming to all-new library controls, here's how to get more out of Windows 7's new multimedia features," by Zack Stem, PC World via The Washington Post, October 22, 2009 --- Click Here
    http://snipurl.com/windows7multimedia    [www_washingtonpost_com] 

     Whether you're leaping directly from Windows XP to Windows 7 or you stopped in Vista territory along the way, you'll find that the latest version of Microsoft's operating system handles media files in several new ways. The methods for photo and video importing, editing, and exporting have been all updated. You have new options for sharing and streaming files between computers. And media libraries become more-versatile vessels for finding and managing media files. I'll explain how to get started with these and other entertainment features of Windows 7

    Check Out the Libraries

    Windows 7 manages media files differently than previous Windows OSs did. It retains the familiar Pictures, Videos, Music, and Documents folders, but you can assign additional library locations in order to collect your media files more dynamically.

    The libraries in Windows 7 organize file types to help applications find media more easily. By default, programs look to the Pictures, Videos, Music, and Documents folders instead of having to scrutinize your whole disk. Windows XP and Vista tied media libraries to those specific folder locations. For example, Windows Media Player watched vigilantly over C:\Users\[username]\Music. Then, anytime you added new audio files to that folder, Media Player showed them in your music library. If you wanted Media Player to look for media in other areas--say, in the iTunes music folder or in another user's music library--you had to add the new locations manually within the program.

    In Windows 7, the Pictures, Videos, Music, and Documents folders are not the only doors into those libraries; you can add any other disk location you like, and library-savvy applications will automatically pool media wherever it's stored.

    Add Libraries

    Instead of manually curating media in the traditional user folders, you can turn any folder into a library. Applications will know where to find media, and you can keep your computer organized in whatever way you want.

    For example, you can turn a networked folder into an auxiliary library, or even pool music files from a different user on the same PC. Or transform your Downloads folder into a library, instantly putting MP3 and video downloads into media applications. Here's how (the process is the same for any of these situations).

    Open the Start Menu, and click your username. Open the Downloads folder, and pick Include in library, Music. Then select Include in library, Movies. Henceforth, without your having to open them immediately after downloading them, your PC will automatically slurp music and movie files into Windows Media Player.

    To remove the library status of a folder, open a window in the desktop and then navigate to that library folder in the left pane. In our case, the menu path is Libraries, Music, Downloads. Right-click the library-enabled folder--Downloads--and choose Remove location from library.

    Get Windows Live Essentials

    Windows 7's standard installation omits some previously bundled Windows software, including Photo Gallery and Movie Maker, but you can still download these apps at the Windows Live Essentials download page. Click Download on the right side, and save and run the file.

    In the installer, mark the checkbox for each piece of software you want to add. If you're on the prowl for useful multimedia options, check Photo Gallery, Movie Maker Beta, and Silverlight. (You're likely to encounter Silverlight video-streaming sites such as Netflix, so you might as well add it to Windows 7 now.) Click Install, and after several minutes, okay the final prompts to exit the installation. (I skipped changing my default home page and other needy-relationship-style requests.)

    You can sign up

    Use these groupings to your advantage. Click Next and then click Add tags next to any of the groups. Enter a few keywords from that particular photo session, separating them with semicolons. Click Import.

    If you shot RAW files, the program may prompt you to download and install an additional codec. I had to go through that process to accommodate photos from my digital SLR camera; but once you've installed the extra piece of software, Windows 7 can display the higher-end RAW files in the same manner as it does JPEGs.

    Publish a Photo Gallery Online

    Your friends and family can view your photos through the Windows Live site. After importing and arranging an album, you can upload the images within Windows Live Photo Gallery.

    Within that application, right-click My Pictures, and pick Create new folder. Name the new folder. Drag in pictures that you want to publish online. Click the name of the folder within the main window near the top to select all of the pictures. Choose Publish, Online album. Sign into your Windows Live account if needed.

    Give the album a title and in the pop-up menu choose who can view the pictures. Change the value for 'Upload size' in the pop-up menu if you wish; Medium gives enough detail for Web viewing; Large and Original allow ample size for displaying on a big TV, printing, and otherwise downloading. Then click Publish.

    After the photos have finished uploading, the program will prompt you with the option to view them. Click View Album to open the page in your Web browser. If you miss that option, click your account name in the upper right corner of Windows Live Photo Gallery, and select View your photos. Copy the link from the Web page, and share it with your friends.

    If you decide to limit who can see one of your albums, visit that album's Web page, and click Shared with: Everyone (public) at the bottom of the page. Click Edit Permissions on the following page, and uncheck the Everyone (public) box. If you've made friends through the Network area of Windows Live, pick the My network box instead. Otherwise, you can add individual e-mail contacts at the bottom. (Press the spacebar to speed up entry of the next address.)

    Back in Photo Gallery, you can add more photos to a published group by selecting the new pictures and choosing Publish, [gallery name]. Hold Shift and click the first and last images to select pictures in sequence, or hold down Ctrl and click pictures to group them in any order you like.

    Import Photos and Videos Into Windows Live Movie Maker

    Windows Live Movie Maker eschews video capture tools in favor of relying on the rest of Windows 7. If you connect a DV camcorder to a Win 7 PC, the capture process should automatically launch outside Movie Maker.

    Click the Import the entire video radio button, enter a name, and click Next. Click the Import videos as multiple files checkbox, and the tool will splice the tape into your individual shots. Approve the next windows to import the tape; the importing process will take exactly as much time as your footage does to play.

    Once your PC has captured your media, you have some options for adding clips to a video in Windows Live Movie Maker. From the desktop, drag your photos and videos into the right pane in that program. If that area is blocked, drag the files over the Movie Maker icon in the Taskbar, continue to hold the mouse down, and then drop them into the right pane. Alternatively, select Add above Videos and photos in the software, select the media, and click Open.

    You'll want to rearrange and trim various clips during the editing process, but at this point all of them are part of your movie. If you added too many clips or images, delete them from the storyboard by clicking the files and then clicking Remove.

    Edit Your Movie

    Windows Live Movie Maker cuts the timeline view, focusing instead on arranging clips in a storyboard. Just drag and drop each clip and each image to place them in the desired order within the right pane. Since some video clips run too long, you'll need to trim them into shape.

    Click a video clip to select it; then click the Edit tab at the top of the window, and click Trim. At this point, you can adjust the in- and out-point sliders (which govern the length of the clip, by trimming from one or both extremities) at the beginning and end of the timeline. Press the spacebar or click the Play icon to view a sample from the full clip, playing only between the edited points.

    If you're satisfied, click Save and close to finish. You'll make the edit here, but the original video file will stay the same, in case you want to reimport it later.

    Continued in this long article


    2014: The Year in Interactive Storytelling, Graphics, and Multimedia --- http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/29/us/year-in-interactive-storytelling.html

    Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


    "Whatever Happened to ... Virtual Reality? Remember the movie Lawnmower Man? Here's why we're not even close," MIT's Technology Review, October 21, 2010 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25917/?nlid=3673

    The early 90's were awesome. Bill Waters was still drawing Calvin and Hobbes, the tattered remnants of the Cold War were falling down around our ears, and most of Wall Street was convinced that the Macintosh was a computer for effete graphic designers and that Apple was more or less on its way out.

    Into this time of innocence came a radical vision of the future, epitomized by the movie Lawnmower Man. It was a future in which Hollywood starlets had virtual intercourse with developmentally challenged computer geeks in Tron-style bodysuits and everything looked like it was rendered by a Commodore Amiga.

    Anyway, at that time Virtual Reality was a Big Deal. Jaron Lanier, the computer scientist most closely associated with the idea, was bouncing from one important position to another, developing virtual worlds with head mounted displays and, later, heading up the National Tele-immersion initiative, "a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet 2," whatever the heck that was.

    Google Trend shows the steady decline in searches for "Virtual Reality" Soon some sensed that the technology wasn't bringing about the revolution that had been promised. In a 1993 column for Wired that earns a 9 out of 10 for hilarity and a 2 out of 10 for accuracy, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab (who I'm praying will have a sense of humor about this) asked the question that was on everyone's mind: Virtual Reality: Oxymoron or Pleonasm?

    It didn't matter if anyone knew what he was talking about, because time has proved most of it to be nonsense:

    "The argument will be made that head-mounted displays are not acceptable because people feel silly wearing them. The same was once said about stereo headphones. If Sony's Akio Morita had not insisted on marketing the damn things, we might not have the Walkman today. I expect that within the next five years more than one in ten people will wear head-mounted computer displays while traveling in buses, trains, and planes."..."One company, whose name I am obliged to omit, will soon introduce a VR display system with a parts cost of less than US$25."

    Affordable VR headsets were just around the corner, really? And the only real barrier to adoption, according to Negroponte? Lag. Computers in 1993 just weren't fast enough to react in real time when a user turned his or her head, breaking the illusion of the virtual.

    According to Moore's Law, we've gone through something like 10 doublings of computer power since 1993, so computers should be about a thousand times as powerful as they were when this piece was written - not to mention the advances in massively parallel graphics processing brought about by the widespread adoption of GPUs, and we're still not there.

    So what was it, really, that kept us from getting to Virtual Reality?

    For one thing, we moved the goal posts - now it's all about augmented reality, in which the virtual is laid over the real. Now you have a whole new set of problems - how do you make the virtual line up perfectly with the real when your head has six degrees of freedom and you're outside where there aren't many spatial referents for your computer to latch onto?

    And most important of all, how do you develop screens tiny enough to present the same resolution as a large computer monitor, but in something like 1/400th the space? This is exactly the problem that has plagued the industry leader in display headsets, Vuzix. Their products are fine for watching movies, but don't try using them as a monitor replacement.

    Consumer-level Virtual Reality, it turns out, is really, really hard - not quite Artificial Intelligence hard, but so much harder than anyone expected that people just aren't excited anymore. The Trough of Disillusionment on this technology is deep and long.

    That doesn't mean Virtual Reality is gone forever - remember how many false starts touch computing had before technologists succeeded with, of all things, a phone?

    And, just a coda, even though the public long ago gave up on searching for Virtual Reality, the news media never got tired of it. Which just shows you how totally out of touch we can be:

    Comments 

    Artificial intelligence
    To my opinion there is a big need to artificial intelligence, therefore the virtual reality research has future. I wish the mankind had artificial "people", who work instead him. Virtual reality must be created from the simple reality, and storaged in big memories of artificial creatures. Afterwards these robots can learn anything... Rate this comment: (Reply) vkrmful 10/22/2010 Posts:1

    VR, AR, etc.
    The problem with all of these technologies is not just interface (getting the tools to work well), it is also one of content and content creation. I would argue that iPhone only made touch interfaces sexy again because they created a platform that had just enough tools to make it easy for the 3rd party comunity to generate lots of exciting content for it that leveraged the interface. If someone could create an inexpensive VR/AR system and tool kit that not just worked but also made it easy to for instance point the system's cameras at a nearby object and get a workable shaded 3D model which the user could easily manipulate and use to create new conent I think these products will continue to stay out of the consumer space. Sure bits and pieces of AR and VR will continue to creep into our lives but don't expect any explosions anytime soon there is a lot of work on this stuff left to be done. 

    Re: VR, AR, etc.
    VR has to be vectored, In order to deal with the specter, Of people losing their way, While navigating their stay, In a world where reality is sectored. Rate this comment: (Reply) luddite 10/22/2010 Posts:151 Avg Rating:

    Jensen Comment
    High end virtual reality learning was and is too expensive for main stream higher education. Second Life is vastly inferior to virtual reality but was more affordable until the 50% academic discount was taken away. Any type of virtual world learning beyond video is probably to technical facilitate and deliver for mainstream higher education Now in the military training for most any nation, it is quite another matter where virtual reality is too valuable to ignore..

    Bob Jensen's threads on virtual learning worlds ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#VirtualWorldResearch

    Bob Jensen's threads on multivariate data visualization are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm

     


    The Financial Accounting Standards Board recently approached Bloomfield about studying how to create financial accounting standards that will assist investors as much as possible, he quickly turned to the virtual world for answers.

    "Theory Meets Practice Online: Researchers and academics are looking to online worlds such as Second Life to shed new light on old economic questions," by Francesca Di Meglio, Business Week, July 24, 2007 --- Click Here 

    In fact, many economics researchers, including Bloomfield, professor of accounting at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, are using the virtual environment to test ideas involving staples of economics such as game theory, the effects of regulation, and issues involving money. Since 1989, Bloomfield has been running experiments in the lab in which he creates small game economies to study narrow issues. But when the Financial Accounting Standards Board recently approached Bloomfield about studying how to create financial accounting standards that will assist investors as much as possible, he quickly turned to the virtual world for answers.

    "It would be very difficult to look at the complex issues that FASB is trying to address with eight people in a laboratory playing a very simple economic game," he says. "I started looking for how I could create a more realistic economy with more players dealing with a high degree of complexity. It didn't take me long to realize that people in virtual worlds are already doing just that."

    . . .

    At Indiana University, researcher Edward Castronova has posed the idea of creating multiple virtual economies to study the effects of different regulatory policies. At Indiana, Castronova is director of the Synthethic Worlds Initiative, a research center to study virtual worlds. "The opportunity is to conduct controlled research experiments at the level of all society, something social scientists have never been able to do before," the center's Web site notes (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/1/06, "Virtual World, Virtual Economies").

    A virtual stock market is certainly not the only online entity that opens itself up to research. Marketers are already using the virtual world to test campaigns, packaging, and consumer satisfaction. Pepsi (PEP) famously tracks use of its products in There.com. Architects seek reaction to design. Starwood Hotels (HOT) test-marketed its new loft designs in Second Life (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/23/06, "Starwood Hotels Explore Second Life First").

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on Accounting Research versus the Accounting Profession are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession


    November 30, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    RECOMMENDED READING

    "Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column.

    Infobits subscriber Karen Ellis, founder of the Educational CyberPlayGround (http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/), recommends the

    following:

    STUDIO THINKING: THE REAL BENEFITS OF VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION By Lois Hetland, Ellen Winner, Shirley Veneema, and Kimberly M. Sheridan New York: Teachers College Press, 2007

    $24.95

    ISBN 978-0-8077-4818-3

    "The authors set out to tell us why arts education is important and to give art teachers a research based language they can use to describe what they teach, and what is learned. They reached their conclusions after studying a number of well-taught studio classes in two schools.

    Over the course of a year, they observed what they call a 'hidden curriculum' that defines what art education is and what it does. Studio Thinking presents their findings in a cohesive model along with lesson examples and commentary. The authors say they want to 'change the conversation about the arts in this country' and that could happen if they can resurrect, or reinvigorate, some of their earlier work. Studio Thinking presents what the authors say is the right 'reason' for arts education as opposed to some other rationales, which they say, are just plain wrong."

    -- Review by John Broomall, Executive director of the Pennsylvania

    Alliance for Arts Education

    http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Arts/StudioThinkingArtsAdvocacy.html


    How It Works: 3D Printing with Fused Deposition Modeling --- Click Here
    http://thejournal.com/whitepapers/2014/07/stratasys-3d-printing-with-fdm-073014.aspx?pc=e844em01&utm_source=webmktg&utm_medium=E-Mail&utm_campaign=e844em01 

    3D Printing Videos --- Search YouTube for 3D Printing --- https://www.youtube.com/ 

    Education Technology
    Bob Jensen's Threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---

    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    Bob Jensen's Threads on Education Technology ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

     

    How to Create 3-D Popup Books

    May 21, 2010 message from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    Fun for the weekend?  I just came across an interesting site that enables creations of short (up to 10 pages currently) pop-up books.  Whether or not this is useful for delivering basic concepts to our students is debatable but is certainly another technique to try.  It also has the added fun of being an augmented reality book, so you can use the website to read your 3-D pop book as if its resting on your hand - neat in a very geeky way, but pedagogically I'm not so sure.

    The website is at:  http://alpha.zooburst.com/index.php and is currently in Alpha stage testing, I wrote up a blog article on it replete with pictures, a video and of course an accounting pop-up book:

    http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2010/05/21/zooburst-3d-augmented-reality-story-telling/

     Let me know what you think,

    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739
    Second Life: Robins Hermano
    Twitter: shornik

    http://mydebitcredit.com
    yahoo ID: shornik

    Jensen Comment
    Steve Hornik is a pioneer in the use of Second Life in his accounting courses ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife


    Summarizing Academic Accounting Research for Practitioners

    April 14, 2007 message from Ron Huefner [rhuefner@acsu.buffalo.edu]

    The Journal of Accountancy (AICPA) has begun a new series of articles to review accounting research papers and explain them to practitioners. The April issue has an article on "Mining Auditing Research."

    It summarizes about a dozen research articles, mostly from The Accounting Review, but also including articles from JAR, CAR, AOS, and the European Accounting Review.

    The link for this article is: <http://aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/apr2007/boltlee.htm

    This may be useful in bringing research findings into classes

    Ron


    Question
    When should professors add practitioners to their courses?

    "Mixing Theory and Practice on Defense Policy," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed, August 8, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/08/defense

    In a class about United Nations regulations on the laws of war, the discussion turned inevitably to Star Trek.

    When the U.N. authorizes sanctions against a particular nation, said Ilan Berman, the professor, the institution acts much like the Borg — in the show’s universe, a mechanized force of cyborg mercenaries bent on assimilating all of mankind. The analogy was lost on most of the class, but Berman drove the point home for those who didn’t regularly tune in to syndicated science fiction programs in the early 1990s: Each member nation must act as part of the collective.

    The lecture, peppered as it was with the occasional pop culture reference, covered a lot of ground, from the U.S. national security strategy to the justifications for nations’ use of force. The students in the class — five were present on a Monday night in July for the elective — come from a range of backgrounds, several of them working full-time, but all in the program with an eye toward defense policy, whether in the government, consulting or think tanks.

    In Washington, those are hardly unorthodox goals. Programs in defense or security studies churn out students every year in the nation’s capital, from well-known and respected institutions such as Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and also outside the Beltway at places like Harvard (Kennedy) and Princeton (Wilson). The students in Berman’s class, tucked in a conference room on the seventh floor of a corporate office building in Fairfax, Va., are part of a relatively new experiment: What if a state school in Springfield, Mo., operated a satellite campus alongside the established players in defense studies?

    So far, enrollments have been growing each year since the unit opened shop in 2005 within commuting distance from the city, sandwiched between a rapidly developing apartment complex and an office park. The Department of Defense and Strategic Studies, a part of Missouri State University, caters to students who want to break into Beltway defense circles with a public university price tag and the advantages of a more practical approach. In doing so, it offers a two-year M.S. degree that requires both coursework and internships.

    Having access to actual practitioners in the classroom means, in this case, connections to defense and foreign policy officials in the government. As with others like it, the program has had a long revolving-doors tradition, starting from its original incarnation in the early 1970s at the University of Southern California, where it was founded by a former defense official who served on the SALT I delegation, William R. Van Cleave, and partially funded by the free-market Earhart Foundation. But unlike at similar departments elsewhere, Missouri State’s full-time faculty of three and its nine affiliated lecturers tend to come mainly from positions in Republican administrations and conservative-leaning institutions.

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    Some years back Professor Sharon Lightner (UC at San Diego) put together a really interesting online course for students, practitioners, and accounting standard setters in six different countries where the classes met synchronously.
    "An Innovative Online International Accounting Course on Six Campuses Around the World" --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255light.htm

    Ohio State University:  Synchronous Partnering Course Modules in Universities in Different Nations

    "Frontiers in Higher Education: A Procedural Model," Ruth Sesco, The International HETL Review, Volume 2, June 9, 2012 ---
    http://hetl.org/

    The paper describes a procedural model implemented at Ohio State University that shares similar content and interaction among international partner classes for a short time, usually 3-5 weeks. The model is flexible and adaptive to any discipline at both the graduate and undergraduate levels and includes expertise from both partnering instructors. Technologies are embedded to integrate a variety of structured opportunities for interaction and to utilize different teaching and learning strategies. There is no exchange of credits or funding, and all instructors are individually responsible for grading their own students, thus allowing subject expertise and peer interaction from around the world at no extra personal cost. The model can be implemented to internationalize an entire curriculum to a broad spectrum of learners world-wide with a significantly reduced carbon footprint, at minimal cost, and in direct response to the needs of higher education.

    Jensen Comment

    I suspect that Ruth Sesco independently developed a model that was invented for an international accounting course by a San Diego State University accounting professor years ago when the most advanced online technology was rudimentary.

    You can read about this remarkable international accounting professor and what she accomplished with almost no budget by going to ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255light.htm

     


     

    Open Sharing and Adaptive Hypermedia

     


    There are now nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of which are in very basic accounting.
    But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
    Sometimes the videos are advertisements such as an advertisement for downloading
    INTERMEDIATE ACCOUNTING 12th ED Solutions Manual by KIESO, WEYGANT, WARFIELD
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca08uh1cq1Y

    There are nearly 70 videos on XBRL.

    More than 100 colleges have set up channels on YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/edu
    Many universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583

    "YouTube Creates New Section to Highlight College Content," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 27, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3684&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    More than 100 colleges have set up channels on YouTube, and this week the popular video service unveiled a new section that brings together all of that campus content in one area.

    It had been difficult to find college lectures on YouTube, since they are generally far less popular than the site’s humorous and outrageous clips, and so they do not show up in lists of the most viewed videos on the site. Although YouTube has long had an education category, it relies on users who post videos to decide whether to categorize their videos as educational, and as a result the definition of education is very broad. The new YouTube EDU page includes only material submitted by colleges and universities.

    Spencer Crooks, a spokesman for YouTube, said in a statement that the site now features complete lectures for some 200 full college courses. “Subjects range from computer science to literature, biology to philosophy, history, political science, psychology, law, and much more,” he said. “You can search within YouTube EDU to find videos on topics of interest.”

    The new section makes it possible to find out which college-produced video is most popular. The winner so far is an interview with a University of Minnesota professor discussing the science behind the new movie Watchmen. That video has been viewed about 1.5 million times. The most popular lecture video on YouTube is from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, on the subject of “Advanced Finite Elements Analysis” (which has been viewed about 19,000 times).

    Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch


    October 12, 2010 message from Paul Clikeman

    Bob,

    I would be very grateful if you would look at my new website http://auditeducation.info . The site contains articles, cases, classroom exercises, videos and academic research related to financial statement auditing. I’d appreciate suggestions for improving the site and publicizing it.

    Paul M. Clikeman, Ph.D.
    Associate Professor of Accounting
    Robins School of Business
    University of Richmond
    Richmond, VA 23173

     

    October 12, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Paul,

    I welcome this exciting new site containing resources for auditing and the history of auditing. It selectively links to some of the best articles on an array of auditing topics, including auditing history.
    http://auditeducation.info 

    I linked your site in various Web documents including
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Professionalism
    However, until I get my new computer set up at Trinity University, I may not be able to update these files on the Web server.

    I will also announce your site on the AAA Commons.

    Hopefully other accounting bloggers will also announce your site.

    Good Work

    Bob Jensen


    Free Open Sharing Tutorials, Videos, and Course Materials

    Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing lectures, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Bob Jensen's threads on free tutorials and videos in various academic disciplines ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch


    "So you want to learn to program?" by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2012 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/01/16/so-you-want-to-learn-to-program/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Jensen Comment
    Having taught both Fortran and COBOL at one point in my career, I will pass on this opportunity to upgrade my programming skills. However, these sound like valuable free resources for the younger generation headed for college or that generation of unemployable history majors seeking new skills.

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


    1,400+ Open Sharing "Tutorials" On YouTube from a Harvard Business School Graduate
    Khan Academy Home Page --- http://www.khanacademy.org/
    This site lists the course categories (none for accounting)

    "A Self-Appointed Teacher Runs a One-Man 'Academy' on YouTube:  Are his 10-minute lectures the future?" by Jeffrey Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 6, 2010 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/A-Self-Appointed-Teacher-Runs/65793/?sid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en

    The most popular educator on YouTube does not have a Ph.D. He has never taught at a college or university. And he delivers all of his lectures from a bedroom closet.

    This upstart is Salman Khan, a 33-year-old who quit his job as a financial analyst to spend more time making homemade lecture videos in his home studio. His unusual teaching materials started as a way to tutor his faraway cousins, but his lectures have grown into an online phenomenon—and a kind of protest against what he sees as a flawed educational system.

    "My single biggest goal is to try to deliver things the way I wish they were delivered to me," he told me recently.

    The resulting videos don't look or feel like typical college lectures or any of the lecture videos that traditional colleges put on their Web sites or YouTube channels. For one thing, these lectures are short—about 10 minutes each. And they're low-tech: Viewers see only the scrawls of equations or bad drawings that Mr. Khan writes on his digital sketchpad software as he narrates.

    The lo-fi videos seem to work for students, many of whom have written glowing testimonials or even donated a few bucks via a PayPal link. The free videos have drawn hundreds of thousands of views, making them more popular than the lectures by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, famous for making course materials free, or any other traditional institution online, according to the leaders of YouTube's education section.

    Mr. Khan calls his collection of videos "Khan Academy," and he lists himself as founder and faculty. That means he teaches every subject, and he has produced 1,400 lectures since he started in 2006. Now he records one to five lectures per day.

    He started with subject matter he knows best—math and engineering, which he studied as an undergraduate at MIT. But lately he has added history lectures about the French Revolution and biology lectures on "Embryonic Stem Cells" and "Introduction to Cellular Respiration."

    If Mr. Khan is unfamiliar with a subject he wants to teach, he gives himself a crash course first. In a recent talk he explained how he prepared for his lecture on entropy: "I took two weeks off and I just pondered it, and I called every professor and everyone I could talk to and I said, Let's go have a glass of wine about entropy. After about two weeks it clicked in my brain, and I said, now I'm willing to make a video about entropy."

    Some critics have blogged that this learn-as-you-go approach is no way to run an educational project—and they worry that the videos may contain errors or lead students astray.

    But to Mr. Khan, occasional mistakes are part of his method. By watching him stumble through a problem, students see the process better, he argues. Sometimes they correct him in comments on his YouTube videos, and he says this makes students more engaged with the material. "Sometimes when it's a little rough, it's going to be a better product than when you overprepare," he says.

    The Khan Academy explicitly challenges many of higher-education's most sacred assumptions: that professional academics make the best teachers; that hourlong lectures are the best way to relate material; and that in-person teaching is better than videos. Mr. Khan argues that his little lectures disprove all of that.

    Watching his videos highlights how little the Web has changed higher education. Many online courses at traditional colleges simply replicate the in-person model—often in ways that are not as effective. And what happens in most classrooms varies little from 50 years ago (or more). Which is why Mr. Khan's videos come as a surprise, with their informal style, bite-sized units, and simple but effective use of multimedia.

    The Khan Academy raises the question: What if colleges could be retooled with new technologies in mind?

    College From Scratch Mr. Khan is not the only one asking that question these days.

    Clay Shirky, an associate teacher at New York University and a popular Internet guru, recently challenged his more than 50,000 Twitter followers with a similar thought exercise:

    "If you were going to create a college from scratch, what would you do?"

    Bursts of creativity quickly Twittered in, and Mr. Shirky collected and organized the responses on a Web site. The resulting visions are either dreams of an education future or nightmares, depending on your viewpoint:

    All students should be required to teach as well, said @djstrouse. Limit tenure to eight years, argued @jakewk. Have every high-school senior take a year before college to work in some kind of service project away from his or her hometown, said @alicebarr. Some Twittering brainstormers even named their fictional campuses. One was called FailureCollege, where every grade is an F to desensitize students to failure and encourage creativity. Another was dubbed LifeCollege, where only life lessons are taught.

    When I caught up with Mr. Shirky recently, he described the overall tone of the responses as "bloody-minded." Did that surprise him?

    "I was surprised—by the range of responses, but also partly by the heat of the responses," he said. "People were mad when they think about the gap between what is possible and what happened in their own educations."

    Mr. Shirky declined to endorse any of the Twitter models or to offer his prediction of how soon or how much colleges will change. But he did argue that higher education is ripe for revolution.

    For him the biggest question is not whether a new high-tech model of higher education will emerge, but whether the alternative will come from inside traditional higher education or from some new upstart.

    Voting With Their Checkbooks Lately, several prominent technology entrepreneurs have taken an interest in Mr. Khan's model and have made generous contributions to the academy, which is now a nonprofit entity.

    Mr. Khan said that several people he had never met have made $10,000 contributions. And last month, Ann and John Doerr, well-known venture capitalists, gave $100,000, making it possible for Mr. Khan to give himself a small salary for the academy so he can spend less of his time doing consulting projects to pay his mortgage. Over all, he said, he's collected about $150,000 in donations and makes $2,000 a month from ads on his Web site.

    I called up one of the donors, Jason Fried, chief executive of 37signals, a hip business-services company, who recently gave an undisclosed amount to Khan Academy, to find out what the attraction was.

    "The next bubble to burst is higher education," he said. "It's too expensive for people—there's no reason why parents should have to save up a hundred grand to send their kids to college. I like that there are alternative ways of thinking about teaching."

    No one I talked to saw Khan Academy as an alternative to traditional colleges (for one thing, it doesn't grant degrees). When I called a couple of students who posted enthusiastic posts to Facebook, they said they saw it as a helpful supplement to the classroom experience.

    Mr. Khan has a vision of turning his Web site into a kind of charter school for middle- and high-school students, by adding self-paced quizzes and ways for the site to certify that students have watched certain videos and passed related tests. "This could be the DNA for a physical school where students spend 20 percent of their day watching videos and doing self-paced exercises and the rest of the day building robots or painting pictures or composing music or whatever," he said.

    The Khan Academy is a concrete answer to Mr. Shirky's challenge to create a school from scratch, and it's an example of something new in the education landscape that wasn't possible before. And it serves as a reminder to be less reverent about those long-held assumptions.

    Jensen Comment

    The YouTube Education Link --- http://www.youtube.com/education?lg=EN&b=400&s=pop
    I could not find Khan Academy tutorials linked at the above site.

    The Khan Academy YouTube Channel is at http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy
    The above site also links to a PBS News item about Khan Academy

    Khan Academy Home Page --- http://www.khanacademy.org/
    This site lists the course categories (none for accounting)

    Although Khan Academy has many general education tutorials and quite a few things in economics and finance, I could not find much on accounting.  One strength of the site seems to be in mathematics. There is also a category on Valuation and Investing which might be useful for personal finance.

    Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing lectures, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Bob Jensen's threads on free tutorials and videos in various academic disciplines ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch


    MIT's Video Lecture Search Engine: Watch the video at --- http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/
    Researchers at MIT have released a video and audio search tool that solves one of the most challenging problems in the field: how to break up a lengthy academic lecture into manageable chunks, pinpoint the location of keywords, and direct the user to them. Announced last month, the MIT
    Lecture Browser website gives the general public detailed access to more than 200 lectures publicly available though the university's OpenCourseWare initiative. The search engine leverages decades' worth of speech-recognition research at MIT and other institutions to
    convert audio
    into text and make it searchable.
    Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, November 26, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19747/?nlid=686&a=f
    Once again, the Lecture Browser link (with video) is at http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/
    Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

    Find free video lectures from free universities at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    "UC Berkeley university puts course videos (but not for credit) on YouTube," PhysOrg, October 3, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news110638174.html

    University offerings at the dedicated YouTube channel include peace and conflict studies, bioengineering courses, and a science class titled "Physics for Future Presidents."

    "UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life: academics, events and athletics," said vice provost for undergraduate education Christina Maslach.

    The University plans to continually add videos to the channel, which officially launched Wednesday with about nine full courses consisting of approximately 40 lectures each.

    Berkeley lays claim to being the first university to offer full courses on popular video-sharing website YouTube, which is based in Northern California.

    The university began online broadcasts, called "webcasts," of its own in 2001 and last year began making audio "podcasts" available for download at Apple's iTunes online store.

    "We are excited to make UC Berkeley videos available to the world on YouTube," said Ben Hubbard, who co-manages the university's webcast program.

    "I think the whole open content movement is in keeping with what we are as a public institution, we really believe at our core that making this available to the public is truly important."
     

    UC Berkeley is the first university to make videos of full courses available through YouTube. Visitors to the site at youtube.com/ucberkeley can view more than 300 hours of videotaped courses and events. Topics range from bioengineering, to peace and conflict studies, to "Physics for Future Presidents," the title of a popular campus course. Building on its initial offerings, UC Berkeley will continue to expand the catalog of videos available on YouTube.
    View the Playlist Here --- http://www.youtube.com/ucberkeley 
    There is a link to the most viewed videos (with star ratings) at the above page.

    Examples include Integrative Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, etc.
    Links to 201 videos --- http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ucberkeley&p=r
    You can search by topic in the search box at the above page.

    On October 4, 2007 I could not find any accounting, finance, or economics videos at the UC Berkeley site. There were six courses that popped up for "Business."

    Here's a student, who created a RealPlayer playlist, explaining how to these videos --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUfKoXtwEu0

    Also see Webcast.Berkeley [iTunes, Real Player] http://webcast.berkeley.edu/ 

    UC Berkeley also has XLab --- http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/07/13_xlab.shtml

    Nearly all prestigious universities now offer some form of open sharing of course materials, the most noteworthy of which is MIT. Yale, however, has some of the finest lectures on video --- http://www.yale.edu/opa/download/VLP_QuestionsAnswers.pdf

    From Princeton
    University Channel (video and audio) ---  http://uc.princeton.edu/main/

    From the University of Texas
    Take Five from the University of Texas http://www.utexas.edu/inside_ut/take5/

    From Harvard
    Introduction --- http://athome.harvard.edu/about/about.htm
    Program List --- http://athome.harvard.edu/archive/archive.asp

    Teaching Materials (especially video) from PBS

    Teacher Source:  Arts and Literature --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/arts_lit.htm

    Teacher Source:  Health & Fitness --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/health.htm

    Teacher Source: Math --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/math.htm

    Teacher Source:  Science --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/sci_tech.htm

    Teacher Source:  PreK2 --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/prek2.htm

    Teacher Source:  Library Media ---  http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/library.htm

    Video Lecture Search
    Type in "Video Lectures" with quotation marks at http://megite.com/discover.php?q=learning
    Example:  David Deutsch Quantum Computation Lectures --- http://www.quiprocone.org/quipmain.htm  

    You can read about these and other examples of open sharing at major universities at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


    Winners of KPMG's Integrity/Ethics Videos Contest --- http://www.kpmgcampus.com/whoweare/ethics.shtml


    Copyright Restrictions on Open Sharing/Source Learning Materials

    These are only my opinions, and they should not be taken as legal advice.
    Just because something can be accessed online does not mean it is an open sharing item. Generally online items are like library books that can be accessed by the public but have copyright restrictions copying and uses other than personal reading. If online learning materials are billed as "open sharing," or "open source" (as in the case of OCW materials at MIT) chances are that they can be used in total or in part for educational purposes in other open sharing materials if proper credits are given. In commercial materials such as books and course videos, there is vulnerability for lawsuit by the copyright owners. In my personal opinion, I think a lot depends upon how central the copyrighted material is to the purchased material. If use is incidental and credits are fully proper, then the risks of lawsuit are less than when the copyrighted material becomes more featured in the material. In any case, it is good advice to seek permission from copyright owners if the use is for some for-profit purpose. This probably includes online or onsite courses for which fees are charged to take the course. The dreaded DMCA is somewhat vague on open sharing materials, but open sharing does not mean that copyright owners have abandoned all rights. You can read more about the dreaded DMCA at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

    This is Very Important --- http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/help/faq3/index.htm
    MIT is the most open sharing major university in terms of course materials --- http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
    It's statement on intellectual property sets, in my opinion, precedent for most other open sharing colleges --- http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/help/faq3/index.htm

    YouTube has a statement about use of YouTube videos at http://www.youtube.com/t/howto_copyright
    Also see http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/topic.py?topic=10550&hl=en_US

    Since the term "open source" is rooted in computer software, the term is a bit cloudy when it comes to text and multimedia learning materials. You can read more about open sharing and copyrights at the following sites:


    How to Excerpt Open Courseware Video, Compress It, and Serve it Up to Students

    Suppose that a very long video lecture is available as open courseware for proper use in other learning materials. An instructor may only want to use parts of this lecture in another course or supplemental tutorials for a course. Searching a long video is tedious and time consuming. A better approach is to make audio or video excerpts of portions of the long lecture.

    Homemade video tutorial (very basic) on how to record streaming audio on your PC --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPHSDOyj5f8
    Note the passing reference to a free sound recorder called Audacity --- http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
    Note that if you are watching a lecture video that's pretty much a talking head, it saves a lot, I mean a LOT, of file space to only capture the audio.
    This might, for example, work very well when capturing parts of  the many UC Berkeley, YouTube, Yale, or Harvard video lectures --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
    Just in case source streams disappear from the Internet, I suggest capturing what's important to you and saving to external media such as a CD or DVD disk.
    Capturing also allows you to only capture what is relevant to you or your students without having to spend a lot of time waiting for the good parts.

    If the video open sharing video is a file, you might be able to download the video file and then edit the file using something like the Producer Module in Camtasia Studio --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/enhance.asp

    However, in most instances open sharing videos are streaming (using the term loosely here) videos for which there is no file to download. In that case the video must be captured in total or in part by software designed for such purposes. The software I like for video capturing is called Camtasia Recorder --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/record.asp
    Also see http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/education.asp
    This is cheaper alternative than many more specialized products for streaming video capture. You can download my PowerPoint file about Camtasia at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/
    Links to examples are given in this slide show.

    You can read about other alternatives for streaming video capture at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

    When you capture streaming media as an avi file it has the advantage in that you can edit the movie and delete parts you do not want using software like Camtasia Producer  --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/enhance.asp
    You can also add interaction "skip to" buttons, quiz questions/answers, survey questions, etc.

    But captured avi files are generally enormous and cannot be stored efficiently anywhere. After you've excerpted and edited the captured video as an avi file it is almost always necessary to compress it into a wmv, mov, rm, scf, flv, or some related option such as the compression options available in Camtasia Producer. There is not generally a noticeable quality degradation in the compressed versions. However, it is not possible, at least in Camtasia, to alter the compressed version without recapturing it as an avi file.

    After you have your compressed file such as a wmv you will need to get it to your students. Chances are that your Blackboard, WebCT, or Web server does not give you enough capacity to serve up a lot of video, including space-saving compressed video. The next best thing is to either distribute your video to students on CD or DVD disks or to send it to them over the Internet.

    It is not generally possible to attach large video files to email messages. However there are very good free alternatives for sending files to students over the Internet --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles

    Bob Jensen's threads on free online textbooks and other electronic literature --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm


    Camtasia Studio + iPods = Videos to Go --- http://visuallounge.techsmith.com/2006/02/camtasia_studio__ipod__videos_to_go.html


    Twiki wiki Tutorial by Michael Lougee at the University of Minnesota ---  https://wiki.umn.edu/view/Main/MichaelLougee

     


    May 3, 2006 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    RESOURCES FOR RESHAPING SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION

    ". . . the crisis in the scholarly communication system not only threatens the well being of libraries, but also it threatens our academic faculty's ability to do world-class research. With current technologies, we now have, for the first time in history, the tools necessary to effect change ourselves. We must do everything in our power to change the current scholarly communication system and promote open access to scholarly articles."

    Paul G. Haschak's webliography provides resources to help effect this change. "Reshaping the World of Scholarly Communication -- Open Access and the Free Online Scholarship Movement: Open Access Statements, Proposals, Declarations, Principles, Strategies, Organizations, Projects, Campaigns, Initiatives, and Related Items -- A Webliography" (E-JASL, vol. 7, no. 1, spring 2006) is available online at http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v07n01/haschak_p01.htm

    E-JASL: The Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship [ISSN 1704-8532] is an independent, professional, refereed electronic journal dedicated to advancing knowledge and research in the areas of academic and special librarianship. E-JASL is published by the Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication (ICAAP), Athabasca, Canada. For more information, contact: Paul Haschak, Executive Editor, Board President, and Founder, Linus A. Sims Memorial Library, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA USA;
    email: phaschak@selu.edu 
    Web:
    http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/

    November 2, 2006 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    OPEN SOURCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

    The October/November 2006 issue (vol. 3, issue 1) of INNOVATE is devoted to open source and the "potential of open source software and related trends to transform educational practice." Papers include:

    "Getting Open Source Software into Schools: Strategies and Challenges" by Gary Hepburn and Jan Buley

    "Looking Toward the Future: A Case Study of Open Source Software in the Humanities" by Harvey Quamen

    "Harnessing Open Technologies to Promote Open Educational Knowledge Sharing" by Toru Iiyoshi, Cheryl Richardson, and Owen McGrath

    The complete issue is available at http://www.innovateonline.info/ .

    Innovate [ISSN 1552-3233] is a bimonthly, peer-reviewed online periodical published by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University. The journal focuses on the creative use of information technology (IT) to enhance educational processes in academic, commercial, and government settings. Readers can comment on articles, share material with colleagues and friends, and participate in open forums. For more information, contact: James L. Morrison, Editor-in-Chief, Innovate; email: innovate@nova.edu ; Web: http://www.innovateonline.info/ .

    Bob Jensen's threads on open sourcing are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    ......................................................................

    ADAPTIVE HYPERMEDIA

    The JOURNAL OF DIGITAL INFORMATION (JoDI) has recently published a special issue focusing on adaptive hypermedia. "Adaptive hypermedia systems are those that build a profile of the user and then deliver content that is appropriate for these needs, rather than the more traditional 'one-size-fits-all' approach of the web." These systems have the potential for tailoring online learning experiences to the individual student.

    The complete issue (vol. 7, no. 1, 2006) is available at http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/issue/view/29 .

    The Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) [ISSN: 1368-7506] is a peer-reviewed Web journal, supported by Texas A&M University Libraries. Current and past issues are available at http://journals.tdl.org/jodi .

    See also:

    "Adaptive Hypermedia: A New Paradigm for Educational Software" By H. Spallek ADVANCES IN DENTAL RESEARCH, vol. 17, December 2003, pp. 38-42 http://adr.iadrjournals.org/cgi/reprint/17/1/38  [Note: online access available via a subscription by your institution.]

    Although this paper discusses how adaptive hypermedia was used in dental education courses, it's findings can be applied to other disciplines.

    Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous learning are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm


    History of Spreadsheets in Education

    "Spreadsheets in Education–The First 25 Years," by  John E Baker Director, Natural Maths john@naturalmaths.com.au  and Stephen J Sugden School of Information Technology, Bond University ssugden@bond.edu.au , July 24, 2003 --- http://www.sie.bond.edu.au/articles/1.1/bakersugden.pdf

    Spreadsheets made their first appearance for personal computers in 1979 in the form of VisiCalc [45], an application designed to help with accounting tasks. Since that time, the diversity of applications of the spreadsheet program is evidenced by its continual reappearance in scholarly journals. Nowhere is its application becoming more marked than in the field of education. From primary to tertiary levels, the spreadsheet is gradually increasing in its importance as a tool for teaching and learning. By way of an introduction to the new electronic journal Spreadsheets in Education, the editors have compiled this overview of the use of spreadsheets in education. The aim is to provide a comprehensive bibliography and springboard from which others may develop their own applications and reports on educational applications of spreadsheets. For despite its rising popularity, the spreadsheet has still a long way to go before becoming a universal tool for teaching and learning, and many opportunities for its application have yet to be explored. The basic paradigm of an array of rows-and-columns with automatic update and display of results has been extended with libraries of mathematical and statistical functions, versatile graphing and charting facilities, powerful add-ins such as Microsoft Excel’s Solver, attractive and highlyfunctional graphical user interfaces, and the ability to write custom code in languages such as Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications. It is difficult to believe that Bricklin, the original creator of VisiCalc could have imagined the modern form of the now ubiquitous spreadsheet program. But the basic idea of the electronic spreadsheet has stood the test of time; indeed it is nowadays an indispensable item of software, not only in business and in the home, but also in academe. This paper briefly examines the history of the spreadsheet, then goes on to give a survey of major books, papers and conference presentations over the past 25 years, all in the area of educational applications of spreadsheets.

    Bob Jensen's video tutorials on spreadsheets are at
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

    Bob Jensen's threads on the history of education technologies are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

     


    Bye Bye Blackboard

    The Blackboard:  A tribute to a long-standing but fading teaching and learning tool
    From the Museum of History and Science at Oxford University
    Bye Bye Blackboard: From Einstein and others
    --- http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/blackboard/

    Bob Jensen's threads on technology in education are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

     


    Devices and Systems for Mobile Learning

    Question
    What are real time virtual office hours?

    Hint:
    They operate a bit like a course chat room with some added features like microphones, and an instructor or teaching fellow is in the room at all times.

    As reported in The Harvard Crimson on Monday, teaching fellows (Harvard parlance for TAs) for the course this semester will begin holding real-time, online help sessions for students this week. Using free, Java-based software, students can log on, chat with each other (via text or microphone) and even “raise their hands” with the click of a button, which adds them to a queue on the teaching fellow’s computer.
    Andy Guess, "Office Hours: Coming to a Computer Near You," Inside Higher Ed, September 18, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/18/officehours

    A tools PowerPoint file is included at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/


    June 29, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    PAPERS ON MOBILE LEARNING

    Mobile learning is the theme of the current issue of the INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF RESEARCH IN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING. Papers include:

    "Mobile Distance Learning with PDAs: Development and Testing of Pedagogical and System Solutions Supporting Mobile Distance Learners" by Torstein Rekkedal and Aleksander Dye, Norwegian School of Information Technology

    "The Growth of m-Learning and the Growth of Mobile Computing: Parallel Developments" by Jason G. Caudill, Grand Canyon University

    "Mobile Learning and Student Retention" by Bharat Inder Fozdar and Lalita S. Kumar, India Gandhi National Open University

    "Instant Messaging for Creating Interactive and Collaborative m-Learning Environments" by James Kadirire, Anglia Ruskin University

    "m-Learning: Positioning Educators for a Mobile, Connected Future" by Kristine Peters, Flinders University

    The issue is available at http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/issue/view/29 . Papers are available not only in HTML and PDF formats, but you can also download and listen to them in MP3 audio versions.

    International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) [ISSN 1492-3831] is a free, refereed ejournal published by Athabasca University - Canada's Open University. For more information, contact Paula Smith, IRRODL Managing Editor; tel: 780-675-6810; fax: 780-675-672;
    email: irrodl@athabascau.ca ;
    Web: http://www.irrodl.org/ .

    See also:

    "Are You Ready for Mobile Learning?" By Joseph Rene Corbeil and Maria Elena Valdes-Corbeil, University of Texas at Brownsville EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, vol. 30, no. 2, 2007 http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm07/eqm0726.asp 

    "Frequent use of mobile devices does not mean that students or instructors are ready for mobile learning and teaching."

     


     

    The Future of Textbooks

    June 29, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    ......................................................................

    PROPOSED SOLUTION TO "BROKEN" COLLEGE TEXTBOOK MARKET

    "Most debates over high textbook prices devolve into a blame game . . . Publishers go after excessive profits, bookstores stock too few used books, professors ignore prices and switch books on a whim, colleges fail to guide their faculty members, and students are not smart shoppers. Such claims are unproductive, the [Education Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance] says, though it sides more with students than with publishers." [The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 1, 2007]

    After a yearlong study, the Committee, an independent panel that advises the U.S. Congress on student aid policy, has released "Turn the Page: Making College Textbooks More Affordable," a report that addresses the problem of rising prices of college textbooks. Long-term solutions would entail an "infrastructure of technology and support services with which institutions, students, faculty, bookstores, publishers, and other content providers can interact efficiently. This infrastructure would consist of a transaction and rights clearinghouse, numerous marketplace Web applications, and hosted infrastructure resources. . . . The hosted infrastructure would ensure that all systems interface, support a registry of millions of learning items, provide marketplace services to thousands of campuses and millions of users, and process hundreds of millions of transactions for both fee-based and no-cost content."

    The report and related materials are available at
    http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/edlite-txtbkstudy.html .

    ......................................................................

    PAPERS ON MOBILE LEARNING

    Mobile learning is the theme of the current issue of the INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF RESEARCH IN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING. Papers include:

    "Mobile Distance Learning with PDAs: Development and Testing of Pedagogical and System Solutions Supporting Mobile Distance Learners" by Torstein Rekkedal and Aleksander Dye, Norwegian School of Information Technology

    "The Growth of m-Learning and the Growth of Mobile Computing: Parallel Developments" by Jason G. Caudill, Grand Canyon University

    "Mobile Learning and Student Retention" by Bharat Inder Fozdar and Lalita S. Kumar, India Gandhi National Open University

    "Instant Messaging for Creating Interactive and Collaborative m-Learning Environments" by James Kadirire, Anglia Ruskin University

    "m-Learning: Positioning Educators for a Mobile, Connected Future" by Kristine Peters, Flinders University

    The issue is available at http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/issue/view/29 . Papers are available not only in HTML and PDF formats, but you can also download and listen to them in MP3 audio versions.

    International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) [ISSN 1492-3831] is a free, refereed ejournal published by Athabasca University - Canada's Open University. For more information, contact Paula Smith, IRRODL Managing Editor; tel: 780-675-6810; fax: 780-675-672;
    email: irrodl@athabascau.ca ;
    Web: http://www.irrodl.org/ .

    See also:

    "Are You Ready for Mobile Learning?" By Joseph Rene Corbeil and Maria Elena Valdes-Corbeil, University of Texas at Brownsville EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, vol. 30, no. 2, 2007 http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm07/eqm0726.asp 

    "Frequent use of mobile devices does not mean that students or instructors are ready for mobile learning and teaching."


    Question
    What are the supposed Top 10 and the Top 100 e-Learning tools, at least in England?


    Answer
    Top 100 --- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html
    Various experts list their Top 10 --- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/index.html

    Jensen Comment
    I totally disagree with the rankings of the Top 100 and the Top 10.

    Where is Blackboard and WebCT? --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard

    Where are the many important tools for handicapped learners? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

    Where is Camtasia? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

    Where are the edutainment and learning game alternatives? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

    Where is Matlab (used in virtually every U.S. university) --- --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB

    Like it or not, Wikipedia is one of the most sought out sights in the world by e-Learners --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
    There are risks, but the odds are high that users will get helpful learning information and links.

    Where are HTML and related XML/RTF and XBRL markups?  --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm  

    Where are the many huge and free online libraries? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

    Where are the important blogs and listservs? --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

    I could go on and on here!

    Bob Jensen

    Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring, management, and presentation technologies are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm 

    August 3, 2007 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

    Bob:
    I agree with you that the list is flawed - Toolbook should be #1

    Richard J. Campbell

    mailto:campbell@rio.edu

    August 3, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Richard

    ToolBook should’ve been number 1 but it fumbled the ball. What proportion of e-Learners are now learning, today, from ToolBooks? My guess is that much less than one percent. A negligible proportion of instructors are developing learning materials using ToolBook dhtml files relative to FrontPage and Dreamweaver htm files.

    The biggest innovation for e-Learners and authors was Adobe Acrobat’s tremendous development of online pdf files that could be read and electronically searched for free but not be tampered with by readers. Now major commercial publishing houses are putting new books on line as pdf files.

    One of the biggest innovations I forgot to mention was the unknown (at least to me) date in which MS Office files (particularly ppt, doc, and xls files) could be downloaded and read from a Web servers that at one time only could handle htm markups. In terms of e-learning htm, pdf, doc, xls, and ppt files are overwhelmingly the main files for e-Learning, although they are now joined by such files as xml files.

    Another huge e-Learning innovation that I forgot to mention is the unknown (at least to me) date in which the above learning and research files could be attached to email messages. This made it easier to have private distributions (say to students in a class) without having to put files on Web, Blackboard, or WebCT servers. Anybody with email can not send files back and forth.

    There is still a great risk of macro viruses when downloading MS Office files from the Web or email messages. However, most e-Learners are doing so from trusted Web sites and/or email senders such as files from their course instructors.

    ToolBook could fade away and the world would hardly know about it or miss it.

    Bob Jensen


    The future of text books?
    From Jim Mahar's blog on June 16, 2005 --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

    The future of text books?
    Megginson and Smart
    Introdcution to Corporate Finance--Companion Site

    Wow.
    I think we may have a glimpse into the future of text books with this one. It is the new Introduction to Corporate Finance by William Megginson and Scott Smart.

    From videos for most topics, to interviews, to powerpoint, to a student study guide, to excel help...just a total integration of a text and a web site! Well done!

    At St. Bonaventure we have adopted the text for the fall semester and the book actually has made me excited to be teaching an introductory course! It is that good!!

    BTW Before I get accused of selling out, let me say I get zero for this plug. I have met each author at conferences but do not really know either of them. And like any first edition book there may be some errors, but that said, this is the future of college text books!

    Check out some of the online material here. More material is available with book purchase.

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

     

     

     

    The Latest Experiments in Student Recruitment by Colleges

    Question
    Take a look at your college's current Web site.  How does it stack up against the competition?

     

    Answer
    The Latest Experiments by Colleges Recruiting New Students

    "College Recruiters Lure Students With New Online Tools," by Bob Tedeschi, The New York Times, December 30, 2004 
    http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/technology/circuits/30coll.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1104501548-NF+yTytFntuHGH4s471j9A 

    Colleges taking their battle for high school seniors to the Web and beyond.

    Frustrated by the failure of e-mail solicitations to generate much response - largely because of the colleges' own unrestrained e-mail policies - admission directors are looking for new ways to incorporate the Internet into their marketing plans. For some, that means setting up more online chats. For others, it means streaming more video from their Web sites.

    For Saint Mary's College, a Catholic college for women in Notre Dame, Ind., the answer is a high-tech version of campus view books, glossy tomes featuring ethnically diverse samplings of students wandering through verdant campuses, happy to be within sprinting distance of a Chaucer text.

    After two years of testing, this fall Saint Mary's rolled out a video magazine, or Vmag, aimed at prospective applicants. Students can download the publication from the Saint Mary's home page (www.saintmarys.edu), along with software that automatically retrieves updates. When an updated version is ready for viewing, a desktop icon prompts the user to reopen it.

    Each Vmag contains four one- to two-minute video clips featuring various aspects of campus life. While some of the clips show monologues by the college president or financial aid director, most are narrated by a pair of Saint Mary's students, who take viewers on a tour.

    "We were searching for something a little more innovative and exciting to catch the attention of prospective students, and we found it," said Mary Pat Nolan, who was until recently the Saint Mary's director of admission. "This really sets us apart."

    Ms. Nolan, who left Saint Mary's this month, said the college had tested the Vmag for two years, sending it to applicants who had been accepted by the school but had not yet decided to enroll. She said it was impossible to determine how it had affected enrollment, but added that she suspected it had helped.

    Delivering a video magazine, Ms. Nolan said, "is a way to tell students we're not living in the dark ages, and that we're technologically advanced."

    "We're not a convent school that's isolated, where you'll never see a man or have a social life," she said. "You'll have it all."

    That message resonated with Maggie Oldham, who was among the first prospective students to view the video magazine two years ago. Ms. Oldham, now a sophomore, had been accepted by four colleges; initially, Saint Mary's was at the bottom of her list.

    "When you see pictures, you think, 'That looks nice,' " Ms. Oldham said. "But with video, I could see myself in that class or at that basketball game. It was pretty persuasive, the whole interactive part of it."

    Frequent updates to the video were helpful. "Once you go to all those schools, they all kind of run together," she said. "You can go back and look at all the brochures, but this is better at reinforcing what you've seen."

    Kathleen Hessert, co-founder of NewGame Communications, a Charlotte, N.C., company that produces Vmags for schools and other organizations, said the technology is starting to attract interest from more colleges. "I think we were a little bit ahead of the market initially," Ms. Hessert said.

    Continued in article

     

    PowerPoint Helpers

    "The 15 Most Common Presentation Mistakes," by Richard Feloni, Business Insider, August 25, 2014 ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/most-common-presentation-mistakes-2014-8?op=1

    Video Tips on How to Improve Laptop Presentations ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/improving-powerpoint-style-presentations/32126?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    "The Battle Against Bad PowerPoint," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 8, 2012 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/techtherapy/2012/03/08/episode-93-the-battle-against-bad-powerpoint/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    "How to prevent death by PowerPoint," by Samanta White, CGMA Magazine, May 13, 2015 ---
    http://www.cgma.org/Magazine/News/Pages/powerpoint-secrets-201512307.aspx?TestCookiesEnabled=redirect

    How to Create Animated Pie Charts in PowerPoint ---
    https://www.howtogeek.com/402392/how-to-create-animated-pie-charts-in-powerpoint/


    "Redesigning Mary Meeker's Ugly Internet Slideshow," by Belinda Lanks, Bloomberg Businessweek, May 30, 2014 ---
    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-30/redesigning-mary-meekers-ugly-internet-slideshow

    Jensen Comments
    Some slides have less text, which is probably a good thing during the presentation. However, for those of us who cannot attend the presentation, sometimes more text adds value for a much larger absentee audience. A dark background is easier on the eye, and the dark background makes it easier to track a red laser pointer. However, be sure to set the your printer so that it does not drain your printer ink to print dark backgrounds.

    Bob Jensen's threads on PowerPoint and other presentation helpers ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#PowerPointHelpers


    Jensen Comment
    Even though the Amazon Kindle displays books and runs streaming videos into its own screen or television screens (a feature that I use for one movie per day), it's not a tablet computer.  Erin Templeton, however, shows how to load PDF files for on-the-road and classroom presentations.

    "A Quick ProfHack: Kindling the Presentation," by Erin Templeton, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 20, 2014 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/a-quick-profhack-kindling-the-presentation/57285?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


    Using Website Pages In Place of Powerpoint Slides
    "Presenting Without PowerPoint?" by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Education, October 7, 2013 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com//blogs/technology-and-learning/presenting-without-powerpoint

    Jensen Comment
    Of course many powerful speakers, like evangelical preachers, make presentations without any visual aids, including PowerPoint, Videos, White Boards, or Chalk Boards.

    For those that want live Websites, there's a bit of a risk since Webservers can fail when you need them the most or access to the Internet may be very expensive as is sometimes the case in a hotel ballroom. Also the presentation may be made in a room without an Internet connection (including wireless) such as a presentation in a developing country.

    The trick I used to use is to make a Camtasia video of live Website pages and then make my own live presentation using the Camtasia video complete with the Pause button and a laser pointer.

    When anti-PowerPoint professors rant it's usually about those boring PowerPoints that have too much text or are simply bullet points. But those same professors fail to mention how wonderful PowerPoint can be to point, with a laser pen, to a parts of a complicated graph or columns of numbers in a table.

    It's not that PowerPoint is bad. Like any tool it can be used effectively or be badly misused.

    Bob Jensen's threads on how to use PowerPoint more effectively ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#PowerPointHelpers


    "Seven tips to beautiful PowerPoint," by Eugene Cheng  ---
    http://www.slideshare.net/itseugene/7-tips-to-beautiful-powerpoint-by-itseugenec
    Thank you Andy's Teaching and Learning Blog for the heads up ---
    http://awteachlearn.blogspot.com/


    Graphing Lessons

    Kids Zone:  Create a Graph ---
    https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createAgraph/

    Beautiful, Editable PowerPoint Graphics & Shapes (Free Library) ---
    https://www.pptpop.com/powerpoint-graphics/

    How to Make a Chart or Graph in Excel ---
    https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-build-excel-graph

    Mathematics and Graphing Calculators Go Beyond What Most of Us Think of as "Calculators" --- 
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphing_calculator 

    This is relatively high level, but academics love Wofram Alpha (especially for graphing functions) ---
    https://www.wolframalpha.com/


    From the Scout Report on August 11, 2006

    Getting Results --- http://www.league.org/gettingresults/web/ 

    Educators have argued politely (and not so politely) about the most effective pedagogical methods for decades, and at times, they have even been able to agree on certain approaches. One recently created resource designed specifically for community college educators is the Getting Results website. Created as part of partnership between the National Science Foundation and WGBH, this self-contained professional development course is designed to "challenge previous thinking about teaching and learning and give you the basic tools for effective classroom practices." Users of this fine resource can work independently, or also elect to team up with groups of colleagues. Enhanced with online videos and worksheets, the course contains six modules, including "Moving Beyond the Classroom" and "Teaching with Technology". With an easy-to-use interface and non-intrusive graphics, this site is a most welcome addition to currently available online resources for community college educators.


    What not to do in PowerPoint (video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORxFwBR4smE

    "LESSONS FROM DILBERT (about PowerPoint)," by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Blog, September 28, 2011 ---
    http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2011/09/lessons-from-dilbert.html


    Students Evaluating the Lecture Pedagogy
    "Lecture Fail?" by Jeffrey Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 24, 2012 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Lecture-Fail-/130085/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

    PowerPoint is boring. Student attention spans are short. Today many facts pop up with a simple Google search. And plenty of free lectures by the world's greatest professors can be found on YouTube.

    Is it time for more widespread reform of college teaching?

    This series explores the state of the college lecture, and how technologies point to new models of undergraduate education.

    Last month, we began inviting students across the countries to fire up their Web cameras or camera-phones to send us video commentaries about whether lectures work for them. Below are highlights from the first batch of submissions, which are full of frustration with “PowerPoint abuse” – professors’ poor use of slide software that dumps too much information on students in a less-than-compelling fashion.

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


    "Microsoft Office Simplified For the Web," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2010 ---
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704575304575296681972150418.html 

    I am writing this in Microsoft Word, hardly an unusual way to author a document. But I'm not using Word as you know it—part of the large, complex Microsoft Office suite installed on your computer's hard drive. Instead, I am using a new, streamlined version of Word that for the first time resides on remote servers you reach through the Internet.

    This new version of Word is used inside a Web browser. It works on both Windows PCs and Macs, and via the newer versions of the major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. It's free and it doesn't require you to have regular Office on your computer.

    Word isn't the only Office component that's now available in a free online version. Microsoft has created similar simplified versions of Excel, PowerPoint and its OneNote note-taking program as part of the free online suite called Office Web Apps, which is available at office.live.com. To use the new online Office, you'll need a free account for the company's broader Windows Live online service.

    WSJ's Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg takes a look at the new free, online version of Microsoft Office, called Office Web Apps. It's a stripped down version of the familiar desktop edition of Office, and runs on both PCs and Macs. Walt says it may be all you'll ever need in an Office suite. Microsoft is also releasing a new version of its traditional desktop Office for Windows next week, called Office 2010. But in my view, the online edition is the most interesting new development for consumers in this round of updates. It's part of the broader trend toward cloud computing—doing tasks online rather than with desktop programs. And it's meant to help the software giant compete with rival online office suites from competitors like Google and Zoho.

    I've been testing Office Web Apps on both Windows and Mac computers, and in all four major browsers, and I like it. It has some downsides and is still a work in progress. It lacks many of the more sophisticated features of the local, desktop version of Office. In fact, Microsoft—apparently trying to protect its profitable desktop suite—refers to Office Web Apps as a "companion" to desktop Office, for "light" work.

    Mossberg Mailbox Mossberg on buying an iPad for children But these are capable, if simpler, programs that look and feel like their desktop counterparts and they will likely meet the needs of many consumers who produce basic documents, even if they don't own desktop Office. Also, the new Web Apps are connected to a generous 25 gigabytes of free online storage for your documents, via a companion Microsoft online storage system called SkyDrive.

    Another big benefit: Microsoft boasts its Office Web Apps produce documents that use the same file formats as the desktop programs and thus, look fully accurate when opened in desktop Office. The company calls this "fidelity." In my tests, this claim held true, at least on my Windows PC. (A revised version of Microsoft Office for the Mac, tuned to work with Web Apps, is in the works.)

    The new version of the desktop Office suite also has many new features, but a lot of these are for power users or corporate users, and, overall, it isn't nearly as big a change as its predecessor, Office 2007. Among the new desktop features consumers will notice and use are the extension of the consolidated top tool bar called the "Ribbon," introduced in the 2007 version in most Office programs, to Outlook; a new unified view for printing, sharing and previewing documents, called "Backstage"; and richer graphics. You can also now customize the Ribbon.

    In my tests of the streamlined Office Web Apps, I was able to use a variety of fonts and styles, insert and resize photos, and create tables. And I was able to view my documents, though not edit them, on an iPhone and iPad. This also works with other mobile devices.

    One glitch I ran into in the Word Web App was that, if you use a tab to start a paragraph, it changes the left margin of each subsequent line. Microsoft says this is a bug and it is working to fix it.

    Another downside for some users may be that the Web Apps only directly open documents from, and save them to, your online SkyDrive storage, not your hard disk. So you have to upload files from your hard disk to SkyDrive to edit them in the Web Apps. And, like most cloud-based programs, they can only be used when you're online.

    There are numerous things you may be used to doing in desktop Office that can't be done in the online version. For instance, you can't drag photos by the corners to resize them, embed videos, create slide transitions or add new spreadsheet charts.

    You can, with one click, open a Web version of your document in the full desktop program, to take advantage of richer editing. However, this only works with certain combinations of browsers and desktop Office versions.

    Two of the Web apps, Excel and OneNote, allow multiple users to log on and work on the same document together. The others don't yet. In fact, in my tests, I couldn't open a Word document locally until I had closed it online, and vice versa. Microsoft says it is working on expanding simultaneous use to all the apps.

    Office Web Apps are a good start for Microsoft at bringing its productivity expertise to the Web, and may be all many consumers need for creating simple documents.

     


    Students from the University of Denver created this video "parody" on technology in the classroom.
    It appears, however, to be a bit more serious critique than what I would call a humorous parody.
    http://www.youtube.com/user/DUinnovations#p/a/u/0/6svk_R_rVhA

    Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm


    What's wrong with PowerPoint--and how to fix it," by David Coursey, Executive Editor, AnchorDesk September 10, 2003 --- http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2914637,00.html 
    (Thank you Ed Scibner for pointing to this link.)

    Are PowerPoint slides making us stupid? Are all problems really just a few bullet points away from their solutions? Or is the medium having a bad effect on the message? I'm no Marshall McLuhan or Edward Tufte (I will pause here to let you all shout, "Damn straight!"), but I do know something about business presentations and how they're put together. And I know that PowerPoint too often gets in the way of the message, replacing clear thought with unnecessary animations, serious ideas with 10-word bullet points, substance with tacky, confusing style.

    I DON'T KNOW what McLuhan would think about PowerPoint, him being dead and all. But Tufte is very much alive and, in an essay appearing in the September issue of Wired, minces no words: "PowerPoint is evil," says the Yale professor whose books have set the standard for graphic presentation in the computer age.

    Tufte says that slideware programs like PowerPoint (there aren't many others left) "may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for speakers can be punishing to both content and audience." The standard PowerPoint deck, he says, "elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch."

    This is especially true given that many presenters--who really shouldn't be presenting in the first place--use PowerPoint as a crutch. PowerPoint becomes a tool to separate the presenter from the audience and from the message.

    But it doesn't have to be this way. It's possible to use PowerPoint as a tool (just like the projector you probably use to display your presentation), and as a real complement to what you're saying, without dumbing down your ideas. Today I'd like to offer some advice to help you do just that.

     

    • Do the presentation first, then the slides. Many people draft and write their presentation in PowerPoint itself. It's far better to prepare the presentation in Word (or whatever other tool you use to write)--including all the detail you want to present--and then transfer the highlights to PowerPoint. The one problem with using Word for this: It doesn't have a very good outlining tool.

       

    • Artwork has killed more presentations than it's saved. You're not a graphic artist, and neither am I. PowerPoint makes it too easy to add confusing graphics to presentations. Use restraint.

       

    • Animation is for cartoons. Animation tends to take over the presentation, which then becomes more about the presenter trying to make all the builds and transitions work properly than actually presenting the content.

       

    • Present more than the slide. Don't you hate it when presenters stand at the front of a room and read their slides ?  Slides are supposed to convey the major points of the presentation, reinforcing the speaker's points. Use them as prompts to talk about specific topics, as an outline, not as the substance of the presentation itself.

       

    • Use the notes pages. Many people are unaware that PowerPoint lets you attach notes to slides, which can then be printed and used to guide you or to give to the audience. Search for "notes" in the Help file to find out more about this feature.

       

    • Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. No, you don't have to stand in front of a mirror and do your entire presentation. But a sit-down with some colleagues can answer the questions, "Do these slides make sense?" and "Is this the information people care about?"--before you find out the hard way.
    My point here is that PowerPoint glitz alone does not an effective presentation make. While your decks shouldn't be boring, they aren't entertainment, either. A few staging and showbiz skills help, but most presentations are won or lost in the actual content. Your job is to control PowerPoint. If you don't, PowerPoint will control your presentation.

     


    April 4, 2008 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    RECOMMENDED READING

    "Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column.

    "Why Visual Aids Need to Be Less Visual" By Philip Yaffe UBIQUITY, vol. 9, issue 12, March 25, 2008 - March 31, 2008 http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/volume_9/v9i12_yaffe.html 

    "I was recently invited to a presentation by an accomplished speaker. Needless to say, his speech was well structured, his manner relaxed and confident, his eye contact and body language excellent, etc. He normally spoke without slides, but this time he felt they would reinforce and illuminate his message. They didn't. In fact, they were more of a hindrance than a help."

    Marketing communication consultant Jaffe provides useful advice to anyone adding visual materials to their lectures, conference presentations, and other public speaking activities.


    Onsite rounds give way to PowerPoint for medical interns
    Socratic Dialogue Gives Way to PowerPoint

    "Socratic Dialogue Gives Way to PowerPoint," by Lawrence K. Altman, MD., The New York Times, December 12, 2006 --- Click Here

    Grand rounds are not so grand anymore.

    For at least a century at many teaching and community hospitals, properly dressed doctors in ties and white coats have assembled each week, usually in an auditorium, for a master class in the art and science of medicine from the best clinicians. Before us was often a patient who sat in a chair or rested on a gurney and two doctors, one in training and the other a professor or senior doctor at the hospital. In a Socratic dialogue, they often led the audience in a step-by-step deciphering of the ailment.

    But in recent years, grand rounds have become didactic lectures focusing on technical aspects of the newest biomedical research. Patients have disappeared. If a case history is presented, it is usually as a brief synopsis and the discussant rarely makes even a passing reference to it.

    Now grand rounds are often led by visiting professors from distant hospitals and medical schools. Sometimes, manufacturers of drugs and devices pay the visitor an honorarium and expenses, a practice that has drawn criticism. And the Socratic dialogue has given way to PowerPoint. These rounds are often useful, but certainly not grand.

    Precisely when and where grand rounds began is not known. There are many types of rounds where doctors learn from patients. For example, there are the daily working rounds as doctors walk through a hospital to visit and examine patients. In teaching rounds, more senior doctors supervise the work of residents, or house officers, at a patient’s bedside or in a clinic.

    Grand rounds were showcases featuring the best clinicians, and the practice thrived in an era when doctors knew little more than what they observed at the bedside. Professors often demonstrated characteristics of physical findings like an enlarged thyroid, a belly swollen with fluid or another grotesque disfigurement that the audience could see. Those with a flair for showmanship were often the best teachers, adapting the predictable structure to their needs and talents.

    Grand rounds usually began with a younger doctor’s reciting the medical history of a patient with an unusual disease, physical finding or symptom. Sometimes the professor knew about the case, other times he did not. The professor would then ask the patient what was wrong. The more compassionate professors gave reassurance by placing their hands on the patients.

    The professor would conduct the interview much like a journalist. When did the fever begin? How high was it? Did you notice a rash? Did you have pain? Where did you feel it? What relieved it?

    Each major specialty, like internal medicine and surgery, held separate grand rounds. Pediatrics had a different style. A child unable to relate the events involved in his or her medical history often sat on a parent’s lap. The format promoted direct dialogue and emotional reaction between the pediatrician and the family in a way that would not come across if a doctor coldly presented the child’s case.

    After arriving at a diagnosis, the professor related the current state of medical knowledge to the patient’s case. The emphasis was on diagnosis, treatment and the management of a patient, not on research.

    In those earlier days, the patient stayed for part or all of the session, which usually lasted an hour. Sometimes doctors in the audience asked questions of the patient and professor. Humor trickled into some sessions. So did personal attacks among faculty members.

    As a student at the Tufts Medical School in Boston beginning in 1958, I joined the throngs of doctors on grand rounds when Dr. Louis Weinstein spoke about infectious diseases.

    Usually, the patient’s pertinent information was on a blackboard. Dr. Weinstein would study the fever chart, seeking clues in the pattern to help identify a particular infection. Then he would regale the crowd with anecdotes from his vast experience in caring for patients with typhoid fever, diphtheria, polio and many other infectious diseases.

    Before the Medicare and Medicaid plans were enacted in 1965, many patients treated in teaching hospitals received charity care. In those days, when costs were less of an obstacle, professors sometimes hospitalized patients a few extra days so they could be presented at grand rounds. In other cases, many patients returned after discharge in gratitude for their free care.

    Even the smartest experts had to be on their toes, because younger doctors often selected a case intended to tax their brains. Another intention was to have the experts explain their thinking as they matched wits against colleagues and the illness itself.

    In San Francisco in 1987, I heard a visiting expert discuss the possible reasons that a woman in her 80s, who complained of weakness and muscle spasms in her back, had a severe loss of potassium.

    After the resident gave a detailed account of her illness, the discussant, Dr. Donald W. Seldin, then the chief physician at the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center in Dallas, went to a blackboard to highlight the crucial elements and list possible causes.

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's threads education technologies are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    Epsilen Environment from Purdue University appears to have brought together the latest technology in a course authoring, course management, and e-learning package  --- http://www.epsilen.com/Epsilen/Public/Home.aspx

    The Epsilen Environment is the result of six years of research and development within the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI. Epsilen Products and Services are commercially available through BehNeem LLC, the holding company created in Indiana to commercialize, market and further develop the Epsilen Environment. The New York Times is an equity and strategic partner in the company.

    I maintain a site on the history of course authoring and course management technology at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

    A 2008 addition to the above history site came to my attention in a loose-card advertisement for Epsilen Enviroment that came in the November 3, 2008 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

    Free ePortfolios 
     
    Basic ePortfolio accounts are free for all registered students and faculty of U.S. colleges and universities.  An Epsilen ePortfolio can be created in minutes and be used throughout one’s academic career, during professional life, and even into retirement.  The free Epsilen ePortfolio account offers tools and resources enabling members to:

    • Create and maintain a professional ePortfolio
    • Engage in professional  and social networking
    • Showcase scholarly work and other documents in a wide range of formats
    • Develop and share resumes
    • Store and share files/objects
    • Use Epsilen e-mail, blog, wiki, and other communication and collaboration tools
    • Create and participate in professional collaboration groups
    • Access to online courses and trainings using the Epsilen Global Learning System (GLS) courseware.
    • Produce a personal ePortfolio Web site with profile, photos and video
    • Receive an automated weekly Epsilen status report that lets you know about those that have visited your “corner”, share similar research, teaching, internship or consulting interests.  

    If your campus is, or becomes, a licensed Epsilen institution (see below), your free ePortfolio will integrate dynamically with more sophisticated tools and services listed below that accompany the paid license. Visit www.epsilen.com to create your personal ePortfolio and begin exploring the Environment. 

      
    Exploratory Institutional Memberships
     
    The Exploratory Membership is an easy and cost-effective option for colleges and universities, schools, districts and state systems to explore and experience the features of Epsilen, the next generation of learning and networking software.  Upon payment of an annual membership fee, the following features are available to Exploratory Members: 

    • Administrative account to brand, monitor, and maintain internal ePortfolio accounts of your students ,faculty and alumnae
    • Institutional ePortfolio site for your college or university
    • Global announcement and message broadcasting to ePortfolio accounts associated with your institution
    • Delivery of 12 online courses or training using Epsilen’s Global Learning System (GLS), with the option to incorporate New York Times content described below
    • Direct access to the Epsilen helpdesk 
    • A hosted Web-based  solution that requires no, or little, institutional IT support 
    • Ability to upgrade to other licensed services (see below) 
    • Ability to integrate Epsilen with campus SIS (see below) 
    • Ability to cross list courses across institutions, departments, and schools  

    Annual Exploratory Memberships begin at $5,000 for campuses with up to 2,000 students.  Click here for more pricing information and order application. 
     
     

    New York Times Knowledge Network

    New York Times Knowledge (NYTKnowledge Network) offers New York Times content to complement faculty-designed courses served dynamically in customizable templates through Epsilen’s Global Learning System.  New York Times content is aggregated by subject and easily selected and incorporated into lessons by faculty and the interactive learning environment. NYTKnowledge Network provides access to a repository of Times archives back to 1851 Times articles, special issues sections, multimedia features, and synchronous and asynchronous contact with correspondents, resulting in an extraordinary integrated learning environment that supports hybrid or online offerings.
     

    The New York Times Knowledge Network also offers the opportunity to participate in Webcasts with the Times correspondents and other subject matter experts. These can be included in traditional courses, or offered by your institution as stand-alone life-long learning experiences with comprehensive continuing education programs designed by the New York Times. 


    NYT Knowledge Network Provides:

    • A rich repository of archived content back to 1851
    • Access to other major content providers
    • Multimedia news content
    • Interactive maps and graphs
    • Webcasts, chats with correspondents
    • A comprehensive range of content aggregated by subject and easily integrated to support your teaching objectives.
    • NYTimes Knowledge Network marketing of your continuing education courses.  

    Visit http://www.nytimes.com/knowledge for further information and pricing (will be released in mid August 2007).
     

    Student Learning Matrix 
     
    Programs, departments, and schools within a campus may create unlimited student learning matrices to be used by students through an automated learning outcome assessment tool for both summative and formative learning assessment.  Features include:

    • Creation of unlimited student learning matrices for program- or campus-level learning outcome assessment (Each axis includes attributes defined by the program/campus.)
    • Ability for students to upload their learning outcomes according to predefined rubrics
    • Access by faculty and academic advisors to each student learning matrix for assessment, advisement, and certification
    • Program- and campus-level assessment reports for internal and external accreditation reviews
    • A hosted Web-based solution that requires no institutional IT support

    The annual Student Learning Matrix membership fee is based on the number of students in the program or institution.  Click here for more information and online membership application.
     
     

    Global Learning System (GLS)
     
     

    Epsilen offers the Global Learning System (GLS), a new Web-based learning framework developed as the next generation of eLearning and networking. In contrast to current legacy learning management systems, the GLS offers true global learning collaboration by connecting students and instructors on campuses in the U.S. and around the world in an interactive and intuitive Web 2.0 learning environment.  The GLS complements existing licensed or open source CMS products.  The GLS features include:

    • Global learning management system that enables students and instructors to easily register or be invited to courses and learning collaboration
    • Cross listing of class rosters of two or more courses within various campuses, or across institutions
    • Innovative tools using professional and social networking to enhance learning, encourage collaboration, and utilize peer review technology
    • The ability to easily archive courses and working groups for continued engagement
    • A hosted Web-based solution that requires little, or no institutional IT support

    The annual GLS membership fee is based on the number of students and courses within the institution. Click here for more information and online membership application.
     
     

    Charter Membership
     

    Experience the full suite of the Epsilen “Environment” and resources with unparalleled access to NYTKnowledge Network content. Charter members receive special pricing for unlimited use of ePortfolios, the Student Learning Matrix, courses through the Global Learning System, and interactive Webcasts with correspondents.  With charter membership, two university administrators will be invited to participate in the Epsilen - New York Times charter council, with meetings and events scheduled at The New York Times.  Benefits include:

    • Single sign-on environment featuring a toolbox of services for ePortfolio, social networking, Learning Matrix, GLS, object repository, and NYTKnowledge Network
    • Totally hosted turnkey solution with no need for local servers or local technical staff
    • Cost effectiveness for both small and large campuses
    • Collaboration on designing the next generation of eLearning through networking with other members of the Epsilen - New York Times charter council

    The Epsilen Charter membership fee is based on the total number of students within the institution.  Click here for more information and online membership application. 
     
     

    Technical Support and System Integration
     

    Epsilen offers consulting and technical support through both internal and third-party sources for the integration of Epsilen with local campus databases and existing licensed technology.  This provides a seamless, single sign-on, portal approach to all resources and services supporting the learning and teaching initiatives of a campus.  Click Here for more information and online membership application.

    I maintain a site on the history of course authoring and course management technology at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm


    Knowledge Media Laboratory --- http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/programs/index.asp?key=38
    The Carnegie Foundation

    The Knowledge Media Laboratory works to create a future in which communities of teachers, faculty, programs, and institutions collectively advance teaching and learning by exchanging their educational knowledge, experiences, ideas, and reflections by taking advantage of various technologies and resources.

    The KML is currently working with its partners, including Carnegie Foundation programs, to achieve the following goals:

    • To develop digital (or electronic) tools and resources that help to make knowledge of effective teaching practices and educational transformation efforts visible, shareable, and reusable.

    • To explore synergy among various technologies to better support the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

    • To build the capacity for faculty and teachers independently to take advantage of information and communications technologies that enable them to re-examine, rethink, and represent teaching and students learning, and to share the outcomes in an effective and efficient way.

    • To sustain communities of practice engaged in collaboratively improving teaching and student learning by building common areas to exchange knowledge and by building repositories for the representation of effective practice.

    Bob Jensen's threads on teaching resources are at  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources

     


    On the Leading Edge of Learning and Education Technology
    Sharing Professor of the Week --- Dan Madigan at Bowling Green State University --- http://fp.dl.kent.edu/learninginstitute/madigan.htm

    Dan Madigan is the Director of the Scholarship and Engagement and Professor of English at Bowling Green State University.

    Dan has a newsletter on Teaching Tips (usually with respect to technology) and other helpful teaching resources --- http://www.bgsu.edu/ctlt/page12182.html

    I discovered Dan Madigan in the February 2006 issue of Accounting Education News --- http://aaahq.org/ic/browse.htm
    In that issue of AEN, a summary of provided of his Idea Paper #43 on "New Technologies that are Shaping Education and Learning." Excerpts from that summary are provided below.

    Idea Paper #43 by Dan Madigan

    New Technologies that are Shaping Teaching and Learning

    Blogs

    You can create your own blog for free by going to http://www.blogger.com/home .  Blog technology allows blogs to be syndicated and aggregators allow users to automatically search for favorite blogs on the web and have them delivered to personal accounts ( http://www.bloglines.com/ ) [using tools like RSS feed readers-Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary].

    Wiki

    There are many places on the web that offer wiki support for free wiki including: http://pbwiki.com/ .  To find out more about wikis and how they can be used for teaching and learning go to http://www.writingwiki.org/default.aspx/WritingWiki/For%20Teachers%20New%20to%20Wikis.html .

     Learning Management Systems

    Many universities buy a proprietary LMS, but increasingly universities are building their own LMS based on open source software like Moodle ( http://www.moodle.org/ ).  Moodle's no-cost (excluding costs associated with hardware and support), flexibility to adapt to small or large institutions, departments, programs and individuals, and world-wide support are attractive features.
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
    (This includes modules on Blackboard, Moodle, and various competitors)
     

    Jensen Comment
    I have a somewhat dated module with some useful links about Moodle at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
    In particular go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm#Moodle

    Presentation Software

    Although PowerPoint® may be the most common example of this program, there are many other programs including Keynote, Adobe Acrobat, and the popular and free Open Office Suite package that includes IMPRESS as its presentation program ( http://www.openoffice.org/index.html ).  Simple presentations can also be created using the Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System (S5).  This open source system ( http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/ ) requires only basic knowledge of web skills and can be learned quickly.

    Tutorials/Self-tutorials

    A basic tutorial can be created with any text editor and delivered to students through a variety of digital technologies such as email, Portable Document Files (PDF) that can preserve the format and colors of a document, web pages, and CDs.  Tutorials that appeal to visual learners can be created with scanning software or basic screen capture software found on any operating system.  Video tutorials, like those for software applications, can be created with screen capturing software that captures the movement of a mouse as it is used to open windows and select options in a program.  A microphone, used simultaneously with the screen-capturing tool to narrate the actions and video-editing software, completes the process.  More advanced tutorials include functions that, for example, mimic teacher/student interactions and exchanges, and include an assessment of those interactions.  These interactive tutorials can be created through advanced programs such as Adobe FLASH and java scripting.

    Concept Mapping Software

    Description: Concept mapping (a method of brainstorming) is a technique for visualizing the relationships between concepts and creating a visual image to represent the relationship.  Concept mapping software serves several purposes in the educational environment.  One is to capture the conceptual thinking of one or more persons in a way that is visually represented.  Another is to represent the structure of knowledge gleaned from written documents so that such knowledge can be visually represented.  In essence, a concept map is a diagram showing relationships, often between complex ideas.  With new mapping software such as the open source Cmap ( http://www.cmap.ihmc.us/download/ ), concepts are easily represented with images (bubbles or pictures) called concept nodes, and are connected with lines that show the relationship between and among the concepts.  In addition, the software allows users to attach documents, diagrams, images other concept maps, hypertextual links and even media files to the concept nodes.  Concept maps can be saved as a PDF or image file and distributed electronically in a variety of ways including the Internet and storage devices.

    Webcast

    These live sessions are highly interactive and allow users to share applications, such as whiteboards, concept maps and word documents, and to communicate live through audio and chat.  Elluminate ( http://www.elluminate.com/educator_solutions.jsp ) is one of many server-based software programs that is enjoying popularity in educational settings.  Webcasts provide educational institutions with the ability to support conferencing and to deliver training and presentations to personnel anytime and anywhere.  Recorded and archived webcasts, because they are economical to develop and store, are increasingly becoming the preferred way for universities to deliver lectures, events and presentations to faculty and students through the web, CDs, DVDs and even TV broadcasts.

    Podcasts

    Some popular free podcatcher websites are iTunes and iPodder.  The browser Firefox also has podcatching features.  Users can create their own podcast for free by going to websites such as ( http://www.twocanoes.com/vodcaster/ ).  For a nominal fee, a more powerful and cross-platform podcast creator tool can be found at ( http://www.potionfactory.com/ ).

    ePortfolios

    Although many standard software programs can be used to create basic ePortfolios, the most dynamic programs, such as Open Source Portfolio ( http://www.osportfolio.org ) are designed specifically for developing portfolios that serve a variety of reflective and representational functions within a password protected system.

    Personal Response Systems (Clickers)

    Individuals are equipped with their own remote control keypads that have letters or numbers that correspond to choices given by a presenter.  The results of the responses are captured on a computer either through infrared or radio signals and compiled in ways that show such breakdowns as class distribution and individual responses.  Typically, the results are instantly made available to the participants via some type of graphic that is displayed with a projector.  Presenters can set automatic controls within the system that limit the time a responder has to answer a question.  Each remote "clicker" has a serial number so that all users and their responses can be individually identified and recorded.

     

    Supporting Digital Technology for Teaching and Learning

    As faculty are carefully assessing their use of technology for purposes of teaching and learning, universities need to assess whether their technology support is adequate and responsive to the needs of those instructors.  During the early phases of the digital revolution on campuses, this meant building an infrastructure, providing equipment and offering basic skills-oriented workshops to faculty and students.  Over the years, however, we have learned that basic technology support has not always been enough to ensure that digital technologies are being used effectively as ways to enhance student learning.  Some universities have heeded the challenge and are creatively building upon existing programs to develop a technology of support that is responsive to the professional lives of today's faculty.  What follows are five examples that serve to represent ways that universities are developing creative solutions for supporting a learning environment that is increasingly being influenced by a digital revolution that show no signs of abating anytime soon.

    Faculty Involvement

    Faculty need to have a critical voice in university decisions about technology improvement and deployment on campus--especially when the technology relates to teaching and learning issues...Forward thinking universities find new and inclusive ways to tap into the collective voice so that student learning and new technologies can be effectively aligned.

    Blended Workshops

    Forward thinking universities go beyond skills-based technology workshops.  They have found creative ways to blend pedagogical instruction with technology instruction...Also, universities have begun to offer blended workshops that have a distinct pedagogical focus yet blend in thinking about resources, including technology resources, which can support a strong pedagogical focus...

    Threaded Workshops

    Universities are using the threaded workshop model as a framework for teaching and learning workshops that include learning about new technologies.  Each workshop in the series is "threaded" in such a way as to relate to one another and play off of one another.  Thus, a series on integrated course design might have individual workshops on different topics like assessment, learning activities, motivation, and learning outcomes that are aligned in a way that gives participants a more comprehensive view of how to build a dynamic course.  All discussions about technology in these threaded workshops are contextualized within the larger pedagogical discussion, and are focused on how the technology serves to support the pedagogy.  Because instructors attend the series over a period of several weeks, they bring back to each workshop their applied knowledge and share it with one another as real world and relevant experiences...

    Just-In-Time Resources

    Universities are increasingly realizing that busy instructors do not need to be experts in all areas of digital technology in order to use technology effectively in the classroom.  Universities support this notion by making technology learning easy, accessible, and just-in-time.  Today's digital technology allows just-in-time resources to flourish on campus.  For example, Internet available tutorials that are home grown or licensed ( http://www.atomiclearning.com ) make it easy for instructors to learn new software/hardware in bits and pieces and when needed.  Why learn everything there is to know about PowerPoint or your computer operating system when you can learn only what you need by going to a two-minute video that is available anywhere and anytime.  In addition, just-in-time resources extend the learning environments of students.  Why spend valuable class time teaching students how to use a certain technology application for a project or activity when just-in-time resources can be made available to students at their level and at a time outside of class time?

    Open Source

    Some of the more popular open source software programs include: Moodle ( http://www.moodle.org/ ) and Bazaar ( http://www.klaatu.pc.athabascau.ca/cgi-bin/b7/main.pl?rid=1 ), two LMS programs: MySQL ( http://www.dev.mysql.com/ ), a data base program, and; Open Office ( http://www.openoffice.org/index.html ), a productivity suite that supports word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications.  Many open source products can be found and downloaded at SourceForge ( http://www.sourceforge.net/ ).

    Jensen Comment
    I have a somewhat dated module with some useful links about Moodle at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
    In particular go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm#Moodle

    Conclusions

    Universities are home to a rich diversity of student learners whose cultures have been tremendously impacted by the digital revolution of the last fifteen years.  These students grew up communicating, creating knowledge, and sharing resources through the Internet and all its applications.  As university students, they are poised to take advantage of the digital world for learning.  But are we as teachers?  We should not jump headfirst  into this potential digital cauldron without taking stock of an important detail--as with all technologies and instructional practices, we must not only understand their potential to impact deeper learning in students, we must also understand their limitations as a means to achieve a deeper learning.  It is not the lecture, cooperative learning or the problem-based method itself that enhances student learning any more than it is the Internet, podcast, or blog.  It is far more important to know how to use instructional methods and technology to support learning outcomes that are integrally linked to the student learner as a critical thinker.  Students may know how to navigate the Internet and use other forms of digital technology for purposes of their own learning, but do they know how to take full advantage of those technologies for learning at the university level?  This is where progressive universities enter the equation and lead.

    In today's educational climate of decreasing state support and public scrutiny of educational spending, universities can ill afford to squander important dollars on technology resources that have not been critically assessed in terms of supporting student learning.  But, universities cannot stop there.  Faculty and administrators must combine efforts to celebrate openly the important symbiosis between technology and learning.  Nothing less will suffice or we will suffer from our own negligence.

    The above quotes are only isolated quotes from a much longer document.

     


    Chatterbot --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatterbot

    "CHATBOTS EXPLAINED: Why the world's most powerful tech companies think they're the biggest thing since the iPhone," by Biz Carson, Business Insider, April 2016 ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/what-are-chatbots-and-who-is-building-them-2016-4

    Chatbots 101 ---
    https://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/chatbots-101?IR=T&itm_source=businessinsider&itm_medium=content_marketing&itm_campaign=content_marketing_leadgen_link&itm_content=leadgen_teaser&itm_term=leadgen_teaser-chatbots-101-report-business-insider#!/

    Jensen Comment


    Chatbot --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot

    MIT:  Google says its new chatbot Meena is the best in the world ---
    https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615118/google-says-its-new-chatbot-meena-is-the-best-in-the-world/

    Case studies on how three insurers are using chatbots to boost customer acquisition, slash claims processing times, and increase staff productivity ---
    https://www.businessinsider.com/chatbots-insurance-playbook


    Chatbots --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot

    I think chatbot technology is perhaps the most important learning technology ever.
    Here's a good place (not free) to start learning about their use in education ---
    http://results.chronicle.com/AIChatbotsHE18  

    When I was still teaching (now I'm retired) I made over 100 Camtasia short videos to teach technical modules in my courses. If I were still teaching my next move would be to develop chatbots.
    Bob Jensen


    Chatbots in Education Such as in Learning a Language ---
    https://www.chatbots.org/conversational_agent/matt/

    Using a Chatbot to Prevent Identity Fraud by Social Engineering ---
    http://www.diva-portal.se/smash/get/diva2:237296/FULLTEXT01.pdf

    Jensen Comment
    Microsoft is betting that chatbots will be the wave of the future in ways that thus far are unimaginable, including education chatbots yet to be invented.

    Chatbot --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot

    THE CHATBOT MONETIZATION REPORT: Sizing the market, key strategies, and how to navigate the chatbot opportunity ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/chatbot-monetization-market-business-strategies-opportunites-2016-11

    QuickBooks jumps on the chatbot bandwagon ---
    https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/quickbooks-jumps-on-the-chatbot-bandwagon

    Jensen Comment
    If I were still teaching I would be developing chatbots for my courses and for other technical accountancy modules. There's a great opportunity for chatbot development consulting.


    How a hospital chain's use of chat bots to speed up urgent care highlights the importance of adopting AI tools in a time of crisis ---
    https://www.businessinsider.com/why-health-centers-tech-overhaul-was-key-coronavirus-plan-2020-3?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BIPrime_select&utm_campaign=BI Prime 2020-03-18&utm_term=BI Prime Select

    Times of crisis like the ongoing coronavirus pandemic can be a major roadblock for investments that companies make on digital transformations. 

    But at Providence St. Joseph Health, a nonprofit healthcare system that operates in seven states, the epidemic is proving why those efforts are so critical. And it's even helping to accelerate the ongoing tech overhaul. 

    "If we hadn't made the progress we made over the last 12 months on this digital transformation, we would be in severe jeopardy right now," chief information officer B.J. Moore told Business Insider. "We've had a couple hundred other pet projects that people insist we continue work on. It's given us the room to shut those down."

    When Moore came onboard from Microsoft, he embarked on a "back to basics" mission that focused on seven core areas, including a pivot to the cloud from physical data centers and consolidating its electronic health records to one provider.

    Those initiatives remain ongoing during the coronavirus crisis and employees working on them continue to travel to Providence's 51 hospitals. This is despite other projects falling off and the spread of the disease forcing other firms to prohibit non-essential travel. 

    Like other tech leaders, Moore warned that halting projects could actually be more detrimental in the long term. Instead, he advised others CIOs to use the situation as a way to realign to the overall goals of the transformation.

    "Use this as an opportunity to create focus on those vital few [projects]," he said. "Use this as an opportunity to shut down the 500 other non-critical activities we are asked to do."

    The coronavirus outbreak has also given Moore the result he needed to justify to leadership the investments made so far and the need for those to continue. 

    Several of the milestones his team already hit are proving critical in helping the company respond to the pandemic.

    The adoption of Microsoft Teams, the software giant's workplace chat platform, and other Office 365 productivity tools (along with improvements to the network infrastructure) made it possible for more employees to work remotely.

    The hospital chain also created an online chatbot that is helping to field many initial questions from potential patients, which is reducing traffic to the hospitals and allowing those with the most urgent cases to get faster access to care.

    The situation is even quickening the pace of the transformation.

    "Things that we were going to spread out over the next two to three months, we're accelerating to the next four to six weeks," Moore said.

    The chatbot, for example, had been in the works for six months. Once the coronavirus started to emerge, it went into production within a week.

    Continued in article

    Chatbots --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot

    Chatbots 101 ---
    https://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/chatbots-101?IR=T&itm_source=businessinsider&itm_medium=content_marketing&itm_campaign=content_marketing_leadgen_link&itm_content=leadgen_teaser&itm_term=leadgen_teaser-chatbots-101-report-business-insider#!/

    Jensen Comment
    I think chatbot technology is perhaps the most important learning technology ever.
    Here's a good place (not free) to start learning about their use in education ---
    http://results.chronicle.com/AIChatbotsHE18  

    When I was still teaching (now I'm retired) I made over 100 Camtasia short videos to teach technical modules in my courses. If I were still teaching my next move would be to develop chatbots.
    Bob Jensen

    Case studies on how three insurers are using chatbots to boost customer acquisition, slash claims processing times, and increase staff productivity ---
    https://www.businessinsider.com/chatbots-insurance-playbook

    MIT:  Google says its new chatbot Meena is the best in the world ---
    https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615118/google-says-its-new-chatbot-meena-is-the-best-in-the-world/

    Bob Jensen's threads on chatbots ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Chatbots

     


    "Some Juicy Audiobook Tidbits," by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, July 4, 2013 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com//blogs/technology-and-learning/some-juicy-audiobook-tidbits

    Bob Jensen's threads on free audio books and poems ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Audio


    I always thought the pressure to ban video making in class would come from the faculty. I never thought about other students contending that filming them speaking in class is an invasion of their privacy.

    "Campus Stung by Controversial Video Moves to Ban Recordings in Class," by Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 26, 2014 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Campus-Stung-by-Controversial/145595/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

    The Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater has responded to a controversy over a surreptitiously obtained classroom video of a guest lecturer lambasting Republicans by moving to bar students from recording and disseminating such footage.

    Although the campus’s chancellor, Richard J. Telfer, has not yet signed off on the videotaping policy, statements issued by him and a spokeswoman on Thursday suggested he expected to approve it as soon as it lands on his desk.

    "Faculty on this campus have the right to establish the policies for their individual classrooms," Mr. Telfer said in a written statement.

    "Also," Mr. Telfer added, "I believe it is important that our faculty and students are able to have the free exchange of ideas without concern that what is said will be communicated beyond the limits of the classroom or campus."

    Kyle R. Brooks, the freshman who recorded the video that triggered the controversy, expressed frustration that the institution had responded to his producing the video rather than what it depicts: a guest lecturer denouncing many Republicans as racist, classist, sexist, homophobic, and dishonest.

    "People should have been upset that he came into the classroom and said that," Mr. Brooks said, "but instead they were upset that I recorded it and made it public."

    The question of how to deal with students’ videotaping of classroom interactions has become more pressing for colleges as technological advances have made both the production and dissemination of such recordings easier. The University of Wisconsin at Whitewater is one of several higher-education institutions that have come under fire in recent years after covertly obtained recordings of controversial statements by faculty members have been posted online.

    Of 72 four-year colleges whose faculty leaders recently responded to a Chronicle question on the subject, 20 said they had policies intended to prevent the unauthorized recording and redistribution of classroom speech. In December officials at the University of Colorado at Boulder cited fears of such videotaping to justify their decision to discipline a sociology professor over a classroom skit on prostitution.

    ‘White Rage’

    The incident that sparked the controversy at Whitewater occurred in late February, in an introductory sociology course called "Individuals and Society." The instructor, Monique Liston, a doctoral student in urban education and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, had arranged for students to hear a guest lecture by Eyon Biddle Sr., political director and director of organizing for the Milwaukee-based Service Employees International Union Local 150.

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    With technology these days, I'm not optimistic about policies banning videos taken scrumptiously by students on the various devices available to them. For example, it's fairly obvious when students wear Google Glass eyewear or keep their mobile phones aimed at a speaker. But I have a pair of eyeglasses that look like common eyeglasses and also take video of anything that I am looking at. These eyeglasses also record audio, but the miniture microphone leaves something to be desired. Often I only record the video without audio.

    You can watch a video I took some years ago with my eyeglass camera ---
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/VideoCoolSunglasses/SnowSculptures.3gp   


    Google Glass --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass

    "Google Glass Prompts Experiments in Journalism Schools," by Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Education, September 6, 2013 ---
    http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Google-Glass-Prompts-Experiments-in-Journalism-Schools.html 

    Journalism professors are exploring Google Glass this year to see how it works in their field.

    California State University, Chico, is one of the latest journalism and public relations programs to buy the wearable technology, which allows users to shoot video, share tweets and show the latest news, among other things. The developer version of Google Glass costs around $1,500 and is currently only available to explorers that Google selected through a contest.

    "As I told Google when we entered their contest, we're training students for jobs that probably don't even exist yet," said Susan Wiesinger, associate professor and department chair of the university's Journalism and Public Relations program. "We need them to think creatively. We need to think what might be ahead. And for them to even see a device that isn't yet on the market, it makes them engage with it and not ignore it."

    Some feel that the journalism field has a history of ignoring technology until it's too late. For example, few journalists took desktop Internet seriously, and as a result, classified ads went to Craigslist instead of online newspapers.

    "When has the journalism industry ever benefited from dismissing or ignoring emerging technology?" asked Robert Hernandez, assistant professor of professional practice at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. "In other words, I don't know how Glass can be used for journalism on either creation, or distribution or consumption, but the only way to find out is to play with it, so I've been experimenting with it."

    Hernandez already plans to bring Google Glass into a new journalism class with another technology he's been experimenting with: augmented reality. He also hopes to hire a developer who will create Glass apps for existing media brands. And this year, he'll work on a pilot with a few other people that could turn into a Glass app developing course for news and information.

    At Chico State, Google Glass will spark discussions around privacy issues and technology development in a media literacy class that Wiesinger teaches. A student from Tehama Group Communications, the department's public relations firm on campus, will write a first-person story on how it could be used in the industry and another story about how the department is using it. On top of that, a digital media start-up class will allow students to develop apps for the device.

    But neither of these professors say that Google Glass is groundbreaking for journalism at the moment. Right now, it's a hands-free accessory to a smartphone and still needs to be tied to that phone to tweet and post pictures.

    The technology does allow students to record video while keeping their hands free for other tasks, such as taking notes. And it could provide contextual information for buildings that they're looking at, for example.

    Hernandez said that context is king with journalism and technology. The storytelling has to come first, and the technology comes second in these journalism programs.

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    I envision that Google Glass could also revolutionize some auditing procedures and the teaching of auditing.

    "Professors Envision Using Google Glass in the Classroom," by Sara Grossman, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 20, 2013 --- Click Here
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professors-envision-using-google-glass-in-the-classroom/44401?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    "The Porn Industry Has Already Dreamed Up Awesome Ideas For Google Glass," by Dylan Love, Business Insider, May 25, 2013 ---
     http://www.businessinsider.com/google-glass-porn-2013-5

    "Google Glass and the Future of Technology," by David A. Pogue, The New York Times, September 13, 2012 ---
    http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/google-glass-and-the-future-of-technology/

    New gadgets — I mean whole new gadget categories — don’t come along very often. The iPhone was one recent example. You could argue that the iPad was another. But if there’s anything at all as different and bold on the horizon, surely it’s Google Glass.

    That, of course, is Google’s prototype of a device you wear on your face. Google doesn’t like the term “glasses,” because there aren’t any lenses. (The Glass team, part of Google’s experimental labs, also doesn’t like terms like “augmented reality” or “wearable computer,” which both have certain baggage.)

    ¶Instead, Glass looks like only the headband of a pair of glasses — the part that hooks on your ears and lies along your eyebrow line — with a small, transparent block positioned above and to the right of your right eye. That, of course, is a screen, and the Google Glass is actually a fairly full-blown computer. Or maybe like a smartphone that you never have to take out of your pocket.

    ¶This idea got a lot of people excited when Nick Bilton of The New York Times broke the story of the glasses in February. Google first demonstrated it April in a video. In May, at Google’s I/O conference, Glass got some more play as attendees watched a live video feed from the Glass as a sky diver leapt from a plane and parachuted onto the roof of the conference building. But so far, very few non-Googlers have been allowed to try them on.

    ¶Last week, I got a chance to put one on. I’m hosting a PBS series called “Nova ScienceNow” (it premieres Oct. 10), and one of the episodes is about the future of tech. Of course, projecting what’s yet to come in consumer tech is nearly impossible, but Google Glass seemed like a perfect example of a breakthrough on the verge. So last week the Nova crew and I met with Babak Parviz, head of the Glass project, to discuss and try out the prototypes.

    ¶Now, Google emphasized — and so do I — that Google Glass is still at a very, very early stage. Lots of factors still haven’t been finalized, including what Glass will do, what the interface will look like, how it will work, and so on. Google doesn’t want to get the public excited about some feature that may not materialize in the final version. (At the moment, Google is planning to offer the prototypes to developers next year — for $1,500 — in anticipation of selling Glass to the public in, perhaps, 2014.)

    ¶When you actually handle these things, you can’t believe how little they weigh. Less than a pair of sunglasses, in my estimation. Glass is an absolutely astonishing feat of miniaturization and integration.

    ¶Inside the right earpiece — that is, the horizontal support that goes over your ear — Google has packed memory, a processor, a camera, speaker and microphone, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antennas, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and a battery. All inside the earpiece.

    ¶Google has said that eventually, Glass will have a cellular radio, so it can get online; at this point, it hooks up wirelessly with your phone for an online connection. And the mind-blowing thing is, this slim thing is the prototype. It’s only going to get smaller in future generations. “This is the bulkiest version of Glass we’ll ever make,” Babak told me.

    ¶The biggest triumph — and to me, the biggest surprise — is that the tiny screen is completely invisible when you’re talking or driving or reading. You just forget about it completely. There’s nothing at all between your eyes and whatever, or whomever, you’re looking at.

    ¶And yet when you do focus on the screen, shifting your gaze up and to the right, that tiny half-inch display is surprisingly immersive. It’s as though you’re looking at a big laptop screen or something.

    ¶(Even though I usually need reading glasses for close-up material, this very close-up display seemed to float far enough away that I didn’t need them. Because, yeah — wearing glasses under Glass might look weird.)

    ¶The hardware breakthrough, in other words, is there. Google is proceeding carefully to make sure it gets the rest of it as right as possible on the first try.

    ¶But the potential is already amazing. Mr. Pariz stressed that Glass is designed for two primary purposes — sharing and instant access to information — hands-free, without having to pull anything out of your pocket.

    ¶You can control the software by swiping a finger on that right earpiece in different directions; it’s a touchpad. Your swipes could guide you through simple menus. In various presentations, Google has proposed icons for things like taking a picture, recording video, making a phone call, navigating on Google Maps, checking your calendar and so on. A tap selects the option you want.

    ¶In recent demonstrations, Google has also shown that you can use speech recognition to control Glass. You say “O.K., Glass” to call up the menu.

    ¶To illustrate how Glass might change the game for sharing your life with others, I tried a demo in which a photo appeared — a jungly scene with a wooden footbridge just in front of me. The theme from “Jurassic Park” played crisply in my right ear. (Cute, real cute.)

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology


    Google Glass Will Change Photography Forever ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/google-glass-photos-by-trey-ratcliff-2013-11


    "The Porn Industry Has Already Dreamed Up Awesome Ideas For Google Glass," by Dylan Love, Business Insider, May 25, 2013 ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/google-glass-porn-2013-5

    Less Awesome Ideas for Google Glass

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

     

     


    Knowledge Maps Versus Concept Maps

    Knowledge Mapping --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_mapping

    April 7, 2012 message from Scott Bonacker

    While looking at references to the book "Getting to Yes" in the context of contemporary politics I came across another mapping tool.

    This is the article - and information about the tool - http://litemind.com/getting-to-yes/ 

    There is also a related free product - http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page 

    Scott Bonacker CPA -
    McCullough and Associates LLC -
    Springfield, MO

     

    The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them

    Concept Maps --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_maps

    Concept Mapping Software --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    Description: Concept mapping (a method of brainstorming) is a technique for visualizing the relationships between concepts and creating a visual image to represent the relationship.  Concept mapping software serves several purposes in the educational environment.  One is to capture the conceptual thinking of one or more persons in a way that is visually represented.  Another is to represent the structure of knowledge gleaned from written documents so that such knowledge can be visually represented.  In essence, a concept map is a diagram showing relationships, often between complex ideas.  With new mapping software such as the open source Cmap ( http://www.cmap.ihmc.us/download/ ), concepts are easily represented with images (bubbles or pictures) called concept nodes, and are connected with lines that show the relationship between and among the concepts.  In addition, the software allows users to attach documents, diagrams, images other concept maps, hypertextual links and even media files to the concept nodes.  Concept maps can be saved as a PDF or image file and distributed electronically in a variety of ways including the Internet and storage devices.

     

    "The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them." by Joseph D. Novak & Alberto J. Cańas, Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition Pensacola Fl, 32502 --- http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryCmaps/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.htm

    Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line, referred to as linking words or linking phrases, specify the relationship between the two concepts. We define concept as a perceived regularity in events or objects, or records of events or objects, designated by a label. The label for most concepts is a word, although sometimes we use symbols such as + or %, and sometimes more than one word is used. Propositions are statements about some object or event in the universe, either naturally occurring or constructed. Propositions contain two or more concepts connected using linking words or phrases to form a meaningful statement. Sometimes these are called semantic units, or units of meaning. Figure 1 shows an example of a concept map that describes the structure of concept maps and illustrates the above characteristics.

    Another characteristic of concept maps is that the concepts are represented in a hierarchical fashion with the most inclusive, most general concepts at the top of the map and the more specific, less general concepts arranged hierarchically below. The hierarchical structure for a particular domain of knowledge also depends on the context in which that knowledge is being applied or considered. Therefore, it is best to construct concept maps with reference to some particular question we seek to answer, which we have called a focus question. The concept map may pertain to some situation or event that we are trying to understand through the organization of knowledge in the form of a concept map, thus providing the context for the concept map.

    Another important characteristic of concept maps is the inclusion of cross-links. These are relationships or links between concepts in different segments or domains of the concept map. Cross-links help us see how a concept in one domain of knowledge represented on the map is related to a concept in another domain shown on the map. In the creation of new knowledge, cross-links often represent creative leaps on the part of the knowledge producer. There are two features of concept maps that are important in the facilitation of creative thinking: the hierarchical structure that is represented in a good map and the ability to search for and characterize new cross-links.

    A final feature that may be added to concept maps is specific examples of events or objects that help to clarify the meaning of a given concept. Normally these are not included in ovals or boxes, since they are specific events or objects and do not represent concepts.

    Concept maps were developed in 1972 in the course of Novak’s research program at Cornell where he sought to follow and understand changes in children’s knowledge of science (Novak & Musonda, 1991). During the course of this study the researchers interviewed many children, and they found it difficult to identify specific changes in the children’s understanding of science concepts by examination of interview transcripts. This program was based on the learning psychology of David Ausubel (1963; 1968; Ausubel et al., 1978). The fundamental idea in Ausubel’s cognitive psychology is that learning takes place by the assimilation of new concepts and propositions into existing concept and propositional frameworks held by the learner. This knowledge structure as held by a learner is also referred to as the individual’s cognitive structure. Out of the necessity to find a better way to represent children’s conceptual understanding emerged the idea of representing children’s knowledge in the form of a concept map. Thus was born a new tool not only for use in research, but also for many other uses.

    Psychological Foundations of Concept Maps

    The question sometimes arises as to the origin of our first concepts. These are acquired by children during the ages of birth to three years, when they recognize regularities in the world around them and begin to identify language labels or symbols for these regularities (Macnamara, 1982). This early learning of concepts is primarily a discovery learning process, where the individual discerns patterns or regularities in events or objects and recognizes these as the same regularities labeled by older persons with words or symbols. This is a phenomenal ability that is part of the evolutionary heritage of all normal human beings. After age 3, new concept and propositional learning is mediated heavily by language, and takes place primarily by a reception learning process where new meanings are obtained by asking questions and getting clarification of relationships between old concepts and propositions and new concepts and propositions. This acquisition is mediated in a very important way when concrete experiences or props are available; hence the importance of “hands-on” activity for science learning with young children, but this is also true with learners of any age and in any subject matter domain.

    Continued in article

    "Using Cmap Tools to Create Concept Diagrams for Accounting," by Rick Lillie, AAA Commons --- http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/6d0b8c8402
    There are many comments following this entry on the AAA Commons

    activity type:
    Using Cmap Tools to Create Concept Diagrams for Accounting Classes
    delivery method:
    technology
    author name:
    IHMC (Institute for Human and Machine Cognition)
    topic(s):
    This teaching tip explains how to use Cmap Tools, a concept mapping software program, to create concept maps.  Concept maps provide a way to visually present complex concepts and rules.  Research suggests that NetGen students are visually oriented.  If true, concept maps should prove to be a useful way to present accounting concepts and rules to today's NetGen accounting students.

    Attached to this posting is a Cmap diagram that I created for my ACCT 574 Intermediate Accounting class.

    audience:
    undergraduate
    course type:
    Intermediate Accounting
    level:
    intermediate

    Also see   http://www.drlillie.com/Investments.jpg

    April 9, 2010 replies from Paul Fisher and Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

  • Paul gave me permission to serve up his Excel file at
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/ConceptMaps-PaulFisher.xls

    His explanation is below.

    Bob Jensen 

    -----Original Message-----
    From: AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
    On Behalf Of Fisher, Paul
    Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 1:13 PM
    To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
    Subject: Re: The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them

     

    Here are some examples from my classes. Three types of graphics are generally recognized. Concept maps, mind maps, and graphic organizers, but they all require the same type of mental discipline. I encourage my students to use EXCEL because it is familiar and will probably always be accessible to them. The other programs for mapping are pretty amazing, but there is the extra layer of "learning" the program. I would also suggest that graphics are becoming a larger part of successful practitioners and institutionally we neglect to sufficiently expose our students to these skills.

    Paul

    -----Original Message-----

    From: AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
    On Behalf Of Steven Hornik
    Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 10:06 AM
    To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU

    Subject: Re: The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them

    If anyone would like to see some of the concept maps my students create (these are the best of the best) click this link:

    http://financialaccounting.wikispaces.com/StudentCmaps_Spring2008

    Steven

    _________________________

    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739
    Second Life: Robins Hermano
    http://mydebitcredit.com
    yahoo ID: shornik

    April 10 reply from Australia's Jim Richards

    From: AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU] On Behalf Of James Richards
    Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 10:22 PM
    To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
    Subject: Re: The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them

    I am not sure what Steve’s students use but 2 free ones I have used are VUE and CMaps.  My personal preference is VUE but I am sure that there are others who prefer CMaps.

    Jim Richards
    Phone (Home): (08) 9249 6874
    Phone (Mobile): 0419-172-100


    ArtNC (Concept Map, North Carolina History, Immigration) ---  http://artnc.org/

    Bob Jensen's threads on concept maps ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ConceptMaps


    Emerging Learning Technologies on the Ohio Learning Network --- http://www.oln.org/emerging_technologies/


    Question
    How can you add audio to PowerPoint presentations?

    March 2, 2007 message from David Fordham, James Madison University [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]

  • Deborah Johnson writes:

    "any recommendations for software that would enable me to prepare a slide show presentation with audio. Each slide would be on screen for different lengths of time depending on the narrative that accompanies it. It would have to be a DVD format compatible with computers and TV viewing. If it is also compatible with automobile CD/DVD players would be great for audio only. Deborah Johnson Miami, FL

    My response:

    I'm sure there are a lot of products out there, and everyone on the list probably has his or her favorite.

    Of course, webcasting isn't the same as TV DVD formats. Are you interested in Webcasting, or DVD playback on a TV?

    For the former, I personally like Tegrity recordings. They are easy to make, use native PowerPoint slides directly, allow live recording, and publish almost instantly. The recording can even be viewed over a dial-up line! I don't know if they have a free version or not, but the full-blown version wasn't very expensive. Others like Richard Campbell on the list probably know of a host of other products, and they will vary in terms of ease of use, and some of them may beat Tegrity and be totally free to boot.

    If you are looking for non-web, but TV DVD playback, Microsoft MovieMaker is about the easiest thing to use I can imagine. I notice that some manufacturers are now shipping their new computers with a basic copy of Microsoft MovieMaker already installed. The last five computers my wife ordered from Dell for clients came with it, even though it was not ordered nor was it even mentioned in the order specs. A friend who purchased a new computer from CompUSA also discovered MovieMaker on his list of installed programs.

    Microsoft MovieMaker is one of the lowest learning-curve products I've seen in a long, long time. The steps you follow to do what you want to do are:

    Use PowerPoint to make your text and title frames, and export the slides to JPG format.

    Record the audio narration as MPEG or WMV, using one of the audio recorders that comes with windows, or any of the sound capture programs so popular these days.

    Start movie maker, import the slides to "collections", import the audio, then drag the slides to the storyboard in the order you want them. Switch to timeline view and adjust the timing of each slide to your liking by dragging the edge of the slide along the timeline. Voila. Write your "movie" to a DVD. You can make a 30 minute movie with about 100 slides (including transitions, etc.) in well under an hour.

    The standard DVD format works in any TV DVD player, as well as on any computer that has a DVD reader. I won't work in standard CD-format players in the older cars, but you can certainly use Roxio or something to write a CD of just the MPEG audio file to the orange-book CD format.

    I'm sure others on the listserv will give their favorites too, so go with what's easiest and most cost-effective and most easily obtainable for you. Good luck...

    David Fordham
    PBGH Faculty Fellow
    James Madison University

  • March 2, 2007 reply from Richard J. Campbell [campbell@VIRTUALPUBLISHING.NET]

  • Deborah: I agree with David - you need to choose one or the other - tv or computer output. As far as computer - inexpensive route - I like Swishpix available at www.swhishzone.com  - You can see a Valentine I created in Swishpix at:

    http://www.virtualpublishing.net/annrjc/annrjc.html 

    This is a FORMER girlfriend and I used Snagit to crop the photo for re-use on eharmony.com.

    If you are looking for tv output, your best bet is to get a studio tool like Roxio creator Nero, or a program like Adobe's Encore which is more expensive.

    Richard J. Campbell
    mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.NET


  • Question
    How can you incorporate streaming media such as archived Webcast into a live presentation?

    Answer:

    You should try www.playstream.com  - They have very inexpensive streaming services using a variety of file types - wmv, mp3, realmedia and quicktime. After you upload your clips to your site, you will get an "easylink", and all you need to do is paste that link into your Powerpoint presentation. Playstream has been purchased by Vitalstream, but the new owner has only enhanced their services.

    Richard J. Campbell
    mailto:campbell@rio.edu


    Most faculty serve up video from their university's servers, YouTube, and Tech Smith's Screencast, but there are other alternatives

    "How to Choose the Right Host For Your Online Video," By Robin Miller, ReadWriteWeb, July 25, 2011 ---
    http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/07/how-to-choose-the-right-host-f.php

    Bob Jensen's video helpers are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm

    Also see
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm


    Presentation Pop Out Tools

    September 11, message from David Beckman CPA [ddb@IOWALAW.COM]

    I am making a presentation later this month to professionals that are returning to the University for continuing education. I want to focus participant's attention on particular line items on my PowerPoint slides. I will be using an add-in for PowerPoint called PopOut Presenter that does 60-minute type call-outs or tear-outs. Experts at PowerPoint can do some of what it does within PowerPoint, but this is easy, quick and only cost $15. It is available at:

    http://www.popoutpresenter.com

    September 11, 2002 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi David,

    Thank you for linking to a useful product that I never heard about before.

    There is a helpful PowerPoint FAQ page that discusses add-ins of various types at http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/
    It is interesting to search at the above site using the phrase "pop out"

    Bob Jensen

    Links to two Bob Jensen helpers for tools are as follows:

    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources


    Finding, Capturing, Storing and Sending Open Courseware

    The latest free versions of RealPlayer will capture streaming video without having to install capture card hardware --- Click Here
    Real Media --- http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=RealMedia

    From MIT:  New Video Lecture Search Engine --- http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/ 
    Watch the video demo at
    --- http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/

    "Searching Video Lectures A tool from MIT finds keywords so that students can efficiently review lectures," by Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, November 26, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19747/?nlid=686&a=f

    Researchers at MIT have released a video and audio search tool that solves one of the most challenging problems in the field: how to break up a lengthy academic lecture into manageable chunks, pinpoint the location of keywords, and direct the user to them. Announced last month, the MIT Lecture Browser website gives the general public detailed access to more than 200 lectures publicly available though the university's OpenCourseWare initiative. The search engine leverages decades' worth of speech-recognition research at MIT and other institutions to convert audio into text and make it searchable.

    The Lecture Browser arrives at a time when more and more universities, including Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, Berkeley, are posting videos and podcasts of lectures online. While this content is useful, locating specific information within lectures can be difficult, frustrating students who are accustomed to finding what they need in less than a second with Google.

    "This is a growing issue for universities around the country as it becomes easier to record classroom lectures," says Jim Glass, research scientist at MIT. "It's a real challenge to know how to disseminate them and make it easier for students to get access to parts of the lecture they might be interested in. It's like finding a needle in a haystack."

    The fundamental elements of the Lecture Browser have been kicking around research labs at MIT and places such as BBN Technologies in Boston, Carnegie Mellon, SRI International in Palo Alto, CA, and the University of Southern California for more than 30 years. Their efforts have produced software that's finally good enough to find its way to the average person, says Premkumar Natarajan, scientist at BBN. "There's about three decades of work where many fundamental problems were addressed," he says. "The technology is mature enough now that there's a growing sense in the community that it's time [to test applications in the real world]. We've done all we can in the lab."

    A handful of companies, such as online audio and video search engines Blinkx and EveryZing (which has licensed technology from BBN) are making use of software that converts audio speech into searchable text. (See "Surfing TV on the Internet" and "More-Accurate Video Search".) But the MIT researchers faced particular challenges with academic lectures. For one, many lecturers are not native English speakers, which makes automatic transcription tricky for systems trained on American English accents. Second, the words favored in science lectures can be rather obscure. Finally, says Regina Barzilay, professor of computer Science at MIT, lectures have very little discernable structure, making them difficult to break up and organize for easy searching. "Topical transitions are very subtle," she says. "Lectures aren't organized like normal text."

    To tackle these problems, the researchers first configured the software that converts the audio to text. They trained the software to understand particular accents using accurate transcriptions of short snippets of recorded speech. To help the software identify uncommon words--anything from "drosophila" to "closed-loop integrals"--the researchers provided it with additional data, such as text from books and lecture notes, which assists the software in accurately transcribing as many as four out of five words. If the system is used with a nonnative English speaker whose accent and vocabulary it hasn't been trained to recognize, the accuracy can drop to 50 percent. (Such a low accuracy would not be useful for direct transcription but can still be useful for keyword searches.)
     

    Once again, the Lecture Browser link (with a video demo) is at http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/

    Find free video lectures from leading universities at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm


    Chromecast --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromecast

    Streaming Television = Google's Chromecast + a hardware Dongle
    "Chromecast Review: Finally, an Easy Way to Watch the Web on TV," by Rachel Meltz, MIT's Technology Review, July 30, 2013 --- Click Here
    http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517656/chromecast-review-finally-an-easy-way-to-watch-the-web-on-tv/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130731

    Jensen Comment
    I have pretty good experience with the HDMI connection on my high-end Dell Laptop (called Studio) ---
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI

    My wireless connection to the HDMI plug is rather unreliable so I instead take my laptop close to the television set and use a hard wire connection. It works great.

    The problem is that lower-end cheaper laptops do not have the HDMI port. I think the Chromecast dongle only requires a USB port.


    "UC Berkeley university puts course videos (but not for credit) on YouTube," PhysOrg, October 3, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news110638174.html

    University offerings at the dedicated YouTube channel include peace and conflict studies, bioengineering courses, and a science class titled "Physics for Future Presidents."

    "UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life: academics, events and athletics," said vice provost for undergraduate education Christina Maslach.

    The University plans to continually add videos to the channel, which officially launched Wednesday with about nine full courses consisting of approximately 40 lectures each.

    Berkeley lays claim to being the first university to offer full courses on popular video-sharing website YouTube, which is based in Northern California.

    The university began online broadcasts, called "webcasts," of its own in 2001 and last year began making audio "podcasts" available for download at Apple's iTunes online store.

    "We are excited to make UC Berkeley videos available to the world on YouTube," said Ben Hubbard, who co-manages the university's webcast program.

    "I think the whole open content movement is in keeping with what we are as a public institution, we really believe at our core that making this available to the public is truly important."
     

    UC Berkeley is the first university to make videos of full courses available through YouTube. Visitors to the site at youtube.com/ucberkeley can view more than 300 hours of videotaped courses and events. Topics range from bioengineering, to peace and conflict studies, to "Physics for Future Presidents," the title of a popular campus course. Building on its initial offerings, UC Berkeley will continue to expand the catalog of videos available on YouTube.
    View the Playlist Here --- http://www.youtube.com/ucberkeley 
    There is a link to the most viewed videos (with star ratings) at the above page.

    Examples include Integrative Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, etc.
    Links to 201 videos --- http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ucberkeley&p=r
    You can search by topic in the search box at the above page.

    On October 4, 2007 I could not find any accounting, finance, or economics videos at the UC Berkeley site. There were six courses that popped up for "Business."

    Here's a student, who created a RealPlayer playlist, explaining how to record the audio of these videos --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUfKoXtwEu0

    Also see Webcast.Berkeley [iTunes, Real Player] http://webcast.berkeley.edu/ 

    UC Berkeley also has XLab --- http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/07/13_xlab.shtml

    Nearly all prestigious universities now offer some form of open sharing of course materials, the most noteworthy of which is MIT. Yale, however, has some of the finest lectures on video --- http://www.yale.edu/opa/download/VLP_QuestionsAnswers.pdf

    From Princeton
    University Channel (video and audio) ---  http://uc.princeton.edu/main/

    From the University of Texas
    Take Five from the University of Texas http://www.utexas.edu/inside_ut/take5/

    From Harvard
    Introduction --- http://athome.harvard.edu/about/about.htm
    Program List --- http://athome.harvard.edu/archive/archive.asp

    Teaching Materials (especially video) from PBS

    Teacher Source:  Arts and Literature --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/arts_lit.htm

    Teacher Source:  Health & Fitness --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/health.htm

    Teacher Source: Math --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/math.htm

    Teacher Source:  Science --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/sci_tech.htm

    Teacher Source:  PreK2 --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/prek2.htm

    Teacher Source:  Library Media ---  http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/library.htm

    Science Videos --- http://www.scivee.tv/

    Video Lecture Search
    Type in "Video Lectures" with quotation marks at http://megite.com/discover.php?q=learning
    Example:  David Deutsch Quantum Computation Lectures --- http://www.quiprocone.org/quipmain.htm  

    Educause Live --- http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?SECTION_ID=34&bhcp=1

    You can read about these and other examples of open sharing at major universities at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


    Copyright Restrictions on Open Sharing/Source/Courseware Learning Materials

    These are only my opinions, and they should not be taken as legal advice.
    Just because something can be accessed online does not mean it is an open sharing item. Generally online items are like library books that can be accessed by the public but have copyright restrictions about copying and uses other than personal reading. If online learning materials are billed as "open sharing," or "open source" (as in the case of OCW materials at MIT) chances are that they can be used in total or in part for educational purposes in other open sharing materials if proper credits are given. In commercial materials such as books and course videos, there is vulnerability for lawsuit by the copyright owners. In my personal opinion, I think a lot depends upon how central the copyrighted material is to the purchased material. If use is incidental and credits are fully proper, then the risks of lawsuit are less than when the copyrighted material becomes more featured in the material. In any case, it is good advice to seek permission from copyright owners if the use is for some for-profit purpose. This probably includes online or onsite courses for which fees are charged to take the course. The dreaded DMCA is somewhat vague on open sharing materials, but open sharing does not mean that copyright owners have abandoned all rights. You can read more about the dreaded DMCA at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

    This is Very Important --- http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/help/faq3/index.htm
    MIT is the most open sharing major university in terms of course materials --- http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
    It's statement on intellectual property sets, in my opinion, precedent for most other open sharing colleges --- http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/help/faq3/index.htm

    YouTube has a statement about use of YouTube videos at http://www.youtube.com/t/howto_copyright
    Also see http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/topic.py?topic=10550&hl=en_US

    Since the term "open source" is rooted in computer software, the term is a bit cloudy when it comes to text and multimedia learning materials. You can read more about open sharing and copyrights at the following sites:


    How to Excerpt Open Courseware Video, Compress It, and Serve it Up to Students

    Suppose that a very long video lecture is available as open courseware for proper use in other learning materials. An instructor may only want to use parts of this lecture in another course or supplemental tutorials for a course. Searching a long video is tedious and time consuming. A better approach is to make audio or video excerpts of portions of the long lecture.

    Homemade video tutorial (very basic) on how to record streaming audio on your PC --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPHSDOyj5f8
    Note the passing reference to a free sound recorder called Audacity --- http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
    Note that if you are watching a lecture video that's pretty much a talking head, it saves a lot, I mean a LOT, of file space to only capture the audio.
    This might, for example, work very well when capturing parts of  the many UC Berkeley, YouTube, Yale, or Harvard video lectures --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
    Just in case source streams disappear from the Internet, I suggest capturing what's important to you and saving to external media such as a CD or DVD disk.
    Capturing also allows you to only capture what is relevant to you or your students without having to spend a lot of time waiting for the good parts.

    The latest free versions of RealPlayer will capture streaming video without having to install capture card hardware --- Click Here
    Real Media --- http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=RealMedia

    Other alternatives for capturing streaming video ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

    However, in most instances open sharing videos are streaming (using the term loosely here) videos for which there is no file to download. In that case the video must be captured in total or in part by software designed for such purposes. The software I like for video capturing is called Camtasia Recorder --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/record.asp
    Also see http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/education.asp
    This is cheaper alternative than many more specialized products for streaming video capture. You can download my PowerPoint file about Camtasia at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/
    Links to examples are given in this slide show.

    You can read about other alternatives for streaming video capture at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

    When you capture streaming media as an avi file it has the advantage in that you can edit the movie and delete parts you do not want using software like Camtasia Producer  --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/enhance.asp
    You can also add interaction "skip to" buttons, quiz questions/answers, survey questions, etc.

    But captured avi files are generally enormous and cannot be stored efficiently anywhere. After you've excerpted and edited the captured video as an avi file it is almost always necessary to compress it into a wmv, mov, rm, scf, flv, or some related option such as the compression options available in Camtasia Producer. There is not generally a noticeable quality degradation in the compressed versions. However, it is not possible, at least in Camtasia, to alter the compressed version without recapturing it as an avi file.


    After you have your compressed file such as a wmv you will need to get it to your students. Chances are that your Blackboard, WebCT, or Web server does not give you enough capacity to serve up a lot of video, including space-saving compressed video. The next best thing is to either distribute your video to students on CD or DVD disks or to send it to them over the Internet.

    It is not generally possible to attach large video files to email messages. However there are very good free alternatives for sending files to students over the Internet --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles

    Bob Jensen's threads on free online textbooks and other electronic literature --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm 


    Chromecast --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromecast

    Streaming Television = Google's Chromecast + a hardware Dongle
    "Chromecast Review: Finally, an Easy Way to Watch the Web on TV," by Rachel Meltz, MIT's Technology Review, July 30, 2013 --- Click Here
    http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517656/chromecast-review-finally-an-easy-way-to-watch-the-web-on-tv/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130731

    Jensen Comment
    I have pretty good experience with the HDMI connection on my high-end Dell Laptop (called Studio) ---
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI

    My wireless connection to the HDMI plug is rather unreliable so I instead take my laptop close to the television set and use a hard wire connection. It works great.

    The problem is that lower-end cheaper laptops do not have the HDMI port. I think the Chromecast dongle only requires a USB port.

     


    Question
    How can you capture and send streaming media?

    August 9, 2007 question from XXXXX

    How do I get a copy of the power point show of this great presentation? Am not computer literate but would like this on disc or dvd for a friend who does not have a pc.

    Thank you

    August 9, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen

    I assume you mean from the link http://www.greatdanepro.com/Chiquitita/index.htm 

    This is a streaming presentation which means you cannot download it as a file like you would download it as a PowerPoint file.

    There are several alternatives for capturing streaming media.

    Ratings and reviews of media streaming software --- http://www.homeofficereports.com/streaming%20video.htm

    One alternative is to capture the streaming media in a Camtasia Studio video. This will work fine for the images, but the music that is also captured may be somewhat disappointing --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp 

    For capturing and sending out streaming media you may also check out Playstream at http://www.playstream.com/ 

    Also check out Studio Now for capturing and sending streaming media --- http://www.studionow.com/conversion/?gclid=CKidoveJ6I0CFSasGgodZFTr0w 

    One approach to get a PowerPoint version is to click on Pause with each image and capture the image in streaming video. You can then paste the image into your own PowerPoint slide. It’s a bit tedious but you can then have a PowerPoint slide for each captured image. There are various software options for image capturing such as the Import command in Paints. Separately you can capture the music and then add it to your PowerPoint file --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#PowerPointAudio 

    Various alternatives for capturing screen images are available for a fee. For years I used the Import feature of Paint Shop Pro from JASC. Now, however, I prefer SnagIt from Tech Smith --- http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp 
    Tech Smith also has a free capture program called Jing. PC World (via The Washington Post) gives a highly favorable review of Jing that is quoted at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070801.htm

    Hope this helps a little.

    Bob Jensen

    Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of education technology are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm


    Most faculty serve up video from their university's servers, YouTube, and Tech Smith's Screencast, but there are other alternatives

    "How to Choose the Right Host For Your Online Video," By Robin Miller, ReadWriteWeb, July 25, 2011 ---
    http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/07/how-to-choose-the-right-host-f.php

    Bob Jensen's video helpers are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm

    Also see
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm


    Internet users can view video either as video file downloads (that may or may not be stored on a hard drive) or as streaming video (that does not entail downloading a media file but can be captured with streaming media software).

    Update from the AAA Accounting Commons --- http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home
    I thank Rick for sharing his expertise in the new VoiceThread multimedia education and communication technology.
    Accounting Professor Rick Lillie Uses VoiceThread to Create Streaming Video --- http://iaed.wordpress.com/
     

    If you have not yet discovered VoiceThread, I strongly recommend that you click on the link below and explore the VoiceThread website. You are in for a real technology treat!

    CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VOICETHREAD WEBSITE

    I use VoiceThread to create streaming video lectures, to create tutorials explaining how to solve problems, to explain answers to quiz and examination questions, and more. VoiceThread is easy to use, is similar to PowerPoint (but much more robust), and is web-hosted which makes it easy for you to share VoiceThread presentations with your students and colleagues.

    During a presentation that I gave at the recent 2008 American Accounting Association (AAA) Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California, I talked about VoiceThread. To help participants to see how easy it is to create and share dynamic presentations with VoiceThread, I put together a short presentation that explains how to use VoiceThread. Click on the link below to view the short tutorial program.

     

    I encourage you to sign up for a free account.  Learn to use VoiceThread.  If you like what you create, then you can upgrade to the “Pro” version, which is very inexpensive. To get the full benefit of using VoiceThread, you need a headset/microphone and webcam.  To begin, use the tools included in VoiceThread. If you have questions about VoiceThread, use the “Contact Me” option on the right side of the screen.  Send me a message.  Include your email and/or telephone number.  I will be happy to work with you.

    Enjoy!
    Rick Lillie


    Jensen Comment
    VoiceThread has an advantage in allowing a community of users to comment (in multimedia) comments on an instructional video.
    It's drawback is that it uses a lot of storage and bandwidth for talking heads.

    Some VoiceThread pricing information is given at http://voicethread.com/pricing/pro/
    It is possible to get small amounts of video file storage free, but it can get really expensive when the community goes on and on with long commentaries.
    In the pro version, file sizes are limited to 100 Mb. This is about one tenth the size of a 10 minute YouTube video. YouTube generally limits file sizes to 1 Gb or 10 minutes of compressed video such as mpg compression --- http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hlrm=en&answer=57924
    Colleges can stream much larger videos on YouTube such as the courses that UC Berkeley makes available on YouTube with over one hour of video for each lecture in a course.

    VoiceThread makes it possible to have somewhat longer videos in a 100 Mb file by using small video screens. Note how Rick does this at http://voicethread.com/#q.b173180.i923368

    YouTube also allows any users to comment in text format such that commentaries can accompany videos on YouTube. The huge advantage of YouTube is that videos can be uploaded, viewed, and even downloaded for free. VoiceThread, for an annual fee, has more features.

    Although I've not tried VoiceThread, it would seem that cost and file size limits make this less attractive than YouTube.

    Other video streaming alternatives are summarized at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

    Camtasia users should note that TechSmith will serve up streaming videos in a utility called ScreenCast --- http://www.techsmith.com/screencast.asp

    You can read the following at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

    However, in most instances open sharing videos are streaming (using the term loosely here) videos for which there is no file to download. In that case the video must be captured in total or in part by software designed for such purposes. The software I like for video capturing is called Camtasia Recorder --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/record.asp
    Also see http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/education.asp
    This is cheaper alternative than many more specialized products for streaming video capture. You can download my PowerPoint file about Camtasia at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/
    Links to examples are given in this slide show.

     

     


    Future Lab (in the U.K.):
    Developing innovative learning resources and practices that support new approaches to education for the 21st century.

    By bringing together the creative, technical and educational communities, Futurelab is pioneering ways of using new technologies to transform the learning experience.
    FutureLab Innovation in Education --- http://www.futurelab.org.uk/index.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technologies are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on tools of education technologies are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    Invent with Python (make your own computer games) --- http://inventwithpython.com/


    Just-In-Time Teaching --- http://134.68.135.1/jitt/

    What is Just-in-Time Teaching?

    G. Novak, gnovak@iupui.edu
    Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT for short) is a teaching and learning strategy based on the interaction between web-based study assignments and an active learner classroom. Students respond electronically to carefully constructed web-based assignments which are due shortly before class, and the instructor reads the student submissions "just-in-time" to adjust the classroom lesson to suit the students' needs. Thus, the heart of JiTT is the "feedback loop" formed by the students' outside-of-class preparation that fundamentally affects what happens during the subsequent in-class time together.

    What is Just-in-Time Teaching designed to accomplish?

    JiTT is aimed at many of the challenges facing students and instructors in today's classrooms. Student populations are diversifying. In addition to the traditional nineteen-year-old recent high school graduates, we now have a kaleidoscope of "non-traditional" students: older students, working part time students, commuting students, and, at the service academies, military cadets. They come to our courses with a broad spectrum of educational backgrounds, interests, perspectives, and capabilities that compel individualized, tailored instruction. They need motivation and encouragement to persevere. Consistent, friendly support can make the difference between a successful experience and a fruitless effort. It can even mean the difference between graduating and dropping out. Education research has made us more aware of learning style differences and of the importance of passing some control of the learning process over to the students. Active learner environments yield better results but they are harder to manage than lecture oriented approaches. Three of the "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" encourage student-faculty contact, increased time for student study, and cooperative learning between students.
    To confront these challenges, the Just-in-Time Teaching strategy pursues three major goals:

    What JiTT is Not

    Although Just-in-Time Teaching makes heavy use of the web, it is not to be confused with either distance learning (DL) or with computer-aided instruction (CAI). Virtually all JiTT instruction occurs in a classroom with human instructors. The web materials, added as a pedagogical resource, act primarily as a communication tool and secondarily as content provider and organizer. JiTT is also not an attempt to 'process' large numbers of students by employing computers to do massive grading jobs.

    The JiTT Feedback Loop

    The Web Component

    JiTT web pages fall into three major categories:

    The Active Learner Classroom

    The JiTT classroom session is intimately linked to the electronic preparatory assignments the students complete outside of class. Exactly how the classroom time is spent depends on a variety of issues such as class size, classroom facilities, and student and instructor personalities. Mini-lectures (10 min max) are often interspersed with demos, classroom discussion, worksheet exercises, and even hands-on mini-labs. Regardless, the common key is that the classroom component, whether interactive lecture or student activities, is informed by an analysis of various student responses.
    In a JiTT classroom students construct the same content as in a passive lecture with two important added benefits. First, having completed the web assignment very recently, they enter the classroom ready to actively engage in the activities. Secondly, they have a feeling of ownership since the interactive lesson is based on their own wording and understanding of the relevant issues.
    The give and take in the classroom suggests future WarmUp questions that will reflect the mood and the level of expertise in the class at hand. In this way the feedback loop is closed with the students having played a major part in the endeavor.
    From the instructor's point of view, the lesson content remains pretty much the same from semester to semester with only minor shifts in emphasis. From the students' perspective, however, the lessons are always fresh and interesting, with a lot of input from the class.
    We designed JiTT to improve student learning in our own classrooms and have been encouraged by the results, both attitudinal and cognitive. We attribute this success to three factors that enhance student learning, identified by Alexander Astin* in his thirty year study of college student success:
      By fostering these, JiTT promotes student learning and satisfaction.

    *Astin, Alexander: What matters in college? Four critical years revisited (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993).


    First read about Instant Messaging at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_Messaging


    Amy Dunbar's Early Applications of Instant Messaging While Teaching Online from Her Home

    "Cogito Interruptus," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, August 20, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/08/20/mclemee

    Long before any of us started going online, Jean Baudrillard wrote about the “ecstacy of communication.” This was not as pleasant as it probably sounds. It referred to a state in which “the most intimate processes of life become the virtual feeding ground of the media” and “the entire universe comes to unfold arbitrarily on your domestic screen.” It is a new cultural scene that abolishes “the minimal separation of public and private,” in which certain aspects of life were “played out in a restricted space.” Baudrillard, writing in the 1980s, was thinking of TV, which is hardly the “screen” that comes to mind now. Clearly things have gotten ever more ecstatic since then.

    In any case, not being disposed either to text messaging or IM certainly did not mean living off the grid. I went through the usual struggles to maintain some degree of control over how much of my attention was consumed by “new media” (an expression that is starting to seem a little silly after all this time). Spending more than about 30 minutes online at a stretch tends to produce a condition in which my head feels like a Mexican jumping bean – my brain thrashing around inside its shell without much possibility of deliberate, purposeful motion. It is possible to minimize this distracted state through the practice of iron self-discipline. So one tells oneself while Googling “how to develop iron self-discipline.”

    None of this is unusual, of course. Friends, relations, and colleagues report similar experiences. Nor is it necessarily a sign that the media are creating irreversibly stupifying effects. In my experience, it is still possible to have long spells of tightly focused concentration — times when the flow of my attention to the work at hand precluded any distraction by email, or news updates, or what have you.

    Or so it once seemed. Over the past few months, I’ve started to wonder.

    For a while, it seemed like a generational thing.... The first text message came to my cell phone from a young political activist (someone born around the time this 45 year-old was first arrested at a protest) sending out a reminder about the location of a meeting. “Please respond if you can attend,” the note said.

    Someone with the necessary skills explained how to type a response on my cellphone. I felt old. But it was a special nuance of that feeling – one that comes with learning to do something you understand to be commonplace, now.

    Such reservations were moot. A few days later, another meeting, another message – followed by another, and another – all of it leading, in due course, to that moment of first seriously considering whether it might make sense to abbreviate the word “for” with the numeral 4 in the interest of saving keystrokes, which is not a sacrifice of standards I am quite prepared to make.

    Around the time all this texting was beginning to grow routine and familiar, something else happened. The editor of a literary magazine sent me an instant message asking if I would be interested in writing about a new book. Once, this sort of inquiry would have arrived by e-mail, and I might have responded to it by picking up the telephone. Instead, the IM popped up on my computer screen as a little box – making a loud electronic “bing” sound as it did – and seemed to demand an instant reply.

    What would normally have taken the form of a phone conversation instead took place at the keyboard. Over the next few days, the “bing” resounded several more times as other friends and colleagues started to IM me. (I had been contacted by one other person by IM about a year ago, but only noticed the message well after it appeared, and never took up IM as routine.) After nearly 15 years of coming to some kind of modus vivendi with e-mail and the Web, I found Baudrillard’s “ecstacy of communication” suddenly growing even more pervasive.

    At one level, texting and IM are just slight variations on the now-familiar medium of e-mail. They tend to be even more casual — without so much formality as a subject line, even — yet they finally seem more similar to e-mail than anything else.

    But now that e-mail itself is both so commonplace and so prone to abuse (“naked Angelina Jolie pics here!”), these supplementary forms have a slightly different valence. They seem more urgent. In the case of IM in particular, there is a suggestion of presence – the sense of an individual on the other end, waiting for a reply. (Indeed, the IM format indicates whether someone you know is online at a given time. The window indicates when a person is typing something to send to you.)

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    One of the first accounting/tax professors to use Instant Messaging with online students was my online hero Amy Dunbar when she taught those early UCONN online courses from her home. You can read her paper and  listen to Amy describe her early successes with IM in online teaching at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm#2002
    Her mp3 file is also at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/
    Scroll down to the audio link to her mp3 file (this large file loads slowly)
    I recorded this using my video camera's microphone, so don't expect much in the way of audio quality.

    In August 2008 after eight years of intensive use of AIM, she wrote the following:

    Bob,

    By now AECM is probably tired of hearing about how I teach online, but thank you for the plug. I never tire of talking about online teaching because I am such a huge believer in its efficiency and effectiveness, particularly for working graduate students. Of the 11 online faculty, only 3 of us use AIM in our classes, so most prefer not to synchronous interaction. After 8 years of teaching online, I am still a big fan on instant messaging with my students. Unlike the earlier years, however, I now have scheduled office hours online, although I occasionally log on at other times, especially if an assignment is due. My TA logs on every Tuesday night. I log on every Wednesday and Thursday nights, from 7 to 9, which usually goes on until 10 or later because I have a policy that as long as I am getting questions I will stay online. Sometimes when I am getting a lot of IMs, I just post brb (be right back), and the student types the question while I am answering another question. The trend has been that students IM me much less and IM their group members much more. They have to evaluate each other each week, so they have an incentive to work together to ensure high participation scores.

    When I log on, I can see which groups are meeting because I change their screen names (usually undecipherable names) to G(roup)#LastName, using an AIM tool. Works like a charm. Students post their AIM chats on their group boards so anyone who misses a meeting can see what happened. As I have noted before on AECM, I take excerpts from their chats and post a weekly highlights at the end of each week. This reminds the groups that they are part of a larger class .

    Some instructors fear that they will have no personal impact in an online setting. That has not been the case for me. The following is from a student email today: Your energy level is not only exhausting, but inspiring ...

    Thus, students still get a feel for who I am as a person, although the energy is certainly going down as the years pile on!

    Amy Dunbar
    UConn

     

     


    Questions
    How can you turn your email messages into free video messages?
    How can you video conference calls?

    For those of you in the American Accounting Association, I call your attention to a new Teaching Resource called TokBox submitted to the Commons by accounting professor Rick Little. You do not need to go to the Commons for some of Rick’s links passed on below. I thank Rick for sharing this teaching resource.

     AAA Members

    Please go to the AAA Commons at least once each day --- http://commons.aaahq.org
    For Teaching and Research Resources, Click on the menu bar item called “Roles”
    Rick’s posting is called “Thinking Outside the Box”
    You might want to clidk on Rick’s picture to see his interesting profile (e.g., with Grant Thornton and as a local CPA before getting his PhD in accounting)

    Links for Non-Members

    Rick’s TokBox Blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/using-tokbox-to-communicate-with-your-students/

     

    Rick’s introductory video is at http://www.tokbox.com/vm/b056ued8rnau#vmail=b056ued8rnau

    The TokBox homepage is at http://www.tokbox.com/#

    Tokbox is a free service that lets you talk with your friends over live video. Here's how it works: you sign up and we give you a link. When you want to talk with anyone, just give them the link - they click and you chat. 

    This is an innovative idea for conferencing, letting your parents see their grandchildren, and motivating students. From a societal standpoint it may be a waste of bandwidth for sending videos of talking heads across the Internet.

     

     


    Question
    How can you get Instant Messaging (IM) for free without having to install any software?

    "Don't Tell Your Boss, But There Is a Way To IM Despite Blocks," bu Sarmad Ali, The Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2007; Page B1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119205933351855322.html

    Just use an Internet-based service so that you can chat from a Web page without having to install any software, which might be blocked by a firewall. I tested two such services: Meebo at www.meebo.com  and KoolIM at www.koolim.com . Both are free.

    These services let you simultaneously log in to multiple IM accounts -- and communicate with people with various services. If you have a friend who uses Yahoo Messenger, for example, and another who likes MSN Messenger, you can chat with either.

    Another plus: Meebo and KoolIM are far less vulnerable to viruses than downloadable applications. They're also more efficient, saving users the hassle of installing multiple programs on a computer. This is especially handy for people with old computers that slow down when running several applications.

    Meebo has a well-designed, sleek interface that makes it appealing to even the least tech savvy. From its home page, you simply sign in for different IM services—MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, GTalk (or Jabber) and AIM (or ICQ). Your buddy list will be combined automatically. You don't have to register, but if you do, you get perks such as a single sign-on for all of your accounts, and the ability to share files, save chat logs and store conversations.

    I tried Meebo on my work Windows PC and my iBook at home, and it worked well on both. To start chatting, you just log in to any of the IM services by entering the screen name and password you already have with a service, or by picking a new name, password and services. Your buddy list will appear in a window on the right side of the page, with each name marked by an icon denoting the service the person uses. Once in your buddy list, you can add or delete a contact, message or join a group chat.

    Continued in article

    October 14, 2007 reply from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    I just wanted to let the list know that I've been using Meebo this semester for my undergrad financial accounting class and my grad AIS course. You can see the meebo widget on both of my webpages (wikis) that I use for the course at either: http://financialaccounting.wikispaces.com  or http://acg5405.wikispaces.com  and if I'm online feel free to say hello to see how it works.

    I have always included my Yahoo ID in my syllabus so students could IM me with questions. In recent years I observed two things: 1) I tended to forget to start my IM more and more - I just wasn't using it that much, and 2) students weren't using it, as it required them to get a Yahoo account, download the IM software, etc.

    Since using Meebo, and in particular placing the meebo widget on my web pages, student communication with me has increased at least 10 fold (anectodal not empirical). I'm convinced of the reasons: 1) Ease of Use - students just have to access the course web page, and the widget lets them know if I'm online, and if so they can just type away. 2) I don't forget to start it - since it's web-based I simply have the meebo webpage as one of my tabs in firefox and whenever I start my browser (first thing I do whenever I'm at my computer) meebo is there.

    Meebo also has chat rooms (I haven't used these yet), that allow you to import almost any kind of media (audio/video) and you can invite your students to it to create a synchronous environment for viewing course material and discussing it as a group.

    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    College of Business Administration (407) 823-5739

     

    Google Introduces Instant Messaging
    Google Inc. is joining yet another Internet turf battle, the one over instant communication. Google introduced today an instant-messaging service that lets users exchange text messages and make voice calls over personal computers. Google's move pits it against Internet giants such as Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. that dominate the market.
    Mylene Mangalindan and Christopher Rhoads, "Google Introduces Instant Messaging," The Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2005; Page B3 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112482337312020777,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
    See this IM service at http://www.google.com/talk/

    Set up free conference calls at http://www.freeconference.com/  


    College Credit on the Phone? This makes me suspicious!

    "Community-College System Offers Distance Education by Cellphone," by Sara Lipka, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 12, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3458&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Universities in Japan and Canada unveiled courses by cellphone last year, and now, in the midst of National Distance Learning Week, the United States has too.

    The Louisiana Community and Technical College System yesterday announced the creation of LCTCSOnline, a new program built in collaboration with AT&T and Pearson Custom Solutions, a branch of the publishing and education company.

    Beginning in January, students can register on a single Web site for online courses offered — at $63 per credit hour — by any community college in Louisiana. And they’ll be able to complete their coursework on desktops, laptops, or mobile phones.

    “The top barriers for students in obtaining their degrees are geographic access, cost of higher education, and scheduling conflicts,” said Joe D. May, the college system’s president, in a written statement. “We’re excited to be able to bring a greater level of access to potential students.”

    Louisiana ranks last among the 50 states in the percentage of adults with associate’s degrees, according to the college system, which hopes to solve workforce shortages by enrolling nearly three times as many students as it does now.

    “This initiative embodies the type of thinking we need,” Sally Clausen, Louisiana’s commissioner of higher education, said in a written statement.

    A $500,000 grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents financed the program, which the college system developed in nine months with AT&T and Pearson, The Town Talk, a local newspaper, reported

    Bob Jensen's links to online training and education alternatives are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

     


     

    Classroom, Building, and Campus Design

    Stanford University's d. school
    "It's all about the space at Stanford's design school," by Robin Wander, The Stanford Report, January 18, 2012 ---
    http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

    Stanford's d.school space is the stage for creative collaboration. A new book by two of its leaders provides direction for design spaces elsewhere.

    The spaces within Stanford's popular d.school are as creative as the furniture and fixtures are inventive, and every aspect of the space impacts behavior.

    In his foreword for Make Space, David Kelley, the founder of the design school as well as the design firm IDEO, writes, "Regardless of whether it's a classroom or the offices of a billion-dollar company, space is something to think of as an instrument for innovation and collaboration. Space is a valuable tool that can help you create deep and meaningful collaborations in your work and life."

    As a spectator on the second floor of Stanford's d.school building, on any given day you might observe a team of students standing at a project table in an active stance – literally learning on their feet. Or you might see a group engaged in a sharing exercise sitting on foam cubes in a circle as if around a campfire. From the overlook you might also be able to peer down at the atrium and see an assembly of executives paired up at cocktail tables doing some cutting and pasting – as in scissors and glue, not keystrokes.

    Need an office? Slide a few suspended dry-erase panels together and roll in a table and chair. Swap out the table and chair for a couple of couches on coasters and you've got yourself an informal lounge. Need a respite from an open, collaborative environment? Step into the "Booth Noir," a simply furnished low-tech hiding place tucked in a corner. In each case the environment supports a different kind of learning or exchange of information.

    Continued in article


    Absent Student Shadows in Class:  Virtual Students in the Classroom

    April 1, 2010 message from Robert Blystone [mailto:rblyston@trinity.edu]

    I remember years ago receiving my first FAXed term paper (35 pages). I can add a new technological wonder to my first-time teaching experiences. One of my students left home early for Easter. I have a lab/class that meets at 4pm Tuesday and Thursday. She Skyped into the class by contacting another student in the class with a laptop. She attended the class via Skype and commented on the festivities as they happened. Amazing.

    Bob Blystone

    Robert V. Blystone, Ph.D. Professor of Biology Trinity University One Trinity Place San Antonio, Texas 78212
    rblyston@trinity.edu
    210-999-7243

    A[ro; 2, 2010 reply  from Knutel, Phillip [pknutel@BENTLEY.EDU]  

    We use Saba-Centra - Skype on steroids, essentially - in 90-100 grad classes in our MSA and other grad programs every year.  We have a camera built into the back wall of 13 "hybrid online" classrooms so online students can see both the professor and classroom students as well as anything on the PC or written on the Smartboard.  Faculty clip on a wireless mic, and there are built-in mics at every student seat.  Online students click on a "raise hand" icon to ask a question, and when called on, are heard via the ceiling speakers.  If online students have webcams, the class sees them as well. 

    As of last semester, 37% of students attended online vs. in the classroom, and 22% said the online option was why they chose Bentley.  90% of in-class and online students play back recorded classes, and unlike most online formats that struggle with simple student retention, 80% of online students rated their experience an 8 or higher on a 1-10 scale.  One of these days, we may start advertising our hybrid-online programs, as enrollments have grown significantly almost entirely due to word-of-mouth.

    We have a TA in all these classes to monitor online student technical/audio issues, and we also use the TA PC that we install next to the primary classroom PC in the podium as a "hot swap" backup PC.  If anything goes wrong with the main PC, we can switch the room over to the TA PC in a matter of seconds to keep classes running seamlessly until the next break.  These things you learn after doing this for 10 years!

    Phil

    Phillip Knutel, Ph.D.
    Executive Director of Academic Technology, the Library, and Online Learning Bentley University 180 Adamian Academic Center
    175 Forest St.
    Waltham, MA 02452
    781.
    891.3422/3125 (fax)

    April 2, 2010 reply form Peters, James M [jpeters@NMHU.EDU]

    In effect, this is how I teach all my classes now.  I use Elluminate instead of Skype, which works much better because I can broadcast what I am displaying on my in class computer and I don't broadcast a video of the classroom, just sound and what is displaying on the computer.  This makes what on the computer much clearer.  I have some students in class and some students attending via the internet, but they are treated the same in the class and I seamlessly switch from working with students in class and working with those on the internet (i.e., I use Socratic Method and so classes are dialogs and group problem solving exercises, not lectures).

    Nothing really new here, at least not in my little corner of the world.

     Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    Bob Jensen's neglected threads on classroom design are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Design


    Scalable Computing Laboratory --- http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/Projects/ABC/ABC.html


    June 1, 2006 message form Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    DESIGNING THE FUTURE PHYSICAL UNIVERSITY

    "In discussions about the future of the university, little has been said about how these changes will affect its spatial layout, even though a university's physical characteristics must complement and strengthen its mission." In "Designing the University of the Future" (PLANNING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION, vol. 34, no. 2, 2005-2006, pp. 5-19) Rifca Hashimshony and Jacov Haina discuss several factors, including teaching and learning technology, that may define what the physical facilities of the university of the future will look like.
    The paper is online ---
    Click Here 

    Planning for Higher Education is published by the Society for College and University Planning, 339 E. Liberty, Suite 300, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 USA; tell: 734-998-7832; fax: 734-998-6532;
    email: info@scup.org 
    Web: http://www.scup.org/ 

    See also:

    "The Impact of Facilities on Recruitment and Retention of Students" by David Cain and Gary L. Reynolds FACILITIES MANAGER, vol. 22, no. 2, March/April 2006 http://www.appa.org/FacilitiesManager/article.cfm?ItemNumber=2567&parentid=2542  or http://www.appa.org/files/FMArticles/fm030406_f7_impact.pdf 

    According to a survey conducted by the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers: "Nearly three out of 10 students spurned a college because it lacked a facility they thought was important."

    "Facilities Can Play Key Role in Students' Enrollment Decisions, Study Finds" by Audrey Williams June THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, May 30, 2006 http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/05/2006053002n.htm
    (Online access requires a subscription to the Chronicle.)

     


    You can search video and start the video when a particular word crops up
    YouTube's Interactive Transcripts --- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/youtubes-interactive-transcripts.html

    YouTube added a cool feature for videos with closed captions: you can now click on the "transcript" button to expand the entire listing. If you click on a line, YouTube will show the excerpt from the video corresponding to the text. If you use your browser's find feature, you can even search inside the video. Here's an an example of video that includes a transcript.

    Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm


    Do It Yourself Interactive Whiteboard (about $60 instead of over $1,000)

    October 27, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker [lister@BONACKERS.COM]

    Mr. Lee encourages innovators to ask themselves, "Would providing 80 percent of the capability at 1 percent of the cost be valuable to someone?" If the answer is yes, he says, pay attention. Trading relatively little performance for substantial cost savings can generate what Mr. Lee calls "surprising and often powerful results both scientifically and socially."

    As evidence, he might point to a do-it-yourself interactive whiteboard, another of his Wiimote innovations. Interactive whiteboards, which in commercial form generally sell for more than $1,000, make it possible to control a computer by tapping, writing or drawing on an image of the desktop that has been projected onto a screen. Mr. Lee's version can be built with roughly $60 in parts and free open-source software downloadable from his Web site.

    Some 700,000 people, many of them teachers, have downloaded the software, Mr. Lee says. Much more expensive whiteboards may offer more features and better image resolution, but Mr. Lee's version is adequate for most classroom applications.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/business/26proto.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin 

    This seemed like it might be of interest, if not useful

    Scott Bonacker CPA
    Springfield, MO


    LCD = Liquid Crystal Device computer/video panel and projector displays

    DLP = Digital Light Processor projection device developed by Texas Instruments. DLP is based on a digital micromirror device (a chip with millions of microscopic, hinged mirrors). Red, green and blue light is filtered through a color wheel.

    "LCD or DLP?" by Dave Nagel, T.H.E. Journal, May 2007 --- http://www.thejournal.com/articles/20627 

    I've been reviewing projectors for quite some time, and I've seen them evolve from extraordinarily expensive, bulky, poor-quality devices into what they are now: reasonably priced, high-performance display systems that now enjoy widespread adoption. I've also seen the gap between the two major projector technologies--LCD and DLP--diminish over the years. Nevertheless, some minor perceptual differences remain (as well as one major one) that should be considered when making purchase decisions for setting up classroom and auditorium systems.

    LCD Pros and Cons
    In the olden days, the divide between LCD projectors and DLPs was defined by color fidelity and contrast ratio. That's still true to a lesser extent today. But it comes down more to individual products than the technologies as a whole. Given a halfway decent budget, you could easily find a projector using either technology (or LCoS, for that matter) that would suit your quality standards.

    However, schools are faced with budgetary restrictions that generally lead them into purchasing lower-end projectors. And DLPs seem to offer better specs in the sub-$1,000 category than LCDs.

    Seem to.

    LCDs on the low end still have some advantages:

    There are only two real disadvantages to low-end LCD projectors. First, they're more bulky than DLPs in general. This should not impact installations or even applications that require moderate portability. For those traveling constantly with a projector, size and weight can become a factor. The other disadvantage is the screen door effect produced by LCDs. This is less pronounced now than it used to be, but it's still there, and it can be a distraction for those sitting close to a screen or for those watching video programs.

    DLP Pros and Cons
    DLP projectors, on the other hand, offer more portability and can offer much higher contrast ratios than LCD projectors. However, the reported contrast ratios from some manufacturers are highly tainted with shady testing practices.

    Contrast ratio is a means of stating the range between the brightest gray (white) the projector can produce and the darkest gray (black). Theoretically, the greater the contrast ratio, the greater the range between white and black, meaning that more details should be visible in dark scenes and shadows.

    In reality, tests of some DLP chips are conducted in such a way as to create artificially large contrast ratios by testing only white and only black and measuring those results separately. This is called "On/Off," and it can produce a contrast ratio 125 percent the ratio that would be measured using the ANSI method, in which blacks and whites are displayed and measured simultaneously.

    Continued in article

     


    Physical Design of Schools in the Technology Age
    A 2006 Report from the National Summit on School Design provides recommendations to help designers and educators make better decisions about some of the $30 billion spent annually on new or renovated school facilities--- http://www.archfoundation.org/aaf/documents/nssd.report.pdf

     


    Stanford University Experiments With the Latest Classroom Technology and Building Design

    "Wallenberg Hall:  Opening the Door to New Technologies," by Melinda Sacks, Syllabus, September 2004, pp. 13-16 --- http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=9936 

     

    Each Wallenberg Hall classroom offers a platform for a new level of teaching, at the same time serving as a laboratory for testing and analyzing the value and potential of new technology. Some of the tools will prove invaluable, SCIL researchers believe, while other tools may not be worth their expense. Such information could prove useful to everyone, from an academic department deciding whether to invest a small amount of money in several tablet PCs for the classroom, to a university redesigning or creating a new multimedia auditorium, to a college seeking funding to reinvent its learning spaces.

    “The teaching and research happening here in Wallenberg Hall could be of enormous value to our colleagues at all levels of education regardless of their geography,” says Steinhardt. “Wallenberg Hall represents the university’s commitment to explore new ways of enhancing learning and education through targeted investments in technology.”

    Research and Teaching at Wallenberg

    Research

    The broad range of multidisciplinary projects includes:

    Teaching

    Since Wallenberg Hall first opened its doors to classes in 2002, it has grown from a magnet for early adopters to a widely sought-after learning center for faculty and students from more than 20 departments and schools at Stanford University. Courses offered in the high-performance learning spaces of the hall have included anthropology, history, biochemistry, classic Greek, engineering, and Hebrew, reflecting the fact that virtually any subject can benefit from a well-designed, technology-enriched environment.

    Every day from early in the morning until late into the evening, teachers and students utilize the frequently updated classroom equipment such as interactive Webster boards, video conferencing tools, in-class laptops, tablet PCs, and reconfigurable furnishings to create a seamless multimedia experience. As faculty and students employ these technologies, researchers from the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning (SCIL), who also reside in Wallenberg Hall, evaluate and analyze the impact in an ongoing study of technology in education.

    Highlights from some of the innovative courses taught in Wallenberg Hall include:

    Robots on IEEE Spectrum
    See
    http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/.

    Innovative Cell Phone Technology

    This cell phone technology may have wide ranging education and training possibilities.

    "Cell-phone lessons prompt students to prepare for SAT," by Tanya Schevitz, San Francisco Chronicle, October 19, 2004 --- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/18/MNG3S9BHPN1.DTL&type=tech  

    A new program started this month by the Princeton Review, a test preparation company, and wireless application developer VOCEL allows students to do practice drills in math, reading and grammar by having the questions sent to their phones. Students can download a bank of questions and minidrills or have the phone call them at set intervals with practice test questions.

    The program can also be set up to call or e-mail parents with the results.

    "When you are sitting waiting for the football game or whenever you have a few minutes, instead of carrying around a big book, it is all right in the palm of your hand," said San Diego high school senior Brian Plavnicky, 17, who tried the phone during a Princeton Review SAT preparation class. "Since you are able to use it whenever and wherever you are, it is convenient for you and you are able to study more often."

    Continued in the article

     


    Response Pads and Clickers

    Classroom Clickers After 30+ Years of Application

    Clickers (Response Pads)  in the Classroom ---
     http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads

    Clicker Apps in the Classroom ---
    https://joetigani.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/clicker-apps-in-the-classroom/

    Question
    Should instructors stop using clickers in the classroom?

    "Teaching Tax: On Clickers and Laptops," by Sam Brunson, SurlySubgroup Blog, June 8, 2016 ---
    https://surlysubgroup.com/2016/06/09/teaching-tax-on-clickers-and-laptops/


    Classroom Clickers (Student Response Pads) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response#Classroom_use

    Article Citation:

    Julia Kokina and Paul E. Juras (2017) Using Socrative to Enhance Instruction in an Accounting Classroom. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting: Spring 2017, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 85-97.

    https://doi.org/10.2308/jeta-51700

    Educational

    Using Socrative to Enhance Instruction in an Accounting Classroom

    Julia KokinaPaul E. Juras

    Babson College

    We thank the organizers and participants of the Best Teaching Practices Panel of the 2015 AAA Northeast Regional Meeting in Providence, RI.

    Editor's note: Accepted by Hui Du.

    ABSTRACT:

    Are you interested in increasing the level of student engagement in your accounting course? You are not alone. In today's classroom, increased student engagement and active learning are desired by faculty and students alike. In this paper, we outline how to use Socrative Student Response by Mastery Connect (Socrative 2016), a variation of a real-time response tool called a “clicker.” We used this tool in both undergraduate and graduate-level managerial accounting courses. We provide a user's guide to Socrative, as well as helpful tips to ensure its successful implementation in the classroom.

    Keywords: active learning, Socrative, clicker, student response system

    Bob Jensen's threads on response pads and clickers ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads


    Classroom Clickers (Student Response Pads) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response#Classroom_use

    Article Citation:

    Julia Kokina and Paul E. Juras (2017) Using Socrative to Enhance Instruction in an Accounting Classroom. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting: Spring 2017, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 85-97.

    https://doi.org/10.2308/jeta-51700

    Educational

    Using Socrative to Enhance Instruction in an Accounting Classroom

    Julia KokinaPaul E. Juras

    Babson College

    We thank the organizers and participants of the Best Teaching Practices Panel of the 2015 AAA Northeast Regional Meeting in Providence, RI.

    Editor's note: Accepted by Hui Du.

    ABSTRACT:

    Are you interested in increasing the level of student engagement in your accounting course? You are not alone. In today's classroom, increased student engagement and active learning are desired by faculty and students alike. In this paper, we outline how to use Socrative Student Response by Mastery Connect (Socrative 2016), a variation of a real-time response tool called a “clicker.” We used this tool in both undergraduate and graduate-level managerial accounting courses. We provide a user's guide to Socrative, as well as helpful tips to ensure its successful implementation in the classroom.

    Keywords: active learning, Socrative, clicker, student response system

    Bob Jensen's threads on response pads and clickers ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads


    "Episode 90: Growing Pains for ‘Clickers’," Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 7, 2011 --- Click Here
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/techtherapy/2011/12/07/episode-90-growing-pains-for-%E2%80%98clickers%E2%80%99/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Classroom response systems, or “clickers,” have been around for years, but only a small percentage of classes use them. Competing and incompatible brands, faculty reluctance to try new technologies, and confusion about which campus group should provide support for the devices all contribute to a slow adoption, says Derek Bruff, director of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching and author of Teaching With Classroom Response Systems. The Tech Therapy team looks at how those gadgets can be seen as an example of the difficulty in moving technology beyond the early-adopter stage.

    Download this recording as an MP3 file, or subscribe to Tech Therapy on iTunes.

    Each month, The Chronicle’s Tech Therapy podcast offers analysis of and advice on what the latest gadgets and buzzwords mean for professors, administrators, and students. Join hosts Jeff Young, a Chronicle reporter, and Warren Arbogast, a technology consultant who works with colleges, for a lively discussion—as well as interviews with leading thinkers in technology.

    Jensen Comment
    Response pads have a long history dating back over 30+  years in the classroom. HyperGraphics was one of the first companies to shift from wired to wireless clickers using the old DOS HyperGraphics course (learning) management software. My first dog and pony technology shows featured my managerial accounting course in HyperGraphics. My first gig was at the University of Wisconsin.

    It was October 4-5, 1990 when I made my first away-from-home dog and pony show on featuring HyperGraphics technology --- at the University of Wisconsin. HyperGraphics software pretty much died after Windows replaced the DOS operating system in PCs. I then shifted my managerial accounting and accounting theory courses to ToolBooks for the PC. My out-of-town dog and pony shows really commenced to roll when my university hosts invested in those old three-barrel color projectors that predated LCD projectors. I eventually made hundreds of presentations of HyperGraphics and then ToolBooks on college campuses in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Holland, and the United Kingdom (where I lugged my full PC and LCD projector between five campuses as the European Accounting Association Visiting Professor). Many of my campus visits and topics are listed at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Presentations

    Shortly thereafter Loyola's Barry Rice with his ToolBooks became a much heavier user of clickers than me in his large accounting lectures.

    I think Bill Ellis at Furman University is a current user of clickers in his accounting courses.


    Use Plickers for quick checks for understanding to know whether your students are understanding big concepts and mastering key skills ---
    https://www.plickers.com/
    Thank you Sharon Garvin for the heads up.


    Audience Response --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response

    "App Tries to Increase Student Participation by Simplifying Clicker Technology." by Angela Chen, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 11, 2012 --- Click Here
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/app-tries-to-increase-student-participation-by-simplifying-clicker-technology/37855?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    From clickers to programs like Learning Catalytics—which data-mines to match students with discussion partners—student-response systems are becoming more and more sophisticated. But Liam Kaufman, a graduate of the University of Toronto, thinks that the key to effective feedback is a tool with fewer bells and whistles.

    Mr. Kaufman is the developer of Understoodit, a browser-based app that lets students indicate their level of comprehension during class, and then see how much everyone else understands.

    The idea is that, during a lecture, everyone runs the Understoodit Web site, which is also accessible via mobile and tablet devices. Students press buttons to indicate that they either understand the material or are confused by it. The feedback is displayed in real time, in the form of a “confus-o-meter” and an “understand-o-meter,” which show the percentage of students who comprehend the material.

    The app was inspired by clickers, Mr. Kaufman says. But whereas clickers usually require students to answer questions so the professor can gauge their understanding, Understoodit lets them directly indicate confusion or comprehension, which is then available for everyone to see. That approach, he hopes, will encourage students to ask more questions when they realize that others are confused as well.

    Mr. Kaufman first tested the app on an entry-level computer-science class at the University of Toronto in February. The app is still in beta testing, and available by invitation only. More than 2,000 people have signed up so far, Mr. Kaufman says, including professors at institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

    Continued in article

     

    Over 24 years ago, Barry Rice believed in the learning power of classroom electronic response pads (clickers).
    He was right if they are used correctly ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads

    "Does Using Clickers in the Classroom Matter to Student Performance and Satisfaction When Taking the Introductory Financial Accounting Course?" by Ronald F. Premuroso, Lei Tong, and Teresa K. Beed, Issues in Accounting Education, November 2011, pp. 701-724
    http://aaajournals.org/doi/abs/10.2308/iace-50066
    There is a fee for the full text version

    ABSTRACT:

    Teaching and student success in the classroom involve incorporating various sound pedagogy and technologies that improve and enhance student learning and understanding. Before entering their major field of study, business and accounting majors generally must take a rigorous introductory course in financial accounting. Technological innovations utilized in the classroom to teach this course include Audience Response Systems (ARS), whereby the instructor poses questions related to the course material to students who each respond by using a clicker and receiving immediate feedback. In a highly controlled experimental situation, we find significant improvements in the overall student examination performance when teaching this course using clickers as compared to traditional classroom teaching techniques. Finally, using a survey at the end of the introductory financial accounting course taught with the use of clickers, we add to the growing literature supporting student satisfaction with use of this type of technology in the classroom. As universities look for ways to restrain operating costs without compromising the pedagogy of core requirement classes such as the introductory financial accounting course, our results should be of interest to educators, administrators, and student retention offices, as well as to the developers and manufacturers of these classroom support technologies.

    "Some interesting findings and unanswered questions about clicker implementations," by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 4, 2012 ---
    Click Here
    http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/01/04/some-interesting-findings-and-unanswered-questions-about-clicker-implementations/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    I have been using clickers in my classes for three years now, and for me, there’s no going back. The “agile teaching” model that clickers enable suits my teaching style very well and helps my students learn. But I have to say that until reading this Educause article on the flight out to Boston on Sunday, I hadn’t given much thought to how the clicker implementation model chosen by the institution might affect how my students learn.

    Different institutions implement clickers differently, of course. The article studies three different implementation models: the students-pay-without-incentive (SPWOI) approach, where students buy the clickers for class but the class has no graded component for clicker use; the the students-pay-with-incentive (SPWI) approach, where students purchase clickers and there’s some grade incentive in class for using them (usually participation credit, but this can vary too); and the institution-pays-clicker-kit (IPCK) approach, where the institution purchases a box of clickers (a “clicker kit”) for an instructor, and the instructor brings them to class.

    For me, the most interesting finding in the study was that there appears to be a threshhold for the perceived usefulness of clickers among students. The study found that in the SPWOI approach, 72% of student respondents said they would buy a clicker if it was used in at least three courses they were taking per semester. But drop that number to “at least two courses” and the percentage drops to 24%! So once the saturation level of clicker use reaches something like 50–75% of a student’s course load, they start seeing the devices as worth the money, even with no grade attached to its use. (Only a depressing 13% of students said they would pay $50 for a clicker based solely on its value as a learning tool. We have some P.R. to do, it seems.)

    In the SPWI approach, 65% of respondents said they would buy a clicker if the contribution of clicker use toward their course grades was between 3% and 5%. (This is sort of mystifying. What do the other 35% do? Steal one? Just forfeit that portion of their grade?) The study doesn’t say explicitly, but it implies that if the grade contribution is less than 3%, the percentage would drop — how precipitously, we don’t know.

    The study goes on to give a decision tree to help institutions figure out which implementation model to choose. Interestingly, if it gets down to choosing between the SPWI and SPWOI models, the deciding factor is whether the institution can manage cheating with the clickers. If so, then go with SPWI. Otherwise, go SPWOI — that is, if you can’t control cheating, don’t offer incentives.

    Here at GVSU, I use the SPWI approach. Students have to pay for the clickers, but they get 5% of their course grade for participation. I take attendance at each class using the Attendance app for the iPhone. Then, once or twice a week, I’ll cross-check the attendance records with the clicker records for the day. If a student is present but doesn’t respond to all the clicker questions, they lose participation credit for the day. This method also mitigates cheating; if a student is absent for the day but has records of clicker response, then I hold the student guilty of cheating, because someone else is entering data for them. (Putting the burden on the absent student makes it less likely they’ll give their clicker to someone else to cheat for them.).

    Continued in article

    January 10, 2012 reply from Steve Hornik

    Late reply to this thread, but my memory is pretty bad and I was trying to remember a "clicker" alternative. I finally did, its Pollanywhere and works the same way as clickers. I've used for presentations at AAA meetings a few years ago, here's a link if anyone is interested in finding out more:

    http://www.polleverywhere.com/ 

    _________________________
    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739

    http://about.me/shornik

     


    Will classroom clickers be obsolete if each student in class is online?

    October 22, 2009 message from Bill Ellis [bill.ellis@furman.edu]

    http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/powerpoint-twitter-tools/

    Here’s new software from a reliable source. I’ve not tried this yet, but it might have a use in classrooms.

    FREE PowerPoint Twitter Tools
    Ever wanted to make presentations a more interactive, Web 2.0 experience? A prototype version of the PowerPoint Twitter Tools is now available for testing. Created using SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius
    <http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/sme/reporting-dashboarding/index.epx> (but requiring only PowerPoint for Windows and Adobe Flash to run), the twitter tools allow presenters to see and react to tweets in real-time, embedded directly within their presentations, either as a ticker or refreshable comment page. There are currently six tools:

    Jensen Comment
    Thanks for this heads up Bill. For over a decade I taught in an electronic classroom where each student work station had software that made clickers unnecessary, although clickers would still be useful for students not having computers at their seats. The above software does more than most electronic classroom software to date.

    I summarize the history of classroom clickers (response pads) below.
    This includes a previous message from Bill Ellis and reference to an early adopter back in the 1980s --- our own AECM founder Barry Rice (who by the way was a very popular old-style ToolBook lecturer when using response pads).

    The main advantage of response pads, in my viewpoint, is that they help hold student attention in a lecture because of fear/anticipation of being called on. I used an Excel program that not only called on a student at random, it flashed his/her picture on the screen.

    My electronic classroom software could also instantly flash whatever was on any student’s workstation screen. This prevented students from doing email or playing computer games in class --- or so I discovered after embarrassing a few students early on in the course. If a student seemed to be furiously typing an email message in class, I flipped that student’s screen in front of the class. Some would begin “Dear Mom.”

    Students can write to their moms after class.

    Bob Jensen

    May 26, 2009 message from Bill Ellis [bill.ellis@furman.edu]

    I thought I’d pass along this email on clickers and recommend a new book by Derck Bruff.

    I’ve been using Clickers for almost two years now in Principles, Advanced and Governmental accounting courses at GTC and Furman. The comments by Derck Bruff, a Furman graduate, below are right on target.

    Accountability and engagement are the primary two features clickers have brought into my classrooms. There is no place for shy students to hide. A response is demanded and every student’s score is recorded. Every student is engaged not only by having to answer questions throughout the lecture, but in discussions using “think-pair-share” techniques that reinforce learning in a very active way.

    I don’t use clickers for grades but do let students know their “scores” and class averages. I’ve seen a high positive correlation between responses on the question “how many hours did you study this week?” to a student’s clicker score for the lecture. If students miss a question that gives me an early warning that I should go over that learning objective again.

    I’m convinced that clickers when used creatively help confidence, teaching and learning to improve.

    Bill Ellis, CPA, MPAcc
    Furman University
    Accounting UES

    May 26, 2009 message from Rick Reis <reis@stanford.edu>

    Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 08:30:20 -0700
    From: Rick Reis <reis@stanford.edu>
    Subject: TP Msg. #950 Clickers
    To: tomorrows-professor@lists.stanford.edu 

    "Instead of creating chaos, faculty find that when everyone gets a remote control (and you ask good questions), everyone ends up on the same channel."

    Folks:

    The posting below looks at the impact of an important new technology on faculty lecturing and student learning. It is by James Rhem, executive director of the National Teaching & Learning Forum and is #45 in a series of selected excerpts from the NT&LF newsletter reproduced here as part of our "Shared Mission Partnership." NT&LF has a wealth of information on all aspects of teaching and learning. If you are not already a subscriber, you can check it out at [http://www.ntlf.com/] The on-line edition of the Forum--like the printed version - offers subscribers insight from colleagues eager to share new ways of helping students reach the highest levels of learning. National Teaching and Learning Forum Newsletter, Volume 18, Number 3, March 2009.? Copyright 1996-2009. Published by James Rhem & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Reprinted with permission.

    Regards,

    Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu 

    Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning

    Clickers

    Clickers have been quietly marching over the horizon of attention for several years. Only early adopters, however, and schools with enough money and vision to try them have come to understand that, far from being simply the latest new gadget, they offer students a pedagogically powerful blend of intimacy and anonymity that can move them from passive to active learning with the click of a button (and a battery of well-crafted questions).

    Rapid improvements in the technology and especially the publication of Derek Bruff's Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creative Active Learning Environments (Jossey-Bass, 2009) seem poised to place clickers in faculty consciousness across the board. The attention the book has already received offers some index of the growing interest in clickers. Bruff has already been profiled by the on- line newsletter Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

    How They Work

    For those who don't know, clickers are hand-held devices similar to the remote controls for televisions and other media devices. They can send a specific electronic signal to a central receiving station connected to a computer equipped with software that tabulates the responses and can then display the distribution of answers on a bar graph.

    In operation-especially in quantitative fields with concrete correct and incorrect answers-a professor presents a multiple choice or true/false question. Students respond by pushing buttons for answers (a), (b), (c), and so on. Then, normally, the professor shows the bar graph of how the class answered. Quickly, students can see where they stand in terms of how well they understand the material, and (just as importantly) where their classmates stand, and where they stand in relation to these peers. And students get all of this very specific feedback on their learning without risking a moment of embarrassment. The anonymity of the system allows students to confront little important truths about their progress (or lack of it) without risking a thing.

    Faculty schooled a few generations back when shame and guilt were felt to have at least some pedagogical value-that is to say, in a time when students felt ashamed to make a poor grade or come to class unprepared-the ascendance of this new teaching environment may seem strange. However, as the emphasis in education has shifted over the centuries from building character to simply learning, it all makes sense. (And, of course, whether shame and guilt actually built character remains an open question.)

    Anonymity's Advantages

    The anonymity is "pretty important," says Derek Bruff, who teaches mathematics and serves as assistant director of the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching. "Students are often hesitant to speak up in front of their peers," he says. "A key element in that is the desire not to be wrong or foolish in front of their peers, especially in a class where there are right/ wrong answers. In other classes, they don't want to stand out or be the one with the strange opinion."

    Peer pressure, says Bruff, "dampens conversation." The anonymity that clickers provide is one way of dealing with that. "It's not the only way," Bruff concedes. "There are professors that are able to create a safe environment where that's not a problem."

    If escaping peer pressure and taking refuge in anonymity prove such positive elements in teaching and learning, a question that comes immediately to mind is, where do cooperative learning and other small group activities fit in? The answer? On the next click, so to speak.

    Offering an answer via the clicker establishes a "buy-in," says Bruff, a commitment not simply to an answer but to the learning process. With this threshold crossed, passivity has begun to be left behind. The anonymity allows cumbersome emotional baggage to be left behind as well, lending both a purity and a more animated sense of mission to the next step, the familiar "think-pair-share."

    The "Think Moment"

    "We use the think-pair-share method a lot here," says Bruff, "think, talk with one, talk in the larger group. There's more risk at each stage, but giving students a warm-up experience is important because many need that moment. If a hand in the first row goes up to answer a question, their thinking is stopped. The class is then moving on. Maybe they needed 30 more seconds. Giving the 'think moment' is helpful. Then, in the pair, they get to practice saying what they think, and they get to hear other thinking which then sharpens theirs."

    The silent, private "think moment" operates like moving from warm water to hotter and hotter baths in a hot spring, for example, and finally into strong currents where one may have to swim against the tide intellectually.

    Just as this technologically enhanced learning environment intensifies the focus on learning and recognizing where everyone stands in the process moment to moment, it also intensifies the burden on faculty to become "agile teachers." For example, when clickers first began to be used, showing the bar chart of student responses immediately was expected. As their use has grown and influenced faculty understanding of group behavior and learning patterns, whether to show or not to show the graph has become an important "thinking-on-your-feet" decision. Even if most students agree on a correct answer, how deeply do they understand the reasoning behind it? Sometimes, to make sure their learning goes more deeply, faculty withhold the results and ask students to turn to their neighbor and talk out the reasons for their answer, especially if their neighbor gave a different answer.

    "When I have that happen," says Bruff, "I tell my groups, 'Even if you agree, talk it out because you could both be wrong.' I want them to test themselves a little bit."

    It's the "thinking-on-your-feet" challenge that burdens faculty. "That's a roadblock for some faculty," says Bruff. "They want 'ballistic teaching,'" he says with a laugh. "Launch lecture, and once it's off, it's off on its way." Clickers offer lots of chances for mid-course corrections, but their use also demands something of a chess player's mentality of knowing not only how the pieces move, but which move to make next for maximum advantage. Sometimes, the best move does turn out to be "creating times for telling," says Bruff (using a phrase coined by Schwartz and Bransford), time for a little lecture students need and which skillful use of clicker questions can lead them to want. For example, anticipating a common misconception, faculty may ask a question experience has shown them most students will answer incorrectly.

    "The instructor then reveals the correct answer," says Bruff, "often through a demonstration. The students are surprised most of them got the answer wrong and it makes them want to hear why the right answer is right and the answer they gave is wrong."

    Making Good Questions

    Successful use of clickers turns on the skillful use of good questions. "Writing good questions I would have to say is the hardest part" of teaching with clickers, says Bruff. But it's also the most exciting part because it causes faculty to become intensely intentional about their teaching moment to moment, not just lecture to lecture. "That's why I like to talk about clickers with faculty," says Bruff, "because it generates this kind of conversation: 'What are my learning goals for my students?'"

    There are content questions asking for recall of information, conceptual questions seeking evidence of understanding, application questions, critical thinking questions, and free-response questions. When and how to ask the right kind of question in response to where the students actually sitting before the faculty member are becomes the proof of good teaching in that moment.

    One of the most interesting aspects to emerge from the use of clickers has to do with the flexibility of the multiple choice question to stimulate thinking and learning. "Many people think of the multiple choice question as being only about factual recall," says Bruff, but the one-best-answer variation probes much deeper. "A really good teacher can write really good wrong answers to a question," says Bruff, ones that key into common student difficulties with material. "When I really like 40-60% of my students to get it wrong. And I'd like them to be split between a right choice and several wrong choices, because then that means I have tapped into some misconceptions that are fairly common and need to be addressed and the question is hard enough to be worth talking about."

    Metacognition and Confidence

    Some of the problems that have emerged in using clickers have also turned out to reveal opportunities for increasing student learning or rather student learning about their own learning. Bruff, a mathematician, began to ponder how much confidence he could have in student learning reported via true/ false questions or even some multiple choice questions. In a true/ false situation, for example, students might guess and have a 50% chance of lodging a correct answer. Multiple choice questions might be constructed to include an "I don't know" option, but then the matter of discouraging student engagement becomes an issue. Students might retreat to the safety of an "I don't know" answer rather than commit to a response they felt uncertain about. Pondering this problem has led a number of pioneers in clicker use, like Dennis Jacobs at Notre Dame, to marry self-assessments of confidence levels with decisions about right or wrong answers. So, for example, in Jacobs' system (where clicker responses are graded) a correct answer in which a student indicated high confidence would receive five points. An incorrect answer that a student had expressed high confidence in would receive no points. On the other hand, an incorrect answer in which a student indicated low confidence would receive two points.

    "If a student gives a right answer," says Bruff, "but realizes they aren't confident in it, they have a little metacognitive moment thrust upon them: they have to ask themselves 'Why wasn't I more confident in my answer? What are the standards of evidence in this field that would allow me to be confident in my answer?'" By the same token, a student aware enough of his own learning to express low confidence in an incorrect answer receives partial credit for sensing that he didn't know, thus encouraging him as a learner rather than thumping him for getting something wrong. With this system, he gets both the positive and negative points to be made through the question.

    Creative Options Everywhere

    One of the strengths of Bruff's book on clicker use lies in the wide range of faculty examples he includes. That range evinces impressive imagination and commitment among faculty to improving student learning, itself a pleasure in reading the book. And, while the dominant use of clickers falls in scientific fields, the book includes rich examples of skillful use of clickers in humanities courses as well. Moreover, while clickers offer the most efficient means of collecting student responses, the overall emphasis falls on collecting those responses and on the dimensions of psychology, motivation, and cognition involved in their use. Hence, Bruff includes discussion of some low-tech means of collecting student responses as well.

    With clickers, as with so many other new technologies, the greatest benefit seems to lie in the way they uncover new means of improving one of the most ancient of transactions-teaching and learning. Socrates would be proud.

    Contact Derek Bruff at: Derek.bruff@vanderbilt.edu

    May 27, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Bill and Rick,

    One of the enthusiastic early adopters of response pads (clickers) in the hands of students during lectures was our AECM founder Barry Rice. Barry used the early technology called HyperGraphics for screen presentations and student responses on screen --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads 

    HyperGraphics was DOS-based before the Windows operating system came on the scene. HyperGraphics had a unique niche in the DOS world but never competed well in the Windows/Mac worlds when ToolBook and Authorware came on the scene --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm  This illustrates how technology can make and destroy software. ToolBook and Authorware, in turn, never competed well in academe after course technology became more Web-based. Now we have HTML, XML, Wikis, chat rooms, instant messaging, etc.

    But response pads (clickers) are still popular with many faculty in various academic disciplines. In a lecture, clickers offer limited response capabilities that online students get with full network capabilities from their PC stations.

    I’m certain Barry Rice will be pleased with your 2009 testimonial about successful clicker use that he used successfully as far back as 1989. Barry would probably still use clickers in lectures had he not switched to full-time administration many years ago.

    I had the luxury of teaching in an electronic classroom over the past two decades. Each student sat in front of a PC capable of easily interacting on screen and via ear phones with the instructor and each other. With a flick of a button I could flash any student’s screen in front of the class just as a clicker response can be flashed in front of the entire class.

    What I did not develop software for was response aggregation. One advantage of clicker software is the power to instantly aggregate joint responses of all students in the class such as the number of responses for each of the choices in a multiple choice question. I think the Trinity University electronic classrooms now have such aggregation software that can slice and dice multiple student responses.

    While many faculty users of clickers minimize clicker cheating by not providing student performance grades based on clicker usage, there are some that give credit in some form, including quiz points based upon clicker responses. This can create problems. One study on clicker cheating can be found at http://www.lychock.com/portfolio/Documents/final report.pdf

    Another problem in very large lectures might arise when clickers are used for taking attendance. These are not very reliable for taking role unless accompanied by some verification controls.

    Bob Jensen

    Bob Jensen's threads on the history of classroom and networking course management systems --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

     


    July 1, 2005 email message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    CLICKERS IN THE CLASSROOM

    Resembling television remote control devices, clickers transmit and record responses to questions. Unlike earlier keypad student response systems, clickers can be registered to a student and used in any classroom equipped with a receiving station (which can also be portable). Using clickers, instructors can quickly poll students to ascertain their understanding and mastery of course materials. Clicker polls, unlike a show-of-hands poll, can be anonymous; the results can be quickly tabulated, recorded, and saved in a variety of formats; and students report enjoying the immediate feedback they get. For more information about using clickers in classroom settings, see "7 Things You Should Know About . . . Clickers" at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7002.pdf .

    EDUCAUSE publishes the "7 Things You Should Know About . . ." series on emerging learning practices and technologies. EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. For more information, contact: EDUCAUSE, 4772 Walnut Street, Suite 206, Boulder, CO 80301-2538 USA; tel: 303-449-4430; fax: 303-440-0461; email: info@educause.edu; Web: http://www.educause.edu .

    See also:

    "No Wrong Answer: Click It" WIRED NEWS, May 14, 2005 http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67530,00.html

    Jensen Comment
    Back is the early 1990s, Barry Rice and I were both inspired heavily by a company called HyperGraphics that authored a complete course management and delivery system in DOS (before the days of Windows and Macs).  My classes were small at Trinity University, but Barry had some large basic accounting lecture classes at Loyola College of Maryland.  He made active use of hardware from HyperGraphics that allowed each student in a large lecture to respond to questions in class.  At first all these response pads were hard wired to student desks.  Later they became wireless.  HyperGraphics changed names over the decades but is still in the business of selling wireless response pads.  Now the classroom "Clickers" are replacing the older style wireless response pads.  You can read more about the history of this type of thing at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

    Read how clickers are used at the University of Wisconsin --- http://www.news.wisc.edu/11142.html
    A pilot test at Iowa State University (where students buy them for $16 at the bookstore) is reported at http://www.iastate.edu/Inside/2005/0610/clickers.shtml
    Canada's usage is reported at http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050510.gtclickermay10/BNStory/Technology/

    Also see http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68086,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

    One source for clickers is http://www.smartroom.com/ 

    Richard Campbell suggests www.einstruction.com

    July 5, 2005 reply from Carla Carnaghan [cacarnag@UWATERLOO.CA]

    Alan Webb and I have done a study of the effects of clickers on student satisfaction, engagement and learning in an accounting context. We looked at incremental effect of the clickers beyond what is acheived through the use of an interactive pedagogy alone. Our results suggest that while students enjoyed the use of the technology, there were only modest positive effects on learning (as measured by exam scores) relative to students not using the clickers. There were some interesting effects on oral participation that suggest that using the response pads to ask questions that are too easy actually reduces students asking questions. (We suspect that when the results are displayed showing that most students got a particular question right, those that didn't are even more reluctant to ask questions to improve their understanding, since they are clearly in the minority).

    Similar to what Amy said, both Alan and I found it a useful means of determining what the students did and did not understand so we could tailor our material coverage accordingly.

    Our paper is available at http://www.learning.uwaterloo.ca/LIF/responsepad_june20051.pdf  if anyone is interested in the research design or our findings. I will be presenting it at the AAA annual meeting in August as well.

    July 5, 2005 reply from Thomas C. Omer [omer@UIC.EDU]

    So Carla, in your conclusion you suggest that students are more uncomfortable after the GRS System has been removed. Given my teaching experience in an atmosphere where verbal interaction is required and participation is graded the reluctance of students to talk in front of peers and instructors is quite obvious even though students get better over the semester they are still prone to silence. It seems to me that while the GRS is beneficial to the instructor (which I do not deny) is propagates the incentives to remain silent, to not express an opinion, and never allow the possibility of being seen given a wrong (or right answer for that matter) answer in class. In a sense it heightens the continuing problem of a mute society of students that must suddenly find their voice when the first pay check arrives.

    Interesting paper, good luck on your presentation.

    May 5, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen

    A clicker and a response pad are both devices that can be used as technology aids for "cold calls" in the class.  Many of us use a cold call pedagogy to keep students more alert and tuned into the class lecture/discussion.  There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that cold calls improve attentiveness in class.

    Kathleen O'Toole, "Cold-Calling Van Horne," Stanford Alumni Newsletter, May 2005 --- http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm0505/feature_vanhorne.shtml

    Salespeople trade tales about cold-calling customers, but at the Business School, students and alums reminisce about the moments when their hearts stopped because of “cold calls” from Professor James Van Horne.

    The A. P. Giannini Professor of Banking and Finance is legendary for his classroom-quizzing techniques, which somehow strike both fear and respect into the students who volunteer for his elective courses. Now in his 40th year at the Business School, Van Horne crafts tough questions about interest rates and finance for corporations, nonprofits, and governments. He also demands tough answers of himself. During a lecture to alumni last fall, for example, he challenged the conventional wisdom that says it’s good for the Federal Reserve Board to signal its intentions on interest rates. Van Horne argues that the policy gives us a false sense of certainty.

    Recently, the School’s most fabled inquisitor consented to have the tables turned. At the suggestion of an alumnus, this magazine invited four alums to cold-call Van Horne on anything they desired. Here is an edited transcript of that laughter-filled discussion last October, which Van Horne, in his usual disciplined style, promptly ended at the appointed time.

    Continued in article

     


    Tablet Computing

    June 29, 2006 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    TABLET PCS AND FACULTY USERS

    Many recent studies on tablet PCs in higher education have focused on student users. The purpose of the Seton Hall University project described in "The Tablet PC For Faculty: A Pilot Project" (by Rob R. Weitz, Bert Wachsmuth, and Danielle Mirliss in JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY, vol. 9, issue. 2, 2006, pp. 68-83) "was to test and evaluate faculty applications of tablet PCs apropos their contribution to teaching and learning. Put another way, how would real faculty teaching actual classes use tablets, and how would they evaluate the utility of doing so?"

    Some of the study's findings:

    -- "only a fraction of faculty are motivated to use tablet technology: roughly a third of faculty expressed an interest in replacing their notebook computer with a tablet computer"

    -- "generally, participating faculty did indeed use tablet functionality in their classes and were convinced that this use resulted in a meaningful impact on teaching and learning."

    The paper is available online at http://www.ifets.info/journals/9_2/6.pdf

    The Journal of Educational Technology & Society [ISSN 1436-4522 (online), ISSN 1176-3647 (print)] is a peer-reviewed quarterly online journal published by the International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). Current and past issues are available in HTML and PDF formats at no cost at http://www.ifets.info/


    From Syllabus News on Octiber 26, 2004

    UVa. Testing Tablet PC-Hosted Digital Courseware Program

    The University of Virginia is hosting the test of a state-of-the-art educational delivery platform this fall in a collaboration with three companies holding a big stake in the higher education community. The project involves Thomson Learning, which is supplying Web-based courseware developed with UVa. faculty based on the firm's iLrn platform. Course packages will include Web sites with online tests, diagnostic tools for personalized learning and planning, and links to reference materials via Thompson Gale's InfoTrac service.

    Students will be equipped with Tablet PCs from HP running Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC software and Microsoft OneNote digital note-taking application. In one application, OneNote templates are being used to record biochemistry lectures. The university expects a professor's ability to gauge students' comprehension of the course material immediately via their online performance will improve student retention.

    "The academic environment has changed dramatically in the last decade as a result of numerous social, cultural and economic factors," said Edward L. Ayers, dean of Arts and Sciences at UVa. "The rise of technology has affected how students learn, how instructors teach and how course materials are developed and presented. Greater numbers of students, as well as significant changes in the demographics of those students, necessitate new approaches and instructional models." The program will continue through the spring 2005 semester.


    Nexus 7 --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_7

    "From Google, the Toughest Challenger to the iPad," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2012 ---
    http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303343404577518871956122982.html

    Tired of watching in frustration as its popular Android mobile operating system failed to make much of a dent in the tablet market, Google GOOG -1.81% is stepping in next week with an Android tablet it helped design. It's the Nexus 7, a $199 model with a 7-inch screen. And in my view, it's a winner.

    After testing the Nexus 7 for a couple of weeks, I consider it the best Android tablet I've used. It's a serious alternative to both Apple's AAPL -0.62% larger $499 iPad and to a more direct rival: Amazon's $199, Android-based, 7-inch Kindle Fire. I prefer the Nexus 7 to 7-inch models from Google partners like Samsung, 005930.SE -0.80% whose comparable product costs $250. [image] Google

    The Google Nexus 7's My Library home screen displays a user's recent media content.

    The new Google tablet doesn't have all the features of the iPad. For instance, it lacks a cellular connectivity option, a rear camera and the iPad's dazzling screen resolution. Its base model has half the memory of the iPad's. It offers fewer content choices—music, movies, TV shows—than either the Apple or Amazon devices do. It also has very few apps designed for a tablet, as opposed to a phone, while the iPad boasts over 200,000 apps for tablet use. And its screen area is less than half the size of the iPad's.

    But Google's tablet is a better choice than the iPad for people on a budget; for those who prefer a lighter, more compact tablet that's easier to carry and operate with one hand; and for those who prefer Google's ecosystem of apps, services and content to Apple's.

    Despite some drawbacks, I found it a pleasure to use.

    . . .

    Google's voice-controlled question-and-answer feature, like Apple's Siri, didn't understand me or get it right a lot of the time. And it didn't understand some questions Siri does, like "Will I need an umbrella today?"

    And Google Now requires you to compromise some privacy, by allowing the service to track your location and search history. It tries to figure out your home address by detecting where the device is during most nights.

    Overall, however, Google and Asus have produced a very good tablet in the Nexus 7, one I can recommend.


    "Microsoft Finally Has a Tablet Business Model with Surface," by Dan Frommer, ReadWriteWeb, June 19, 2012 ---
    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft-finally-has-a-tablet-business-model-with-surface.php

    Microsoft Launches "Surface" Surface Tablet (two models)---
    http://247wallst.com/2012/06/18/microsoft-launches-surface-super-tablet/

    Runs on Windows RT or comes with an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro.

    9.3 mm thin, with microSD, USB 2.0, Micro HD Video, 2×2 MIMO antennae

    Also see
    http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/tablets/3364729/microsoft-announce-new-tablet/

    Microsoft's 2012 "Surface" Tablet --- http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/default.aspx

    "The Surface: Celebrate the Competition, Question the Premise," by David Pogue, The New York Times, June 19. 2012 --- 
    http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/the-surface-a-new-tablet-from-microsoft/?gwh=4B88722A8D6F93FC189B50FA50DE70B8

    On Monday at a Los Angeles media event that had been veiled in secrecy, Microsoft announced that it was going to make a gorgeous touchscreen tablet like the iPad. It’s called the Surface tablet. Its main differentiators from the iPad: It has a kickstand, it has real PC ports and it will run Windows 8.

    In some ways, the announcement was a departure for Microsoft, which, for decades, has carefully stayed out of the PC business. There’s never been a Microsoft-branded computer.

    On the other hand, the opening scenes of this movie sure look familiar. Apple comes up with a hit product (iPod, iPhone). Microsoft comes up with a rival that’s nicely designed (Zune, Windows Phone). Unfortunately, it doesn’t add anything attractive enough to lure people away from the safe choice, and nobody buys it.

    There will actually be multiple Surface tablets; this is Microsoft, after all. There are already two basic models: a lighter, superthin one, with an ARM processor, that runs a modified version of Windows 8 called Windows RT, and a Pro version with an Intel chip that runs the full-blown Windows 8.

    There are lots of questions. Microsoft didn’t tell us the ship date, battery life or price. The Pro version, which Microsoft hints will cost about the same as an ultrabook ($1,000), will run regular Windows apps like Office and Photoshop; so what apps, exactly, will be available for the Windows 8 RT version?

    Won’t it anger Microsoft’s traditional “hardware partners” that Microsoft is now making its own competitive tablet?

    Will there be a cellular version? The company demonstrated a magnetic screen cover that, ingeniously, doubles as a keyboard with trackpad. Will that be included, or sold separately?

    I think that Windows 8 represents some of Microsoft’s best work. Fluid, fast, useful, easily grasped — and different from the old iPhone/Android concept of icons-on-black. I’ve been using a prerelease Windows 8 version on a Samsung tablet, and it works beautifully.

    But the iPad’s been around for two years; it’s awfully late for Microsoft to begin its pursuit now. (See also: H.P.’s tablet, BlackBerry tablet, Zune.) To me, the most compelling model is the Intel version; imagine a gorgeous, sleek, thin tablet that can actually run Windows software.

    Continued in article

     

     


    Creating Educational Cartoons

    I've not tried making cartoons, but this sounds like a relatively easy thing to do for those of us without drawing talent.
    Bob Jensen

    "Create Cartoons With Anime Studio Debut Create South Park-like cutout and simple 2D animation easily using the bone structure of a drawing," by Steve Horton, PC World, via The Washington Post, August 6, 2009 --- Click Here

    Anime Studio Debut is Smith Micro's homegrown animated answer to their translated 2D art program, Manga Studio. It uses a "bone" interface as its core. You use a tool to add bones to the structure of a drawing. You can then animate these bones, and you can adjust their strength to behave more like real bones. Anime Studio Debut ($50, 30-day free trial) can also animate based on edges of drawings and in many other ways. It includes a straightforward timeline system that allows you to intuit when and how animation happens easily.

    Build animated characters from the skeleton up with Anime Studio Debut.

    Underneath the animation is a full-featured paint program that has a familiar look to it, as it appears inspired by Manga Studio.

    One of the best things about Anime Studio Debut is its well-designed tutorial PDF. This tutorial, which is laid out like a design book, goes from simple to complex in numerous tutorial topics. Anyone wanting to master Anime Studio Debut would be best served by running through this tutorial from beginning to end. The tutorials are detailed and involved, so expect that to take several hours.

    Continued in article

    How Walt Disney Cartoons Are Were Made --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2011/04/how_walt_disney_cartoons_are_made_.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    Computer Animation of the 21st Century --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation_software

     


    Myths About Education Technologies

      Universities Partner With Each Other 
    http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,37220,00.html
      
    The Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan Business School, and the Darden School at the University of Virginia will offer each other's students classes specializing in e-business.

    "So much of business education is the network-building between the students," said Haas Dean Laura Tyson. "What is nice here is that people in each location will now be able to have a new selection of classes to choose from, and a new selection of people to work with."

    "In essence, this program is not only about sharing knowledge but about sharing communities,.
     

    Bob Jensen's Working Paper 265 Concerns Giving Students the Full Benefits of Newer Technologies May Be Hazardous to Their Long Run Memory and Accomplishments.

    Source:  Metacognitive Concerns in Designs and Evaluations of Computer Aided Education and Training: 
    Are We Misleading Ourselves About Measures of Success? by Bob Jensen at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm 
    • Multimedia and Other Technologies Can Give Students What They Want by Making Learning More of the Following:
    1. Easy (e.g., interactive graphics, interactive databases, ease of search, ease of access, ease of finding help, ease of navigation, etc.)
    2. Fun (animations, videos, audio, etc.)
    3. Inspirational (cream-of-the-crop instructors, access to experts and motivators)
    4. Realistic (networked simulations and virtual reality)
    5. Collaborative (ease of communication and collaborative software)
    6. Efficient (learn from any location at any time at less cost with personalized knowledge bases and portals)
    • What Students Want is Not Necessarily What They Need
    1. Humans retain more when something is hard to learn.
    2. Humans retain more when something is painful to learn and that part of the retention of what is learned is the struggle in finding the answers.
    3. Students retain more when they reason and discover something on their own.
    4. Leaning from mistakes may be the best teacher.
    5. Humans are prone to information overload.
    6. The pace of life and learning may indeed be a killer.

     

    147 PRACTICAL TIPS FOR TEACHING ONLINE GROUPS: ESSENTIALS OF WEB-BASED EDUCATION, by Donald E. Hanna, Michelle Glowacki-Dudka, and Simone Conceicao-Runlee [Overland Park, KS: Atwood Publishing, 2000, ISBN: 189185934X]

    Myths of Online Teaching and Learning

    43. Myth: Learners are unable to adapt to the online environment
    44. Myth: The instructor has to know how to do everything
    45. Myth: Time requirements for teachers are lower in an online environment
    46. Myth: Online classrooms aren't conducive to group interaction and activities
    • Learner-Teacher
    • Learner-Learner
    • Learner-Guest Expert
    • Learner-Student (e.g., where the learner is practice teaching)
    • Learner-Interviewee (e.g., where student plays the role of an interviewer)
    47. Myth: Online classrooms aren't as social as face-to-face classrooms
    48. Myth: The number of learners in online classrooms can be unlimited
    49 Myth: Technology will always work
    50. Myth: The course will market itself; post it on the web and they will come
    51. Myth: Learners will always understand your intended expectations for them from your clearly written syllabus

    Why (Some) Kids Love School --- http://familypc.com/smarter_why_kids.asp 

    Dropout rates are down and test scores are up. Students are engaged in learning and their self-esteem is soaring. So what's really going on within the classroom walls of the country's top wired schools? By Leslie Bennetts

    Once upon a time, back in the olden days, kids used to exult about getting out of school, celebrating their release from drudgery by singing "No more pencils, no more books!" or so the schoolyard ditty would have it. These days, with the explosion of technology that's revolutionizing education around the country, many students are now eager to stay after school, competing for access to all the high-tech equipment that's opening up so many new opportunities to them.

    For younger kids, technology is transforming the schoolwork their older siblings sometimes regarded as tedious into challenging games and activities. For high-school students, technology may banish once and for all the tired questions about relevance. Even the most rebellious adolescents are aware of the real-world value of the skills and experience they're getting in wired schools.

    Teachers who have mastered the art of integrating technology into the curriculum also deserve credit. For a closer look at some of the ways educators are transforming American schools, here are six outstanding examples from this year's Top 100 Wired Schools—two elementary, two middle, and two high schools that have applied creativity as well as resources to the educational challenges of the 21st century.

    My sampling of innovations includes the following:

    1. CAMELOT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Lewiston, Idaho
      This year, 6th-graders and their Idaho pen pals are discussing a state proposal to remove dams on the Snake River; the environmentally friendly plan to encourage salmon breeding could have an adverse impact on the livelihood of some state residents, including their parents. "The kids are learning that people in other parts of the state are impacted in different ways by the same issue," says Kuntz.

    2. CAMELOT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Lewiston, Idaho
      (After drawing monsters, 3rd-graders must describe them in English (creative writing) to e-mail pals at other schools.)
      The culmination of the project is a picnic at a local park. The kids from the different schools, who have not met before, line up holding their monster pictures and try to find their monster twin. After the picnic, students create Web pages about the project, including their monster descriptions, their own drawing, and the drawing that their pal made. The pals continue their e-mail relationships for the rest of the school year.

    3. DELANO OPTIONAL SCHOOL Memphis, Tennessee
      Students in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades produce a daily news show, the "Noon News," which is broadcast to every classroom via closed-circuit TV. Each week, a team of students fills 15 positions, from director and producer to sound technicians, visual designers, and weather announcers, with each successive crew training the next one. They use digital audio/video mixers to switch between the cameras and the computers for different video shots. Broadcasts run from 10 to 25 minutes and include world news.

      At the end of the year, the school celebrates students' achievements with a Technology Fair, where students create traditional cardboard displays and multimedia presentations that show their use of technology. Parents and friends are invited to attend the fair.


    4. FAYETTE MIDDLE SCHOOL Fayette, Alabama
      Last spring local leaders asked the school to create a CD-ROM highlighting all the good things the town of Fayette has to offer, with the idea of using it to advertise the community and attract new businesses.
      (Students in the 8th-grade actually worked with civic leaders to produce the CD.)

    5. AUDUBON MIDDLE SCHOOL Milwaukee, Wisconsin
      An urban school with a predominantly minority student body, 98 percent of whom are bussed to school from the inner city, Audubon has made enormous strides in getting wired over the last few years.

      Last September, several 6th-grade social studies classes from Audubon, under the instruction of Karen Jagmin, cooperated with a group of 10th-graders from another Milwaukee public school in a project involving the Olympics in Sydney. The students picked Olympic sports they were interested in, researched the sport and its athletes, and kept track of the United States' performance in the competitions using the Internet, newspapers, online magazines, CD-ROMs, and TV. Every day they e-mailed a group of high-school students in Sydney, who would respond to their questions.

      Among the topics the students discussed via e-mail were whether other countries make icons out of sports figures the way the United States does, and how cultural differences affect the ways in which athletes are selected and trained. The Audubon students made spreadsheets and graphs showing everything from the medal counts to the shot-put distances, and they wrote summaries explaining their data. They then worked in cooperative groups to create PowerPoint presentations about their experiences to share with other students in their grade and with their 10th-grade partners via Audubon's distance-learning network.

    6. GRANBY HIGH SCHOOL Norfolk, Virginia 
      Last fall, Fred Hartnett, an advanced placement government teacher at Granby, taught an entire unit using Web-based assignments. His students participated in the Youth Leadership Initiative sponsored by the University of Virginia. The kids registered online for a statewide mock election to vote for presidential, congressional, and senatorial candidates. One class member attended a training session at the university to serve as a student facilitator. Each student used the Internet to research a state's past presidential voting history and current polling projections. The unit culminated in an election-night sleepover at the school in which students tracked the results of the election, including the cliffhanger presidential race. "A number of kids were saying, 'I'll never miss another election,' because of the drama of just being involved," says Michael J. Caprio, the principal. "It was very valuable; they saw what the system was all about. They saw democracy work. They lived history."

    7. GULF COAST HIGH SCHOOL Naples, Florida
      In Gulf Coast's interdisciplinary approach to learning, teachers from more than one academic area work together to design a teaching unit. One recent project was called Legends, an unusual collaboration between the English and physical education departments in which students studied the tale of King Arthur. "Students in the English classes took different themes: King Arthur in stained glass, King Arthur in literature, King Arthur in Broadway plays, and so on," Gates says. "They researched their topics using the Internet and created presentations that included 3D animation, sound, and video. The physical education classes researched medieval and Renaissance dance and sporting events like jousting. They learned medieval dances, which they taught to the students in the English class. The results were filmed and are being made into a CD-ROM."

      In fact, the phys ed department infuses technology into all of its fitness activities. "Every single one of our PE courses uses video and digital photography in many ways, including analyzing movement in sports and presenting information on fitness and health," says Gates. "Students research a topic such as jet skiing, kayaking, or surfing, and make a PowerPoint presentation about that fitness activity. They also take digital pictures of the correct way to use each weight and exercise machine in the school's fitness room and they post the images on the school's Web site."


    Ideas for Modifying Traditional Classroom Materials 
    Into Online Learning Materials 
    (Including Updates on MIT's Open Knowledge Initiative called OKI)

    One of the most frequently asked questions asked in my education technology workshops is as follows:  
    "In what ways should course content materials be modified for online learning?"

    My quick and dirty response is that faculty who develop content should learn how to use FrontPage or some other good HTML editor and then learn how to screen capture and video capture themselves rather than relying upon technicians.  You can learn Microsoft FrontPage, screen capturing, and Camtasia video capturing in just a few days with a little help from your friends.  With a little added effort, you can make your online course materials more interactive by saving Excel worksheets as interactive Webpages and by learning how to use JavaScript.  You can learn all of these things in less than a week if you have the correct software and hardware.

    1. Use more screen captures, audio captures, and video captures of things that you normally demo in lecture presentations.   Look under "Resources" at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 
      Also see my tutorials at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

    2. MP3 Audio
      Audio capturing is especially important since you can let students hear what you like to say in lectures or case discussions.  For example, in an Excel spreadsheet you can add buttons that students can click on to hear your explanation of what is going on in various cells of the spreadsheet.  Look under "Resources" at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 

    3. Camtasia AVI Versus RM Recordings --- See http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm 
      Flesh in PowerPoint, Excel, or other presentations with video and audio.  Camtasia works great for both capturing dynamic computer screen presentations in video accompanied by your audio explanations.  Your video files may take up more space than you are allowed on your Web server.  However, you can save them to CD-R or CD-RW disks that can be sold to students for around $1.00 per disk. You can learn more about Camtasia from http://www.techsmith.com/ .  You can make CDs by simply dragging files to a blank CD using Windows Explorer if you first install Easy CD (http://www.roxio.com/en/products/ecdc/ ).  

      For video illustrations and tutorials, see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm 

    4. Excel Saved as Webpages Can Add Interactivity In Imaginative Ways
      Suppose that you want to have students make journal entries in a HTML Webpage.  Or suppose you want to see the impact of interest rate swap valuations with changes in forward yield curve estimates. 

      Or suppose you want an interactive Excel chart imported into a HTML Webpage where the chart will change when the reader changes the loan principal, interest rate, or maturity date. 

      For illustrations on publishing Excel workbooks, spreadsheets, or charts as interactive Webpages, see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/dhtml/excel01.htm 

      For videos and tutorials, see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm 


    5. JavaScript Calculations and Interactivity
      Try to make your online materials more interactive by saving Excel workbooks as interactive Webpages and use of JavaScipt.  For my JavaScript tutorials, see  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm .  

    6. Amy Dunbar's Online Pedagogy
      Make a lot more use of online questions and answers that replace the question and answer type of style that you probably use in lectures.  Amy Dunbar uses this approach extensively.  You can read about how she developed her first online course.  See http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book01q4.htm#Dunbar 

    "Changing the Interface of Education with Revolutionary Learning Technologies,"  by Nishikant Sonwalkar, Syllabus, November 2001, pp. 10-13 --- http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/article.asp?id=5663 

    Recent developments in digital imaging, streaming audio and video, and interactive human-machine interfaces provide a wealth of opportunities to enhance the learning experience. More important than the technologies, however, is the context in which the multimedia enhancements are presented to learners. The design and development of combined media components—text, graphics, audio, video, animation, and simulations—for enhancing the learning process will depend on the learning model appropriate for the delivery of given course content. A list of a few potential multimedia enhancements might include:

    Video, animations, and simulations offer exceptional potential for enhancing the interface of education. Experimental demonstrations and real-life experiences and situations can be captured on video and provided as digital video.

    Continued at http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/magazine.asp?month=11&year=2001

    Also see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 


    Video:  Open Education for an Open World
    45-minute Video from the Long-Time President of MIT --- http://18.9.60.136/video/816

    Bob Jensen's threads on open source video and course materials from prestigious universities ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology in general ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    THE COLLEGE OF 2020: STUDENTS  ---
    https://www.chronicle-store.com/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?CO=CQ&ID=76319&PK=N1S1009

    Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


    You can now get free e-books on iTunes U. Apple announced today that Oxford, Rice, and the Open University have all added digital books to the lectures and other materials traditionally available on the popular educational-content platform.
    "New at iTunes U: Free E-Books," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 29, 2010 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-at-itunes-u-free-e-books/27957?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing videos and learning materials from prestigious universities ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Bob Jensen's threads on free textbooks and videos ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks


    How to embed a YouTube video window into PowerPoint (which can be viewed when online if the link is not broken)
    October 24, 2009 message from Rohan Chambers [rohanchambers@ROHANCHAMBERS.COM]

    I just learnt this! I know that some of you already know how to do it, but for the others who are interested:

    1 (a) Embed a Youtube video into powerpoint that can be viewed while connected to the internet.
      
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yzUxNbi1h4

    1 (b) You must also view this FAQ video:
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR-dz8IMNsw&feature=related

    2. Embed a Youtube video into powerpoint that can be viewed while not connected to the internet
       
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwqyg5uNClY&feature=related

         Ps -The FAQ video above may also be relevant

    Regards, 

    Rohan Chambers


    Study the Works of Pioneers Who Have Experimented Early On

    Update on free sharing of courseware from MIT, Stanford, EDUCAUSE and elsewhere.
    "CourseWork: An Online Problem Set and Quizzing Tool," by Charles Kerns, Scott Stocker, and Evonne Schaeffer, Syllabus, June 2001, 27-29.  I don't think the article is available online, although archived table of contents for the June edition is at http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/magazine.asp?month=6&year=2001 

    A Web-based learning support tool that helps faculty assess student understanding will soon be a component of the Open Knowledge infrastructure under the development at Stanford, MIT, and other universities.

    THE OPEN KNOWLEDGE INITIATIVE (OKI)

    MIT, along with its principal partner Stanford University, has launched The Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI), an ambitious project to develop a modular, easy-to-use, Web-based teaching environment for assembling, delivering, and accessing educational resources and activities.  The initiative emerged from the realization that our institutions were repeatedly building specialized Web applications that shared common requirements for enterprise data and services.  Existing commercial products still require extensive customization to integrate into student information, authentication, and authorization systems, and related data stores.  Faculty using these tools frequently complain that while sometimes helpful, they require extra effort, forcing them to impose their style of teaching upon the rigidly structured course system format.  And changing the color of the screen or shape of the buttons isn't the level of customization that really supports different pedagogical approaches.

    What is OKI?

    OKI is about tools, a system, and a community.  It is not a new browser, document editor, or pre-packaged content.  OKI tools are the elements that enable basic teaching on the Web and that support specialized discipline-specific needs, pedagogical methods, or group logistics.

    OKI is being developed with careful attention to IMS, SCORM, AICC, Dublin Core, and related standards efforts.  In keeping with another recently announced MIT project, the OpenCourseWare Initiative (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/ocw-facts.html) which will make content from MIT courses available on the Web for free, OKI is based on an open source licensing model (there are  no proprietary components).  It allows the tools, no matter who creates them, to:

    • Save information about learners, subjects, and teaching methods in the same format
    • Share information
    • Access other systems like the library, the registrar, and authentication and authorization systems
    • Extend the system; anyone can add new features and new tools.

    OKI is being built by institutions that have dealt with large open systems in academic settings.  Besides MIT and Stanford, core initial collaborating institutions include the Dartmouth College, North Carolina State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin.

    Recalling the vitality and success of another open source effort, the development of the Linux operating system, OKI hopes to build a community of developers, teachers, educational technologists, librarians, and researchers who will collaborate to continually improve and extend the OKI learning management system.  OKI is committed to working with its partners and early adopters to establish a dynamic open source framework for continued development, support, and training.

    Getting Involved

    Information about the progress of OKI can be found on the OKI Web site:  http://web.mit.edu/oki .  For updates subscribe to the list oki-announce@mit.edu using the form on the OKI Web site.  If you'd like to contribute more directly to this effort, e-mail oki-suggest@mit.edu.

     


    Update on Course Design and OKI

    "Designer of Free Course-Management Software Asks, What Makes a Good Web Site?" by Jefferey R. Young, The Chronicle of Higher Education's interview with Charles Kerns, one of the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) management team, January 21, 2002 --- http://chronicle.com/free/2002/01/2002012101u.htm 

    What makes a good course Web site? That's one of the questions facing Charles F. Kerns, education-technology manager for academic computing at Stanford University, as he helps design a new course-management system that will be free for any college to use.

    The effort to create the course-management system, called the Open Knowledge Initiative, is led by Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also involves several other colleges. The group plans to release a series of software modules to help professors teach both classroom and online courses, as well as a set of technical specifications that will let programmers at other colleges develop compatible software.

    Before working on the Open Knowledge project, Mr. Kerns led the Stanford Learning Lab, a division of the university that does research and development into using technology in education.

    Q. What makes a good course Web site?

    A. There's a lot of activities that you can engage in on the computer, but if you just slap them together as an add-on to a course without really thinking about how it fits in with all the other things in the course, it doesn't make much sense. So I don't really like to think about a course Web site; I like to think about all the learning activities and how they work together.

    I'd say a good Web site is one that doesn't just sort of hang out there as an independent entity, but is an important part of teaching for the course.

    Let me give you an example of one. When I was in the Learning Lab, we worked for several years with the human-biology program here at Stanford, and one of the issues that we had was how to get an understanding of the misconceptions and the knowledge of the students by using weekly assignments -- and how to grade them with limited resources. So the research team at the Learning Lab developed a system where we have multiple-choice questions, and then the multiple-choice questions also have a free-text entry area for putting in a rationale for the answer.

    Pedagogically, this is sound ... and it also helps in time management, because you can sort the questions for the most frequently missed questions. So you can be very efficient in looking at where students have problems, and then you can look at their answers in the rationales and find out what the misconceptions are.

    Q. What are some misconceptions about designing course Web sites?

    A. One of the big problems is if you think the instructor has to do an upfront information-design task that might take six months. Then it's such a high barrier to using technology and multimedia. But if you let the students, as part of their research, post the material on the site ... then you don't have to go through this long authoring process ahead of time, and you can take the role you normally do as a professor -- critique student work.

    You probably don't write a textbook the first time you start teaching the class. ... Making an engaging Web site with all of the content is not the really important part of course Web sites -- it's the communication aspect [that's important].

    Q. What are the biggest challenges for designing the Open Knowledge Initiative?

    A. One is the wide range of skill levels of our faculty. We have many faculty who could write this [software], and we have many faculty who use e-mail and the Web, and that's about it. We have this wide range of skill levels, so how do we support across this?

    We also have different practices in different disciplines. ... We have a lot of peer-reviewed writing assignments in our writing courses, but we have nothing quite like that in our engineering and science courses. There's lots of variants for different departments, so how do we accommodate all this, and these different skill levels, and have something for the student that looks coherent?

    Q. So is one of the unique aspects of the Open Knowledge Initiative the attempt to accommodate the teaching needs of different disciplines?

    A. The idea is that in this open-source system, you can make modules, and they will work [together]. For instance, if I got a grant to build something, then I could build a module that was focused on my problem -- let's say in product design, or mechanical engineering, or English. Then I could use the other tools that were already there for gradebooks and announcements and that sort of thing, but I'd have my module that focused on my specific needs.

    That's Step 2 for us right now, though. Step 1 is to have a basic system that covers things like posting documents, making announcements, giving quizzes, having a home page. That's a star we can almost reach. We're getting close.

    Bob Jensen's threads on the tools and OKI are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm 


    Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Online Course Materials --- http://pieria.acs.southwestern.edu/ibbin/ibGate.exe?LOADPAGE=%2ffaculty%2fcoursematerials.htm 


    If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at 
    http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
     
    Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE


    "Designer of Free Course-Management Software Asks, What Makes a Good Web Site?" by Jefferey R. Young, The Chronicle of Higher Education's interview with Charles Kerns, one of the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) management team, January 21, 2002 --- http://chronicle.com/free/2002/01/2002012101u.htm 

    What makes a good course Web site? That's one of the questions facing Charles F. Kerns, education-technology manager for academic computing at Stanford University, as he helps design a new course-management system that will be free for any college to use.

    The effort to create the course-management system, called the Open Knowledge Initiative, is led by Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also involves several other colleges. The group plans to release a series of software modules to help professors teach both classroom and online courses, as well as a set of technical specifications that will let programmers at other colleges develop compatible software.

    Before working on the Open Knowledge project, Mr. Kerns led the Stanford Learning Lab, a division of the university that does research and development into using technology in education.

    Q. What makes a good course Web site?

    A. There's a lot of activities that you can engage in on the computer, but if you just slap them together as an add-on to a course without really thinking about how it fits in with all the other things in the course, it doesn't make much sense. So I don't really like to think about a course Web site; I like to think about all the learning activities and how they work together.

    I'd say a good Web site is one that doesn't just sort of hang out there as an independent entity, but is an important part of teaching for the course.

    Let me give you an example of one. When I was in the Learning Lab, we worked for several years with the human-biology program here at Stanford, and one of the issues that we had was how to get an understanding of the misconceptions and the knowledge of the students by using weekly assignments -- and how to grade them with limited resources. So the research team at the Learning Lab developed a system where we have multiple-choice questions, and then the multiple-choice questions also have a free-text entry area for putting in a rationale for the answer.

    Pedagogically, this is sound ... and it also helps in time management, because you can sort the questions for the most frequently missed questions. So you can be very efficient in looking at where students have problems, and then you can look at their answers in the rationales and find out what the misconceptions are.

    Q. What are some misconceptions about designing course Web sites?

    A. One of the big problems is if you think the instructor has to do an upfront information-design task that might take six months. Then it's such a high barrier to using technology and multimedia. But if you let the students, as part of their research, post the material on the site ... then you don't have to go through this long authoring process ahead of time, and you can take the role you normally do as a professor -- critique student work.

    You probably don't write a textbook the first time you start teaching the class. ... Making an engaging Web site with all of the content is not the really important part of course Web sites -- it's the communication aspect [that's important].

    Q. What are the biggest challenges for designing the Open Knowledge Initiative?

    A. One is the wide range of skill levels of our faculty. We have many faculty who could write this [software], and we have many faculty who use e-mail and the Web, and that's about it. We have this wide range of skill levels, so how do we support across this?

    We also have different practices in different disciplines. ... We have a lot of peer-reviewed writing assignments in our writing courses, but we have nothing quite like that in our engineering and science courses. There's lots of variants for different departments, so how do we accommodate all this, and these different skill levels, and have something for the student that looks coherent?

    Q. So is one of the unique aspects of the Open Knowledge Initiative the attempt to accommodate the teaching needs of different disciplines?

    A. The idea is that in this open-source system, you can make modules, and they will work [together]. For instance, if I got a grant to build something, then I could build a module that was focused on my problem -- let's say in product design, or mechanical engineering, or English. Then I could use the other tools that were already there for gradebooks and announcements and that sort of thing, but I'd have my module that focused on my specific needs.

    That's Step 2 for us right now, though. Step 1 is to have a basic system that covers things like posting documents, making announcements, giving quizzes, having a home page. That's a star we can almost reach. We're getting close.


    From CIT Infobits Newsletter on January 31, 2002

    MORE ON GOOD COURSE WEBSITE DESIGN

    In the summer of 2001, the University of Oregon Library System's Web Publishing Curriculum was redesigned to incorporate many of the newer standards, including HTML 4.01 and Cascading Style Sheets. The site, aimed at developers in colleges and universities, includes web page design tutorials, guidelines for good practice, and a collection of handouts for use in web publishing workshops. The site is available at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/it/webpub/ 


    EDUCAUSE Effective Practices and Solutions --- http://www.educause.edu/ep/ 

    EDUCAUSE has developed this Effective Practices and Solutions (EPS) service to

    This service is entirely member-driven; its success depends on your willingness to share your successes with your colleagues to help them save time and resources. The more practices contributed to the service, the more valuable it will become. Please note that practices in the EPS database have been identified as effective and replicable by their contributors; their value has not been judged by EDUCAUSE. 

    You can read more about course and lesson sharing at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm#TeacherTraining 

     


    Textbooks will never be the same!

    "The Many Forms of Digital Text," Syllabus, November 2001, p. 41 --- http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/article.asp?id=5676 

    The term “textbook” no longer necessarily means a sturdy bound volume of sewn pages. Today’s textbook may be that, or it may be an entirely online product with hyperlinks in place of pages, or perhaps a combination of CD-ROM, Web site, and printed handouts. The five companies highlighted here publish and/or distribute digital texts, each with a unique approach.

    Rovia, based in Brookline, Mass., distributes copyrighted intellectual property online. Rovia works with publishers to deliver online content to students while protecting the publishers’ rights. Using the RovReader, a proprietary browser plug-in, users can access and interact with their electronic textbooks from any Internet-capable device. www.rovia.com

    MetaText offers completely online textbooks integrated with course management systems (CMS). MetaText has partnered with several course management system providers, including Blackboard, and also offers its own course management features such as Course Editor and SyllabusEditor. www.metatext.com

    Atomic Dog Publishers has merged the roles of traditional print publisher and online content provider into what they call “hybred” (as opposed to hybrid) media publishing. Their titles are a combination of online content, interactive media, and print component. Atomic Dog’s holistic approach starts with the content, building technology tools such as video and animation around the subject matter. www.atomicdog.com

    Thinkwell Publishers, based in Austin, Texas, offers textbook content in both CD-ROM and online formats. Thinkwell’s titles (about 15 so far in the social sciences and sciences) feature a complete set of video lectures (about 10 minutes each in length), illustrated notes to accompany the lectures, and even transcripts of the lectures for those who need them. www.thinkwell.com

    OpenMind publishes customized, personalized learning materials. They work with authors to publish original content or supplements to existing OpenMind content. Using an open source model, OpenMind encourages authors and adopters to engage in a collaborative process of continuously revising, improving, and customizing content. www.ompg.com


    Edutainment, Learning Games, and Gamification


    Gamification --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

    Gamification,  Then and Now ---
    https://daily.jstor.org/gamification-then-and-now/

    Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment, learning games, and gamification ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment


    Learning the Wrong Lessons from Video Games ---
    http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2018/learning-the-wrong-lessons-from-video-games/


    Accounting Novels, Plays, and Movies ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm


    International Center for the History of Electronic Games --- http://www.thestrong.org/online-collections/icheg/


    "How Deloitte Made Learning a Game," by Jeanne C. Meister, Harvard Business Review Blog, January 2, 2013 --- Click Here
    http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/how_deloitte_made_learning_a_g.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date


    Free Comic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adventures of Nikola Tesla ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/free-physics-comic-books.html


    Exploratorium: Geometry Playground: Activities and Links --- http://www.exploratorium.edu/geometryplayground/resources.php


    "Can you draw a perfect score in the accounting game?" by Ken Tysiac, Journal of Accountancy, February 18, 2014 ---
    http://journalofaccountancy.com/News/20149622.htm

    More than 1,000 questions inspired by content in accounting textbooks are featured in a new online game created for high school students.

    The AICPA helped develop the game, called “Bank On It,” which is available at startheregoplaces.com. The game is intended to be a fun, engaging way for educators to reinforce the accounting principles being taught in class while giving their students a taste of real working-world scenarios in the accounting profession.

    The concept for the game was designed by a team of high school students who won the AICPA’s Project Innovation Competition. The game is won by reaching a winning bank balance set prior to starting. Players earn money by answering questions correctly and landing on other strategic spaces as they move around the board.

    Players can play the game at the “Staff Accountant” or “CEO” level, focusing on business and industry, public accounting, or not-for-profit accounting. Sample questions below are pulled from “Staff Accountant” and “CEO” levels for business and industry.

    Continued in article


    "Making an Impact with Games?" by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 13, 2015 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/making-an-impact-with-games/60455?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

    I’ve written a lot about using and making games for the classroom here at ProfHacker, as while games and learning have been around for a long time our ability (and interest) in realizing their potential is on the rise. One of the continuing challenges for bringing games into education is assessing the impact of games on learning. Often, it’s hard even to agree on what we want games to accomplish: are we most interested in raising student engagement? Reaching learners who are alienated by traditional lectures? Increasing critical thinking and analysis skills? Or getting content memorized or absorbed?

    Games for Change and the Michael Cohen Group just released a report, Impact with Games: A Fragmented Field, that addresses some of these questions. It’s a great read for those of us thinking about the ramifications and challenges games present for higher education. Today I’m going to take a look at a few of the highlights that might be particularly of interest for ProfHackers working with digital pedagogy.

    The group found five sources of disconnect within the field that contribute to the challenge of measuring impact: of those, two that strike me as particularly important are that ”Impact is defined too narrowly” and ”Evaluation methods are inflexible.” These are some of the frustrations with assessment that accompany any digital pedagogy, as we may default to using comparative measures (does this game “teach” better than a lecture?) rather than defining new metrics for a different type of learning

    Defining games by their impact is one way to find great games that become the imitable standards for socially conscious or serious gaming. However, these games don’t all “teach” content in an expected way, and the impact of a game might even be entirely unrelated to knowledge-based outcomes–for instance, a great game might bring a team together for collaboration and problem-solving in new ways. The team observes that: ”When evaluators and researchers stick too rigidly to their preferred methods they lose the flexibility required to tailor assessment to unusual and complex games. Such rigidity can be dangerous, sometimes leading to games based on evaluation methods (rather than methods based on the game).”


    GradeCraft --- https://www.gradecraft.com/

    "Want to Make Your Course ‘Gameful’? A Michigan Professor’s Tool Could Help," by Casey Fabris, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15, 2015 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/want-to-make-your-course-gameful-a-michigan-professors-tool-could-help/56649?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

    What if the classroom were more like a video game?

    Barry J. Fishman, a professor of information and education at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, would like to help you find out. Mr. Fishman has borrowed elements of gaming to develop GradeCraft, a learning-management system that lets instructors organize their courses in a “gameful” way.

    The system lets students choose their own path through a course, selecting the assignments that interest and challenge them. At its heart is a tool, called the “grade predictor,” that helps to “manage some of the chaos” of such a personalized system. The grade predictor also helps students figure out what they need to do to reach the classroom goals they set for themselves.

    GradeCraft also aims to give students the ability to fail without detrimental consequences. There are many assignments to choose from, so any students who do poorly on one can find plenty of other tasks to redeem themselves. Instructors, meanwhile, can allow students to revise their work. Mr. Fishman’s assessment system treats unsuccessful assignments not as failures but as learning experiences that pull students closer to mastery.

    Today’s students are often made to feel that they can’t afford to make mistakes, Mr. Fishman says. In video games, by contrast, risks don’t come with serious consequences: Maybe you just end up repeating a level. “The idea that, if you played a game and when your character died that was it, that game couldn’t be played anymore, that would not be a very good-selling game,” he says.

    Continued in article


    "Making Board Games in the Classroom," by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 29, 2013 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/making-board-games-in-the-classroom/48983?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    I just got home from THATCamp Games II at Case Western Reserve University, where we played and made a lot of games. In the past I’ve talked about making games for the classroom using lots of technologies (Inform 7, inklewriter, Twine, Scratch), but games don’t require any computing power to be great. Physical board and card games can be powerful systems of representation and more immediately accessible for exploring something in a classroom. This might bring back made memories for some of us of classroom jeopardy–but when the mechanics of the game fit the content, it can be much more powerful than that.

    During THATCamp Games II I taught a crash course workshop in making educational board games. Here’s the full Prezi from the workshop. The same basic process can be used for designing a game for a lesson or in asking students to make a game, which itself can provoke a different way of thinking about an idea. Here’s an overview of the process we used:

    Phase One: Imagine

    1. Brainstorm an educational objective
    2. Choose a central mechanic
    3. Clarify your theme and concept

    Most of us learned through board games at some point–even if it was the foundations of capitalism in Monopoly, a reductive version of the American dream in the Game of Life, or just color recognition from Candyland. But board games can address much more complex topics: Pandemic models cooperative disaster response to the spreading of infectious diseases; Eco Fluxx poses questions of environmentalism through a changing rules system; and there’s even an Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose board game.

    A straightforward goal–a purpose behind the game–works best when it can clearly be connected with the game. One of the teams during the workshop chose creative thinking and connected it with competitive challenges, as seen in the prototype above for “Think. Build. Tell.” These mechanics can then be interwoven with a theme, ideally in a way that strengthens both. For instance, a rebranded version of Monopoly may have a new “theme”, but it doesn’t really change gameplay–while moving a strategy game to a different era often rewrites all the rules.

    Phase Two: Make

    1. Imagine your game space metaphor
    2. Design your system and pieces
    3. Prototype your playable design

    There are lots of ways to think of game boards, but all of them have to represent something complex in a simple way. Most of them do that through using a visual metaphor–Monopoly simplifies the city to a single block, Sorry uses complete abstraction, The Game of Life conflates movement through space with movement through stages of life. One way to jumpstart game design thinking is to take all the pieces of a game box and throw away the rules, then imagine a new ruleset that makes all those pieces work together. This helps us explore how all the pieces of a physical game combine to form a system–it’s a lot more transparent than most video games.

    Continued in article


    Jokes are a vital part of teaching and learning. Jokes serve many purposes in academe, and most of these purposes are not taken up in the book reviewed below. But the book does delve into humor and cognition.

    Some famous authors built their serious messages within humor, notably Mark Twain, PG Wodehouse, Charles Dickens (sometimes), Shakespeare (sometimes), Will Rogers, and many, many others ---
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorists
    Their messages in many cases live on because of the humor.

    The Science of Jokes (and Riddles)
    "
    What’s so funny?" Tim Lewens , The Times Literary Supplement ---
    http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1171575.ece

    Review of Inside Jokes:  Using humor to reverse-engineer the mind
    by Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett and Reginald B. Adams, Jr.
    359pp. MIT Press. Ł20.95 (US $29.95).
    December 2012
    978 0 262 01582 0

    A Dissertation Recommendation
    The Effects of Humor on Cognitive Learning in a Computer-Based Environment
    by Whisonant, Robert Dowling
    Virginia Tech, 1998
    Free Download

    Previous studies on humor in education have focused on the use of humor embedded in the presentation of content material. Some research, however, suggests that humor is an effective tool for increasing divergent thinking and information acquisition if the humor is given prior to the presentation of content material. This study used an experimental design to test if humor given prior to content presentation was more effective in helping students understand and remember information and enjoy the presentation than a control group treatment. Statistical tests did not support either hypothesis.

    Jensen Comment
    One of the biggest mysteries in teaching and writing is how some teachers/authors can pull humor off amazingly well while others in similar circumstances perform terribly.

    Also be aware that subjects of humor are much more restrained in recent decades by evolving political correctness. Particularly puzzling is how people who are from a particular racial, ethnic, gender, or religious cohort may tell jokes about themselves and their cohort friends that become offensive retold by humorists outside the cohorts in question. There are very few cohorts for which there is open season for humor --- except for the elderly, politicians, and Scandinavians Americans named Ole, Lena, and Sven ---
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ole_and_Lena 

    Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment


    The Jigsaw Classroom: A Cooperative Learning Technique --- http://www.jigsaw.org

    Welcome to the official web site of the jigsaw classroom, a cooperative learning technique that reduces racial conflict among school children, promotes better learning, improves student motivation, and increases enjoyment of the learning experience. The jigsaw technique was first developed in the early 1970s by Elliot Aronson and his students at the University of Texas and the University of California. Since then, hundreds of schools have used the jigsaw classroom with great success. The jigsaw approach is considered to be a particularly valuable tool in averting tragic events such as the Columbine massacre.

    Overview of the Technique
      History of the Jigsaw Classroom
      Jigsaw in 10 Easy Steps
      Tips on Implementation
      Books and Articles Related to the Jigsaw Technique
      Chapter 1 of Aronson's Book "Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine"
      Links on Cooperative Learning and School Violence
      About Elliot Aronson and This Web Site
     


    "Games in the Classroom (part 3)," by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 30, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/games-in-the-classroom-part-3/36217?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    The challenge of finding a game for the classroom can be difficult, particularly when the games you’ve imagined doesn’t exist. And if you wait for a particular challenge or topic to make its way into game form, it might be a while. Educational games and “serious” games haven’t always kept up with the rest of video gaming, in part because there’s no high return. Modern game development tends towards large teams and impressive budgets, and these resources are rarely used on explicitly educational productions. While efforts like the STEM Video Game Challenge provide incentives for new learning games, and commercial titles can often be adapted for the classroom, there’s still more potential than games have yet reached.

    But if you have a new concept for playful learning, you can still bring it to life for your classroom. There are two ways to start thinking about making games in the classroom: the first is to build a game yourself, and the second is to engage students in making games as a way to express their own understanding.

    You’re probably not a game designer, although there’s a game for that: Gamestar Mechanic can help you “level up” from player to designer. But it’s also important to remember building games rarely happens alone: as with digital humanities projects, games lend themselves to collaboration. If you have a game design program (or even a single course) at your university or a neighboring school, there might be an opportunity to partner your students with them towards creating valuable content-based educational games. Similarly, there may be other faculty who are interested in collaborating on grant-funded projects to build new educational experiences, or collective and expanding projects like Reacting to the Past (which many readers cited as a classroom game system of choice). You might also find collaborators, inspiration and games in progress through communities such as Gameful, a “secret HQ for making world-changing games”–and community manager Nathan Maton has a few things to say about building serious games for education.

    There’s also a difference between making a game or asking your students to make a game as an expression of content for pedagogical purposes and making a game in the industry. Even a flawed game can provide an opportunity for learning and discussion. And your students will often bring a wealth of their own experiences with games to the process, offering them a chance to make new connections with your course material.

    Ready to try making games? Here are a few tools for getting started.

    "Games in the Classroom (part 4)," by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 6, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/games-in-the-classroom-part-4/36294?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Throughout this series, we’ve talked about why you might want to use games in the classroom, how you can find them, and how to start making your own. But games can also inspire us to rethink our classrooms at a structural level, and particularly as sites for collaboration and playful learning that can extend long beyond a single lesson plan. Game designers are pointing out the similarities between games and the classroom. Extra Credits, a video series by game designers taking a deeper look at the form, recently did an episode on Gamifying Education that provides a great starting point for a conversation on game-inspired classroom design.

    For ideas on getting started, I recently spoke with Lee Sheldon, author of the recently released The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game (Cengage Learning 2011), whose book chronicles both his own and others’ experiments with taking the structures, terminology, and concepts of a massive multiplayer role-playing game and applying them to the classroom. You can check out Lee Sheldon’s syllabus at his blog on Gaming the Classroom, along with more of his reflections on the experiment, which divided his students into guilds and encouraged them to “level up” through the semester. After using the course model in its latest iteration, he reported perfect attendance. He also notes the value in his system of “grading by attrition”—students are not being punished for failing, but instead rewarded for progressing and thus less likely to be defeated early.

    As a professional game designer teaching courses on game design, Lee Sheldon has a natural environment for innovation–but his concepts open the door for a conversation across disciplines. Lee Sheldon describes his model as “designing the class as a game”—so not just focusing on extrinsic rewards (the typical focus of gamification), but instead trying to promote “opportunities for collaboration” and “intrinsic rewards from helping others.” As game designers, like teachers, are focused on creating an experience, many of the strategies for building a class as game are similar to more traditional preparation. And he advises that these ideas can work for anyone: “You don’t have to a be a game designer…you can prep like putting together a lesson plan, but learn the terminology.” Lee Sheldon explains that one of the benefits of using games as a model is that a game is abstracted—it has to “feel real”, but you get to “take out the stuff that isn’t fun.” He also notes that “You can do just about anything in a game that you can do in real life,” and the wealth of games today is a testament to that range of possibilities.

    Lee Sheldon and his team at RPI are now working on an experiment with their new Emergent Reality Lab that offers a possible future for courses as games. He explained their current project, teaching Mandarin Chinese as an alternate reality game, as a “Maltese Falcon-esque mystery” narrative—the class will start out as usual, in a normal classroom, but it will be interrupted and move into the lab as the students take a virtual journey across China aided by motion-aware Kinect interfaces in an immersive environment. Lee Sheldon said that his ideal outcome would be for students to learn more Chinese than they would in a traditional class.

    Continued in article


    Teaching Case
    From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on November 1, 2013

    Game Makers Lift Forecasts
    by: Ian Sherr
    Oct 30, 2013
    Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com
     

    TOPICS: Revenue Forecast, Revenue Recognition

    SUMMARY: The article describes expected growth for the first time in several years during the upcoming Christmas season for video game manufacturers because of new gaming systems just coming out, the Sony PlayStation4 and Microsoft Xbox One systems. The article examines profitability of Electronic Arts and Take-two Interactive relative to expectations based on analysts' forecasts. Revenue is also examined; the amount is adjusted to include deferred revenue stemming from accounting practices based on software revenue recognition requirements. Questions ask students to access the financial statements to understand the companies' revenue recognition practices and resulting deferred revenue liability balances.

    CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The article is an excellent way to introduce software revenue recognition with products likely to be of interest to a good number of students in class. NOTE: INSTRUCTORS SHOULD REMOVE THE FOLLOWING DISCUSSION BEFORE DISTRIBUTING TO STUDENTS AS IT ANSWERS SEVERAL OF THE QUESTIONS. Take-Two Interactive Software's disclosure about significant accounting policies related to revenue recognition states that their multiple element arrangements provide "a combination of game software, additional content, maintenance or support." They use vendor specific objective evidence (VSOE) of fair value of each of these components to allocate the price of product sold. "Absent VSOE, revenue is deferred until the earlier of the point at which VSOE of fair value exists for any undelivered element or until all elements of the arrangement have been delivered. However, if the only undelivered element is maintenance and support, the entire arrangement fee is recognized ratably over the performance period." For Electronic Arts, disclosure about similar issues is made under Note 10: Balance Sheet Details. Discussion of deferred net revenue indicates that the balance is related to online-enabled games. This balance "generally includes the unrecognized revenue from bundled sales of certain online-enabled games for which we do not have VSOE for the obligation to provide unspecified updates. We recognize revenue from the sales of online-enabled games for which we do not have...[this] VSOE ...on a straight-line basis, generally over an estimated six-month period beginning in the month after shipment. " The most interesting is the difference between the two companies' treatment of the related COGS. Take-Two Interactive states, "For arrangements which require that revenue recognition is deferred, the cost of goods sold is deferred and recognized as the related net revenue is recognized. Deferred cost of goods sold includes product costs, software development costs and royalties, internal royalties and license amortization and royalties." Electronic Arts, on the other hand, expenses "...the cost of revenue related to these transactions during the period in which the product is delivered (rather than on a deferred basis)." Questions ask the students to identify this issue and speculate as to the companies' reasons for the differing treatment of related costs. The questions also ask students to state the source of the requirements for treatment of these items which can be found in ASC 985-605-25-5 through 7 and 25-10 as well as in the general revenue recognition sections of 605-25-30-6a through 30-7. Take-Two Interactive has made its filing on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 9/30/13 on 10/30/13 and is available at http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/viewer?action=view&cik=946581&accession_number=0001047469-13-010066&xbrl_type=v# For Electronic Arts, only the Filing of the press release on Form 8-K has been made as of this writing; its most recent 10-Q was for the quarter ended June 30, 2013 and is available at http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/viewer?action=view&cik=712515&accession_number=0000712515-13-000037&xbrl_type=v#

    QUESTIONS: 
    1. (Advanced) Describe the businesses of game makers Electronic Arts and Take-Two. How are their products similar? Do they differ in any way? (Hint: if you are unfamiliar with video game products, proceed to the companies' most recently filed financial statements with the SEC on Form 10-Q or 10-K and click on "Description of Business.") For Take-Two Interactive, the most recent 10-Q is available at http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/viewer?action=view&cik=946581&accession_number=0001047469-13-010066&xbrl_type=v# For Electronic Arts, as of this writing, the most recent 10-Q filing was for the quarter ended June 30, 2013 and is available at http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/viewer?action=view&cik=712515&accession_number=0000712515-13-000037&xbrl_type=v#

    2. (Introductory) The article forecasts growth for these two companies this Christmas season. What is the major reason for expecting that growth?

    3. (Introductory) How is the growth expected to affect the two companies' earnings as described in the article?

    4. (Introductory) The author also compares revenues by the two companies. How is this comparison affected by deferred revenues? In your answer, define the term deferred revenue.

    5. (Advanced) Access the two companies' quarterly filings on Form 10-Q for the most recent period available (see above). Locate the amounts of deferred revenue on each companies' balance sheet. State the amounts you find and describe the size of these balances relative to the overall business.

    6. (Advanced) Again access the Electronic Arts quarterly filing on Form 10-Q for the most recent period available and Click on "Balance Sheet Details" under "Notes Tables." For what types of products does Electronic Arts defer revenue?

    7. (Advanced) Now access the Take-Two Interactive filing on Form 10-Q for the most recent period available and Click on Accounting Policies in the left hand column, then scroll down to Revenue Recognition. Again describe the type of products for which the company defers revenue

    8. (Advanced) What do you notice that is different about the two companies' policies? Why do you think the companies have this difference in accounting practices? How do you think this difference will affect quarterly profitability comparisons between the two companies, as is done in this article?

    9. (Introductory) What accounting standard requires EA and TTI to defer these components of revenue? Provide specific references to a section or sections of the FASB's Accounting Standards Codification.
     

    Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island

     

    "Game Makers Lift Forecasts," by Ian Sherr, The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2013 ---
    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB20001424052702304655104579166153884234062?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid

    Videogame makers Electronic Arts Inc. EA +0.96% and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. TTWO +4.49% raised their full-year outlooks following strong sales of their products and early indications of robust holiday sales.

    The forecasts indicate the industry is upbeat that new hardware releases from Sony Corp. 6758.TO -11.13% and Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.38% in November will jump-start videogame sales after years of struggling to find growth.

    EA raised its adjusted profit view by a nickel to $1.25 a share, while Take-Two raised its per-share outlook to between $3.50 to $3.75. Both were above average analyst expectations.

    EA reported its loss narrowed by 28% to $273 million in its fiscal second quarter, thanks to cost-cutting efforts and successful launches of new big-name new titles, such as its "Madden" football game and "Plants vs. Zombies 2" strategy game for mobile devices.

    EA said sales fell about 2% to $695 million. Adjusted for items such as deferred revenue, sales tallied $1.04 billion, down slightly from the $1.08 billion a year prior.

    Take-Two Interactive, meanwhile, posted a wider loss in its fiscal second quarter, due in part to increased marketing costs for its games. Take-Two said sales fell more than 45% to $148.9 million—though when adjusted for items such as deferred revenue, the tally jumped to $1.27 billion, up significantly from the $288 million it reported a year ago.

    Behind that jump was the company's latest "Grand Theft Auto" crime-drama videogame, which was released in September, right before the end of the quarter. Take-Two said sales of the game topped $1 billion in its first three days on the market, a record for the videogame industry.

    Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two's chief executive, said sales of that game and its other top-tier titles "demonstrate consumers' enduring appetite for groundbreaking interactive entertainment."

    Both firms are increasingly expecting a bounty from consumer enthusiasm for the new consoles. Blake Jorgensen, EA's chief financial officer, said the company is still cautious about how the market will receive Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One, but he said customers appeared enthusiastic. "There's a huge amount of excitement," he said.

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comments
    I think video games are for idiot addictions unless they are designed with specific educational objectives in mind such as a Jeopardy-like video game.

    Bob Jensen's threads on gaming and simulation in education Gamification ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

     


    Can't we sing about accounting as well?

    Math and Science Sing Along Experiments
    Sing About Science & Math: Lesson Plans (oceanography sing along) --- http://singaboutscience.org/wp/lesson-plans/ 


    The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies (creative ideas in writing, art, and photography) ---  http://www.salt.edu/


    Gamification --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

    "Why Gamification is Really Powerful," by Karen Lee, Stanford Graduate School of Business, September 2012
    http://stanfordbusiness.tumblr.com/post/32317645424/why-gamification-is-really-powerful
    Karen Lee is the Social Web Strategist at the Stanford GSB

    Last week, Stanford GSB’s Social Web Strategist Karen Lee attended a Week 0 course called “How Neuroscience Influences Human Behavior,” co-taught by Marketing Professor Baba Shiv and Lecturer Nir Eyal. Each post focuses on an interesting insight from class. 

    In my last post, I explained how desire is a fundament driver of habits and how companies can leverage Nir Eyal’s “Desire Engine” framework to build engaging, habit-forming products. 

    After two days of learning the fundamentals of how our brain functions and influences human behavior, our co-instructors Nir Eyal and Baba Shiv invited Managing Director of Mayfield Fund Tim Chang (Stanford MBA ’01) and Founder of Gamification Co. Gabe Zichermann to provide our class a real-world perspective on the applications and implications of habitual behavior for customers, businesses and future generations. They both addressed gamification, which is defined as the process of using game thinking and mechanics to engage users.

    Gamification has become somewhat a polarizing topic for people, as its grown from a niche technique used in the gaming industry, popularized largely due to social games like Farmville, to a popularized approach to engage customers across different industries. Tim Chang explained that gamification is largely misunderstood because of the implied meanings in the word “game” itself. People think of gamification in two extremes, either a hardcore competition or something casual, frivolous and shallow. The definition of game is actually much wider in scope. A game is defined by these 3 core elements: 

    1. Goal or objective: system or user defined
    2. Score: usually in real-time, explicit feedback after every action or decision
    3. Rules: to influence score, boundaries for play

    Through this lens, there are many goals in life that are like a game. Dating. Landing a job. Hitting a sales goal. Driving a car. Gabe Zichermann shared how the automobile industry has embraced gamification to encourage fuel efficiency and engage drivers in a more meaningful way.

    Ford rolled out with a new dashboard for their their 2010 Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrid models. The “SmartGauge with EcoGuide” dashboard displays 4 types of data screens based on what you’re interested in, ranging from the basics of fuel level and battery charge status to more complex information like your driving performance and fuel efficiency.

    The game objective Ford creates for the driver is driving efficiency. The driver’s score is comprised of several different data points (e.g., hills, air conditioning, braking style) and is presented in the dashboard with multiple displays in real-time . . . .

    . . .

    The system’s real-time feedback acts as personal driving coach on how to maximize fuel efficiency, so the driver learns overtime how to change the way they drive to improve their score.

    In a slightly different but related game objective of achieving long-term fuel efficiency, Ford took gamification a step further by displaying on the right hand side “Efficiency Leaves,” which is a visual representation of the driver’s efficiency in the form of growing or wilting leaves and vines.  The more efficient a driver is, the more lush and beautiful the leaves are. It works the other way as well.

    Continued in article

    Video:  How Indie Video Game Makers Are Changing the Game ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/10/how_indie_video_game_makers_are_changing_the_game.html


    Edutainment Idea for Class
    This might be a fun thing to try in class.

    The instructor could identify three students in the class that have some cartoon drawing skills.

    Then the three-column Jeopardy-like listing of choices could be presented to the class where the choices relate to accounting issues.
    Students pick one issue from each column.

    The cartoon-drawing students could then commence their cartoons.

    While they're drawing, the instructor could show New Yorker's accounting cartoons to the class. At The New Yorker Website it is possible to drill down to accounting cartoons.

    Video:  Improv With New Yorker Cartoonists --- Click Here
     http://www.openculture.com/2011/07/improv_with_new_yorker_cartoonists.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
     

    Educational Comics Collection --- http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/edcomics

    Science Comics: A Creative Gateway into Literacy and STEM --- www.sciencefriday.com/educational-resources/science-comics-a-creative-gateway-into-literacy-and-stem

     


    Invent with Python (make your own computer games) --- http://inventwithpython.com/


    Math and Metaphor: Using Poetry to Teach College Mathematics --- http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol20/bahls.pdf


    Are little cheaters a bigger problem than big cheaters in the world?
    "The Honest Truth about Dishonesty:  RSA Animate Version," by Dan Ariely, October 20, 2012 ---
    http://danariely.com/2012/10/20/the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty-rsa-animate-version/

    Jensen Comment
    This RSA animation is a very neat way to help students learn ---
    http://www.321fastdraw.com/?gclid=CI7pp-vOlLMCFVTNOgodZVkApQ

    Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

     


    "Effort to 'Change the Equation' on Science Education," Inside Higher Ed, September 17, 2010 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/17/qt#238407

    President Obama on Thursday announced the launch of "Change the Equation," a new nonprofit organization, led by corporate CEOs, to promote improvements in science education. The new organization will seek to replicate various successful efforts so that they can spread to many more schools and localities. Among the areas of emphasis: expose more school-age students to robotics, improve professional development for math and science teachers and increase the number of students who take and achieve good test scores on Advanced Placement courses in math and science. The new organization also plans to create a state-by-state scorecard on efforts to improve science education

    Jensen Comment
    The bit about introducing edutainment (robotics) to motivate students to major in science reminds me of several reasons for using edutainment in some courses.

    The biggest conflict is that the best kinds of learning are often at odds with the most fun kinds of learning, especially for relatively mature students who often get more out of pain than pleasure ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
    For young children pain may be more of a turn off to learning in general.  Mature students are more likely to endure pain that is more efficient and effective to their goals such as better preparation for graduate studies, passing a certification examination such as the CPA examination, landing a job, improving performance on after landing a job, and being better able to teach and do research a complicated topic.


    But in science for K-12, President Obama's launch of  "Change the Equation," is right on target.


    Fun Facts About Accountant Celebrities --- 
     http://cpatrendlines.com/2010/11/08/fun-facts-12-accountant-celebrities/


    Ethics Learning Games

    Hi Marc,

    I've not had first-hand experience with ethics games. But here are a few ideas (not all are accounting games):.

    Ethics Games and Puzzles (and other ethics learning resources) --- http://www.ethics.org/resource/ethics-games-and-puzzles

    Putting Yourself in Somebody Else's Shoes --- http://thinkingethics.typepad.com/thinking_ethics/games/

    Situation Ethics Games --- http://www.rsrevision.com/games/alevel/situationethics.htm

    Scruples Game --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scruples_%28game%29

    Ethics Training Games --- http://www.ehow.com/info_8028940_ethics-training-games-ideas.html
    This has a "brainstorming category."
    Concept Mapping is a type of brainstorming --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ConceptMaps
    There's a good brainstorming accountics science paper in
    "Auditors’ Use of Brainstorming in the Consideration of Fraud: Reports from the Field," The Accounting Review, 2010, Vol 85, No. 4

    John A. Schatzel at Stonehill College does research on simulation games for teaching auditing, some of which entail ethics ---
    You must have access to the AAA Commons for the above link.
    John posts to the AECM on occasion. Maybe he will read this and help us out.

    You might consider easy-to-use software for making your own games
    http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/41dab78f88
     

    "Games in the Classroom (part 3)," by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 30, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/games-in-the-classroom-part-3/36217?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    The challenge of finding a game for the classroom can be difficult, particularly when the games you’ve imagined doesn’t exist. And if you wait for a particular challenge or topic to make its way into game form, it might be a while. Educational games and “serious” games haven’t always kept up with the rest of video gaming, in part because there’s no high return. Modern game development tends towards large teams and impressive budgets, and these resources are rarely used on explicitly educational productions. While efforts like the STEM Video Game Challenge provide incentives for new learning games, and commercial titles can often be adapted for the classroom, there’s still more potential than games have yet reached.

    But if you have a new concept for playful learning, you can still bring it to life for your classroom. There are two ways to start thinking about making games in the classroom: the first is to build a game yourself, and the second is to engage students in making games as a way to express their own understanding.

    You’re probably not a game designer, although there’s a game for that: Gamestar Mechanic can help you “level up” from player to designer. But it’s also important to remember building games rarely happens alone: as with digital humanities projects, games lend themselves to collaboration. If you have a game design program (or even a single course) at your university or a neighboring school, there might be an opportunity to partner your students with them towards creating valuable content-based educational games. Similarly, there may be other faculty who are interested in collaborating on grant-funded projects to build new educational experiences, or collective and expanding projects like Reacting to the Past (which many readers cited as a classroom game system of choice). You might also find collaborators, inspiration and games in progress through communities such as Gameful, a “secret HQ for making world-changing games”–and community manager Nathan Maton has a few things to say about building serious games for education.

    There’s also a difference between making a game or asking your students to make a game as an expression of content for pedagogical purposes and making a game in the industry. Even a flawed game can provide an opportunity for learning and discussion. And your students will often bring a wealth of their own experiences with games to the process, offering them a chance to make new connections with your course material.

    Ready to try making games? Here are a few tools for getting started.

    "Games in the Classroom (part 4)," by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 6, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/games-in-the-classroom-part-4/36294?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Throughout this series, we’ve talked about why you might want to use games in the classroom, how you can find them, and how to start making your own. But games can also inspire us to rethink our classrooms at a structural level, and particularly as sites for collaboration and playful learning that can extend long beyond a single lesson plan. Game designers are pointing out the similarities between games and the classroom. Extra Credits, a video series by game designers taking a deeper look at the form, recently did an episode on Gamifying Education that provides a great starting point for a conversation on game-inspired classroom design.

    For ideas on getting started, I recently spoke with Lee Sheldon, author of the recently released The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game (Cengage Learning 2011), whose book chronicles both his own and others’ experiments with taking the structures, terminology, and concepts of a massive multiplayer role-playing game and applying them to the classroom. You can check out Lee Sheldon’s syllabus at his blog on Gaming the Classroom, along with more of his reflections on the experiment, which divided his students into guilds and encouraged them to “level up” through the semester. After using the course model in its latest iteration, he reported perfect attendance. He also notes the value in his system of “grading by attrition”—students are not being punished for failing, but instead rewarded for progressing and thus less likely to be defeated early.

    As a professional game designer teaching courses on game design, Lee Sheldon has a natural environment for innovation–but his concepts open the door for a conversation across disciplines. Lee Sheldon describes his model as “designing the class as a game”—so not just focusing on extrinsic rewards (the typical focus of gamification), but instead trying to promote “opportunities for collaboration” and “intrinsic rewards from helping others.” As game designers, like teachers, are focused on creating an experience, many of the strategies for building a class as game are similar to more traditional preparation. And he advises that these ideas can work for anyone: “You don’t have to a be a game designer…you can prep like putting together a lesson plan, but learn the terminology.” Lee Sheldon explains that one of the benefits of using games as a model is that a game is abstracted—it has to “feel real”, but you get to “take out the stuff that isn’t fun.” He also notes that “You can do just about anything in a game that you can do in real life,” and the wealth of games today is a testament to that range of possibilities.

    Lee Sheldon and his team at RPI are now working on an experiment with their new Emergent Reality Lab that offers a possible future for courses as games. He explained their current project, teaching Mandarin Chinese as an alternate reality game, as a “Maltese Falcon-esque mystery” narrative—the class will start out as usual, in a normal classroom, but it will be interrupted and move into the lab as the students take a virtual journey across China aided by motion-aware Kinect interfaces in an immersive environment. Lee Sheldon said that his ideal outcome would be for students to learn more Chinese than they would in a traditional class.

    Continued in article

    September 30, 2012 reply from John A. Schatzel

    Thanks Bob,

    I do receive the posts from this group in archive mode, saw your suggestion, and hope that I can add something helpful to Mark, yourself, and others. My recent research has turned to introducing an ethics audit simulation to accounting education. I recently created such a game and am dedicating it to the advancement of international business ethics research. It is my fifth auditing simulation and although the others (as you noted in your post) address ethics to various degrees, the latest one is focused primary on doing an ethics audit using either a Triple Bottom Line or international ethics auditing standards approach.

    The newest game involves doing an audit using SA8000 by Social Accountability International, which includes ethics management and several other ethics areas. The game was made using interactive multimedia technologies and is played online. The initial prototypes have been tested successfully in accounting systems and business ethics courses and the student feedback has been, on balance, very positive.

    From Mark's perspective, the game would allow students to be assigned to groups and then play the game competitively using the internal scoring system. The scoring system is based on the one I originally created for the Real Audit(tm) financial auditing simulation and then adapted to the Swanson Interactive Internal Control Simulation, which involves a role-playing adventure doing a COSO internal control evaluation (including ethical values). The scores from Swanson and the new Ethics Audit Simulation are posted to a web-based performance reporting system that faculty can access, but are not reported in the game to students. I kept the scores private because I didn't feel the scoring system was refined enough at present.

    One possible research study would be to examine the effect of introducing a game-based scoring system to students on the learning process or on learning outcomes (if that were possible). Regardless, I believe that there are many studies that could be performed with the new ethics audit simulation while students are being encouraged to think at the higher end of Bloom's intellectual scale. If Mark or anyone else is interested in using the software for teaching/ research purposes, they can contact me directly and I will get them a demo set up as well as accounts for their students. I hope this helps!

    John A. Schatzel, Ph.D., CPA
    Professor of Accounting
    Stonehill College

    jschatzel@stonehill.edu

     


    Gamification --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

    "Why Gamification is Really Powerful," by Karen Lee, Stanford Graduate School of Business, September 2012
    http://stanfordbusiness.tumblr.com/post/32317645424/why-gamification-is-really-powerful
    Karen Lee is the Social Web Strategist at the Stanford GSB

    Last week, Stanford GSB’s Social Web Strategist Karen Lee attended a Week 0 course called “How Neuroscience Influences Human Behavior,” co-taught by Marketing Professor Baba Shiv and Lecturer Nir Eyal. Each post focuses on an interesting insight from class. 

    In my last post, I explained how desire is a fundament driver of habits and how companies can leverage Nir Eyal’s “Desire Engine” framework to build engaging, habit-forming products. 

    After two days of learning the fundamentals of how our brain functions and influences human behavior, our co-instructors Nir Eyal and Baba Shiv invited Managing Director of Mayfield Fund Tim Chang (Stanford MBA ’01) and Founder of Gamification Co. Gabe Zichermann to provide our class a real-world perspective on the applications and implications of habitual behavior for customers, businesses and future generations. They both addressed gamification, which is defined as the process of using game thinking and mechanics to engage users.

    Gamification has become somewhat a polarizing topic for people, as its grown from a niche technique used in the gaming industry, popularized largely due to social games like Farmville, to a popularized approach to engage customers across different industries. Tim Chang explained that gamification is largely misunderstood because of the implied meanings in the word “game” itself. People think of gamification in two extremes, either a hardcore competition or something casual, frivolous and shallow. The definition of game is actually much wider in scope. A game is defined by these 3 core elements: 

    1. Goal or objective: system or user defined
    2. Score: usually in real-time, explicit feedback after every action or decision
    3. Rules: to influence score, boundaries for play

    Through this lens, there are many goals in life that are like a game. Dating. Landing a job. Hitting a sales goal. Driving a car. Gabe Zichermann shared how the automobile industry has embraced gamification to encourage fuel efficiency and engage drivers in a more meaningful way.

    Ford rolled out with a new dashboard for their their 2010 Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrid models. The “SmartGauge with EcoGuide” dashboard displays 4 types of data screens based on what you’re interested in, ranging from the basics of fuel level and battery charge status to more complex information like your driving performance and fuel efficiency.

    The game objective Ford creates for the driver is driving efficiency. The driver’s score is comprised of several different data points (e.g., hills, air conditioning, braking style) and is presented in the dashboard with multiple displays in real-time . . . .

    . . .

    The system’s real-time feedback acts as personal driving coach on how to maximize fuel efficiency, so the driver learns overtime how to change the way they drive to improve their score.

    In a slightly different but related game objective of achieving long-term fuel efficiency, Ford took gamification a step further by displaying on the right hand side “Efficiency Leaves,” which is a visual representation of the driver’s efficiency in the form of growing or wilting leaves and vines.  The more efficient a driver is, the more lush and beautiful the leaves are. It works the other way as well.

    Continued in article

     

     


    Edutainment Idea for Class
    This might be a fun thing to try in class.

    The instructor could identify three students in the class that have some cartoon drawing skills.

    Then the three-column Jeopardy-like listing of choices could be presented to the class where the choices relate to accounting issues.
    Students pick one issue from each column.

    The cartoon-drawing students could then commence their cartoons.

    While they're drawing, the instructor could show New Yorker's accounting cartoons to the class. At The New Yorker Website it is possible to drill down to accounting cartoons.

    Video:  Improv With New Yorker Cartoonists --- Click Here
     http://www.openculture.com/2011/07/improv_with_new_yorker_cartoonists.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
     You could have students draw accounting ethics cartoons similar to those wonderful cartoons that appear in the New Yorker.

    Educational Comics Collection --- http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/edcomics


    Hollywood's Accounting, Ethics, and Business Movies --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm

    Professor Roselyn Morris has a listing of ethics movies and some accounting movies---
    http://ceae.aicpa.org/NR/rdonlyres/1E737CC7-562B-4660-936E-91A817EE669E/0/Morris_2006.pdf

    "Perceptions of accountants' ethics: evidence from their portrayal in cinema.: by Felton, S., Dimnik, T. and Bay, D. (2008, December).  Journal of Business Ethics, 83(2), 217-232.

    Abstract: "This article examines popular representations of accountants' ethics by studying their depiction in cinema. As a medium that both reflects and shapes public opinion, films provide a useful resource for exploring the portrayal of the profession's ethics. We employ a values theoretical framework to analyze 110 movie accountants on their basic ethical character, ethical behavior, and values."

    Hollywood Accounting --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

    Spout's Movies Tagged for Accounting --- http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/accounting/MemberTagFilms.aspx

    Amazon's Wall Street Movies --- http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Movies/lm/R2Q5QMM6BWWEAL

    And here are some entrepreneur movies. Of course there are countless movies that feature business (usually in a bad light).

    "Must-See Movies for Entrepreneurs," by Anthony Tjan, Harvard Business Review Blog, March 12, 2010 ---
    http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2010/03/mustsee-movies-for-entrepreneu.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE

    After the Oscars last weekend, I started to think about which movies have really inspired me as an entrepreneur. Here are three films I believe that you should not only see, but also share with your teams. Each ties to an important entrepreneurial and leadership lesson.

    Man on Wire
    A story of the fanatical pursuit of a dream. Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker, was consumed by the idea of walking a wire between New York's former World Trade twin towers. To do so, he would need years of planning and would have to do it as a covert mission. When I first watched this film, I did not know if it was based on a true story or not. The narrative and grainy black-and-white shots made me constantly question whether I was wishing for this to be true or if it was just brilliant story-telling. The fact that Petit is real and actually accomplished the feat in August of 1974 is beyond incredible. In an earlier post, I wrote about the thin line that great entrepreneurs balance between what Oscar Levant described as genius and insanity. You want someone like Petit to succeed because it seems so improbable and outlandish that it takes a creative visionary with some degree of craziness to pull it off. Seeing this movie is an inspiration for those who dare to think differently and push the boundaries.

    More than a Game
    This is the inspiring story of a high school basketball team and their quest for the national title. It is also happens to be the documentary of the high school basketball team on which superstar Lebron James played. I loved this movie for so many reasons, but the inspiration for entrepreneurs is in the unfolding of how Lebron and four of his closest friends from childhood pursued a dream, Starting as a team of fifth graders playing and growing up together in some of the poorest neighborhoods and practicing in a Salvation Army basketball court with linoleum floors. The movie highlights how the journey is always as important as the ultimate goal and inspires us to believe that almost anything is possible with the right people and right dedication.

    Slumdog Millionaire
    A hugely successful film about how you can create your own luck. So many successful entrepreneurs I have met talk about the role of luck in their careers, but it is equally true that they put themselves in the pathway of opportunity. In some ways this movie was like a modern day Bollywood version of Forrest Gump (we all need a little Bubba Gump shrimp luck in our lives). Both are believable tales because of the attitudes of the protagonists who, like great entrepreneurs, have a boundless optimism and openness that allow luck to come to them.

    That's it for my Siskel and Ebert moment. I'll see you all at Netflix.

    A lot of ethics cases are available ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases

     


    Philosophy Made Fun: Read the Free Preview Edition of the Action Philosophers! Comic --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/10/action_philosophers_comic.html
    Bob Jensen's threads on Edutainment --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment


    I'm really not a big fan of video or computer games, but this one from the popular Price is Right television show is both fun and has educational attributes.

    Video:  Pay the Rent strategy on The Price is Right --- Click Here
    http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2011/01/26/pay-the-rent-strategy-on-the-price-is-right/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mindyourdecisions+%28Mind+Your+Decisions%29


    Jane McGonigal has a message: games are good
    "Are Games Good for You?  Jane McGonigal, in her latest book and during her PAX East keynote, talks about the positive effects of playing," by Kristina Grifantini, MIT's Technology Review, March 16, 2011 ---
    http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/26528/?nlid=4250

    Jensen Comment
    I have my doubts when games become addictive to a point of disproportionate time allocation vis-a-vis other forms of learning and scholarship..
     


    "SAT Prep on the Web: : A) a Game; B) Online Chat; C) All of the Above," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2010 ---
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704462704575590383273883818.html

    This Saturday, high-school students around the country will sit for hours of silent testing that will determine some portion of their future: That's right, it's SAT time. For both parents and kids, the preparation for taking the standardized test is stressful and expensive, often involving hours of studying and several hundreds of dollars spent on classes, workbooks and tutors. And many kids will take these tests more than once.

    So this week I tried a Web-based form of test prep called Grockit that aims to make studying for the SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE or LSAT less expensive and more enjoyable. Grockit.com offers lessons, group study and solo practice, and does a nice job of feeling fun and educational, which isn't an easy combination to pull off.

    A free portion of the site includes group study with a variety of questions and a limited number of solo test questions, which are customized to each student's study needs. The $100 Premium subscription includes full access to the online platform with unlimited solo practice questions and personalized performance analytics that track a student's progress. A new offering called Grockit TV (grockit.com/tv) offers free eight-week courses if students watch them streaming live twice a week. Otherwise, a course can be downloaded for $100 during the course or $150 afterward. Instructors hailing from the Princeton Review and Kaplan, among other places, teach test preparation for the GMAT business-school admissions test and SAT.

    For the sake of testing, I focused on the SAT and plunged back into the depths of reading, writing and (gulp) math to get a sense of what students see and do on Grockit.com. In a short period of time, I found myself wanting to go back to the site to get better at certain sections or to earn more Experience Points, which result in badges and unlock new levels of study, both of which can be optionally posted to outside networks like Facebook or Twitter. By default, everyone can see one another's points, which invites healthy competition; these can also be hidden if you'd rather keep them private.

    I tested both the free version of Grockit.com, which includes an SAT writing diagnostic test, and the extra offerings of a $100 Premium account, including diagnostic tests for writing, reading and math to evaluate my strengths and weaknesses in taking the SAT. The free version had too many messages that constantly notified me of what I could do with a paid account and prompted me to upgrade.

    Along with completing practice questions with strangers and instructors, I got a friend of mine to also use Grockit.com so we could compete together in Grockit's Speed Challenge Games. These are included in the free portion and they reward the fastest person who answers a question correctly—but also display incorrect guesses, thus narrowing the possible answers for those who don't answer first. It was more fun for me to play against someone I knew, but I can imagine kids preferring the anonymity of competing with strangers when they don't answer questions correctly.

    In an introductory video, Grockit founder and chief product officer Farb Nivi describes the site by saying, "It's like having a complete multimedia textbook and workbook online, at your fingertips." But for kids (and from my experience, adults), the computer isn't an easy place to concentrate. On any given PC, especially one used by a teenager, instant-message indicators are chiming, Facebook updates and Twitter tweets are waiting to be checked, music is playing in the background and emails are flowing into inboxes. Plus, the Grockit site is just a tab away from other websites and distractions. And the site has no way of working in a distraction-free mode, like how the new Microsoft Office for Mac offers Full Screen View, which quiets any alerts or pop-up distractions.

    It also isn't necessarily comfortable for students to read extensive text (like in reading questions for the SAT) on a vertical computer screen. The site will run on the iPad, which can be held on a lap for more comfortable reading, but many students don't own one of these.

    Part of the way Grockit is made more fun is by purposely incorporating social networking into the experience. As people work on questions, they can instant message with one another in a right-side panel about tips for answering questions or simply for commiserating about studying. These IMs don't make indicator sounds, so they aren't too intrusive, but they can't be fully closed. I saw several chats among teens about nothing in particular, as well as some test-taking tips from instructors and other students.

    Grockit encourages users to "be nice" in chats because all conversations are logged; people can also flag one another for offensive remarks. Chats are also archived on your page so you can reread them for tips and study hints. If you find someone's tip helpful or if you simply like a person, you can award him or her with Grockit Points, which show up beside a name and profile photo. Users' ages or last names aren't displayed.

    Grockit offers one-on-one tutoring for a fee of $50 an hour, and I tried one session for math. My instructor and I used Skype to audio chat throughout the session and he took advantage of a whiteboard in Grockit, where he could write out the steps in an algebra problem to demonstrate how to solve for X.

    Around 40 instructors are employed for Grockit, but anyone can run a practice session, even other students. I signed up for a scheduled practice session at 8 p.m. that I assumed was run by an instructor, and later found out it was run by a student. Grockit instructors can also pop into sessions at any given time to help students, and one did during my session. Grockit works on a system of transparency so users can evaluate all teachers. My tutor had five-star rating and did a great job reminding me of algebra rules.

    If you're looking for an inexpensive and more enjoyable way to study for big tests, Grockit is a viable and easily accessible option. But its proximity to the rest of the Web could prove much more distracting than the old SAT workbook.

    —See a video with Katherine Boehret on Web-based test-prep software at WSJ.com/PersonalTech.
    Email her at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

    Also see http://www.chegg.com/tutors


    AICPA's Accountancy Video Games
    I wonder if there are any accountancy video games in this Paris museum?
    I wonder if any accounting educators have visited this museum?

    "Museum Lets You Play Just About Every Video Game Ever:  Paris's Museum of Arts and Trades has put together a comprehensive playable video game exhibit -  Help us name some mystery consoles," by Christopher Mims, MIT's Technology Review, October 27, 2010 ---
    http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25927/?nlid=3695

    MuseoGames is as comprehensive a history of home video game consoles as any museum has ever created. Visitors to Paris's Museum of Arts and Trades are treated to a collection of video games so extensive that all but the most hardcore gamer would be hard-pressed to identify them all. They stretch from the birth of Pong in the 1970s through the heyday of console gaming and end with the PS2.

    The exhibit also includes interviews with many of the developers responsible for these early gems--all of them overdubbed in French, unfortunately, so I hope you've been brushing up.

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    I could not find the English version of this Paris Website. An English version would be nice for some of the categories such as Blogs.

    Back in the U.S.A., the AICPA has a Website to attract students into accountancy that includes accounting video games ---
    http://www.startheregoplaces.com/
    Eventually click on the Games hot word at the the bottom of the screen. Accounting teachers, however should first click on the Teachers hot word at the top of the screen. They will be asked to get "sign in"  login name and password. There is a delay before they get login permission.

    Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment and learning games ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment


    Bob Jensen's links to educational games.--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Games

    Bob Jensen's threads on teaching and learning resources are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 

    For video games, see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#Future 

    Impatience With Theoretical Reasoning: Math Textbooks are Equivalents of Sitcoms
    Ted Video: Math Class Needs a Makeover (Dan Meyer Video) --- http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html

    The American Accounting Association has a page on tools and cases --- http://aaahq.org/facdev/teaching/teaching_tools.htm

    Also see the AAA’s wider set of helpers on teaching at http://aaahq.org/facdev/teach.cfm 

    Literature Quizzes --- http://www.actionquiz.com/quiz.php?trivia=literature

    Hollywood's Accounting, Ethics, and Business Movies --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm

    Professor Roselyn Morris has a listing of ethics movies and some accounting movies---
    http://ceae.aicpa.org/NR/rdonlyres/1E737CC7-562B-4660-936E-91A817EE669E/0/Morris_2006.pdf

    "Perceptions of accountants' ethics: evidence from their portrayal in cinema.: by Felton, S., Dimnik, T. and Bay, D. (2008, December).  Journal of Business Ethics, 83(2), 217-232.

    Abstract: "This article examines popular representations of accountants' ethics by studying their depiction in cinema. As a medium that both reflects and shapes public opinion, films provide a useful resource for exploring the portrayal of the profession's ethics. We employ a values theoretical framework to analyze 110 movie accountants on their basic ethical character, ethical behavior, and values."

    Hollywood Accounting --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

    Spout's Movies Tagged for Accounting --- http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/accounting/MemberTagFilms.aspx

    Amazon's Wall Street Movies --- http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Movies/lm/R2Q5QMM6BWWEAL

    And here are some entrepreneur movies. Of course there are countless movies that feature business (usually in a bad light).

    "Must-See Movies for Entrepreneurs," by Anthony Tjan, Harvard Business Review Blog, March 12, 2010 ---
    http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2010/03/mustsee-movies-for-entrepreneu.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE

    After the Oscars last weekend, I started to think about which movies have really inspired me as an entrepreneur. Here are three films I believe that you should not only see, but also share with your teams. Each ties to an important entrepreneurial and leadership lesson.

    Man on Wire
    A story of the fanatical pursuit of a dream. Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker, was consumed by the idea of walking a wire between New York's former World Trade twin towers. To do so, he would need years of planning and would have to do it as a covert mission. When I first watched this film, I did not know if it was based on a true story or not. The narrative and grainy black-and-white shots made me constantly question whether I was wishing for this to be true or if it was just brilliant story-telling. The fact that Petit is real and actually accomplished the feat in August of 1974 is beyond incredible. In an earlier post, I wrote about the thin line that great entrepreneurs balance between what Oscar Levant described as genius and insanity. You want someone like Petit to succeed because it seems so improbable and outlandish that it takes a creative visionary with some degree of craziness to pull it off. Seeing this movie is an inspiration for those who dare to think differently and push the boundaries.

    More than a Game
    This is the inspiring story of a high school basketball team and their quest for the national title. It is also happens to be the documentary of the high school basketball team on which superstar Lebron James played. I loved this movie for so many reasons, but the inspiration for entrepreneurs is in the unfolding of how Lebron and four of his closest friends from childhood pursued a dream, Starting as a team of fifth graders playing and growing up together in some of the poorest neighborhoods and practicing in a Salvation Army basketball court with linoleum floors. The movie highlights how the journey is always as important as the ultimate goal and inspires us to believe that almost anything is possible with the right people and right dedication.

    Slumdog Millionaire
    A hugely successful film about how you can create your own luck. So many successful entrepreneurs I have met talk about the role of luck in their careers, but it is equally true that they put themselves in the pathway of opportunity. In some ways this movie was like a modern day Bollywood version of Forrest Gump (we all need a little Bubba Gump shrimp luck in our lives). Both are believable tales because of the attitudes of the protagonists who, like great entrepreneurs, have a boundless optimism and openness that allow luck to come to them.

    That's it for my Siskel and Ebert moment. I'll see you all at Netflix.

    Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
    Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
    Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
    Open Sharing Courses --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


    Bob Jensen's threads on accounting novels, plays, and movies ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm


    Thanks Denny,

    Wanda and I served on the same AAA Executive Committee during what was perhaps the first AAA Annual Meeting in Hawaii (at the Hilton Hawaiian Village). That was the same year the AAA Executive Committee (with spouses) met in Amsterdam (courtesy of funding raised by Jerry Searfoss).

    A book editor once told me that Wanda Wallace was the best textbook author he'd ever worked with in the sense that her books were virtually perfect before they were sent out for editorial review.

    Wanda was also a former Editor of Issues in Accounting Education (IAE).

    Her message to the 2002/2003 AAA Executive Committee (under Pete Wilson)  that tried to terminate both Accounting Horizons and IAE played a key role in saving these journals ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AAAJournals.htm

    Many AECM subscribers perhaps have forgotten the role the AECM played in the above struggle to save these journals for extinction ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AAAJournals.htm

    I wish Wanda and Jim the very best in retirement.

    Respectfully,
    Bob Jensen


     
    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: Dennis R Beresford <dberesfo@uga.edu>
    Date: Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 4:22 PM
    Subject: Fwd:
    To: Bob Jensen <rjensen@trinity.edu>


     
    Bob, Now here's a forthcoming publication from an accounting academic that some people may actually read!  The title of Wanda's novel is "The Soothsayers." Denny

    Sent from my iPad

    Begin forwarded message:

     
    From: "Wallace, Wanda" <Wanda.Wallace@mason.wm.edu>
    Date: June 12, 2012 3:15:54 PM EDT
    To: "dberesford@terry.uga.edu" <dberesford@terry.uga.edu>

     
    Dennis R. Beresford
    Ernst & Young Executive Professor of Accounting
    J.M. Tull School of Accounting
    Terry College of Business
    Athens, GA 30602
    dberesford@terry.uga.edu

     

    Dear Denny,
    It's been a long time since we've been in correspondence, but thought I'd drop a line to say hello and share some news.

     

    Since retirement from academe I've been enjoying writing poetry and fiction. My first novel is to be launched in September 2012, and I am thrilled. The cover is already posted as "Coming Soon" on the home page of champagnebooks.com.

     

    Hope things are going well,
    Regards!
    Wanda

     

    P.S. One of my published fiction short stories is in the literary journal The MacGuffin (Fall 2011) called "Intrusions" and was great fun to craft. FYI


    Wanda A. Wallace (The John N. Dalton Professor of Business Emerita)
    College of William and Mary, School of Business Administration
    Williamsburg, Virginia 23185
    Email address: wawall@wm.edu

     

     


    Question
    How is accountancy practice like mystery writing?

    Edutainment via Fiction Writing

    'May 7, 2011 message from Larry Crumbley,

    Bob, you may wish to update your accounting novel material. My tax Ultimate Ripoff novel is now in the fourth edition and I am now revising it. My cost accounting novel Costly Reflections in A Midas Mirror, is in the 3th edition at Carolina Academic Press. They also have published later editions of my auditing and forensic accounting novels. LSU press will have my Sports Marketing out shortly. Give me your mailing address and I will send you a couple. Larry

    May 8, 2011 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Larry,

    My forays into fiction  so bad that even I won't share them --- and I share almost everything I write. My one exception is my "play"  on eduarbitraging at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/muppets.htm 
    Now you know why I won't share my other fiction attempts.


    I'm glad you're still doing well with your mystery/detective novels.


    My threads on edutainment via accounting fiction writing are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/muppets.htm#Accounting 
    The module on the books by Larry Crumbley needs updating. I will add your listing of teaching innovation references at
    http://www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/lcrumbley/innovate.html 

     

    Also see
    http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2002/Jan/BusinessBookshelf.htm

     

    I also need to update my page on Accounting Novels in general at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm
    If you have any suggestions for things I should add here beyond what are noted above, please let me know.

    Respectfully,
    Bob Jensen
     

    "Mystery Writer," by Gail Farrelly, Journal of Accountancy, March 2010 ---
    http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2010/Mar/20092392.htm

    As different as they seem, accounting and mystery writing actually have a lot in common: Both deal with details. Both are structured. Both require intricate and involved thinking. And, on a personal level, both have been an important and fulfilling part of my life.

     

    Writing mysteries was not one of my early life goals. Armed with an MBA as well as an M.A. in philosophy, I taught business subjects in a junior college. Then, in 1977 The George Washington University was searching for an accounting teacher who would earn a stipend and free tuition to work on a doctorate. I jumped at the opportunity to apply. Being able to teach at a higher level appealed to me. I was accepted, and I earned my doctorate in business administration from GWU, with a major in accounting and a minor in finance.

     

    The more I studied accounting, the more I discovered how much I liked it—so much so that I sat for the CPA exam while I was still in graduate school. After earning my doctorate, I chose to continue teaching accounting, first at Southern Methodist University for three years, then at Rutgers University for 18 years.

     

    I began “serious” writing long before I published my first mystery novel. “Publish or perish” is the unwritten rule for those of us in academia, so throughout my university career I published a number of papers. One of them, co-authored with another professor, caught the eye of Quorum Books. We added another author and published Shaping the Corporate Image: An Analytical Guide for Executive Decision Makers. It was my first book.

     

    Sometimes, when I was doing a serious paper or an op-ed article for the newspapers, I began to dream about writing for fun, which, to me, was to write a novel. I finally decided to see if I could make my dream come true and started my first work of fiction.

     

    Mysteries have always topped my list of leisure reading. As a girl, I read all of the Nancy Drew books, then worked my way through Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. From an interest perspective, it was natural for me to tackle the mystery genre for my fiction work. After a five-year effort, in 1995 I published my first novel. Seeing my name on the book cover— an experience that is hard to describe—motivated me to start on my second mystery. Because I wrote after hours, it took me another five years to finish it.

     

    In 2002, I was ready to begin the next chapter in my life—to become a full-time writer. With my future financially secure, I took an early retirement from the university and devoted myself to writing. My biggest adjustment has been budgeting my time, since as a writer I do not have short-term deadlines as I did as a professor.

     

    My CPA background has helped me in an unexpected way: I’ve called upon it to develop plots for two of my books—Beaned in Boston: Murder at a Finance Convention and Duped by Derivatives.  Likewise, I used my academic experience as a backdrop for my third novel, Creamed at Commencement.

     

    Writing is more than putting words on paper and organizing them to tell a story. Writing involves hard work—even after a book is written. I am constantly looking to promote my books by giving talks, blogging, arranging book signings and exploring ways to expand distribution, such as through e-publishing.

     

    Writers are dreamers. Two of my dreams have been fulfilled teaching at the university level and publishing novels. My wildest dream is to get on The New York Times best-seller list! I don’t know if I will ever reach that goal, but I know I will have a lot of fun trying. Many people have a similar dream; they would like to write a book. My advice: Just do it—but in little chunks each day. Once you see your name in print, you’ll never regret the sacrifice it took to get it there.

    Bob Jensen's threads on accounting novels are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm


    "The New Games People Play: ." b: How Game Mechanics Have Changed In The Age Of Social, by Alexia Tsotsis, TechCrunch, August 1, 2010 ---
    http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/01/the-new-games-people-play-game-mechanics-in-the-age-of-social/

    The crux behind game mechanics is the feeling that you’ve accomplished something; “Whether you’re clicking on a plot of land or a musical note, that is an accomplishment” says Social Gaming Network’s Shervin Pishevar. Social gaming gives you the opportunity to share these goals with your social graph so that many people see them, as well as the chance to work on these accomplishments collaboratively.

    At Friday’s Social Currency CrunchUp, leaders from the Social Gaming space including Pishevar, Disney Mobile SVP Bart Decrem, Stanford School of Business Professor Jennifer Acker and SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch sat down together in order to discuss gaming’s latest incarnation.

    What elements are needed for addictive games?

    Pavlovian mechanics are crucial. It’s important as a user to feel like the time that you spent came up with a result, social elements like being able to see how you did with other people, and being able to play with other people play into this. Integration with music also creates an emotional linkage, one thing responsible for Tapulous’ success was the functionality to apply multiple songs from artists like Justin Bieber to Lady Gaga.

    Decrem elaborates, “There’s an actual science around how to engage and monetize users, the Farmville harvest mechanic, for example. On mobile, its ‘the x factor’ does the game have magic?” What we’re now seeing is what happens when the science of game mechanics in social games is combined with the quirkiness of what you see on the iPhone platform.

    According to Seth Priebatsch, new employees at SCVNGR memorize a deck of 50 game dynamics like the progression dynamic, or earning points to make progress. They then can incorporate those elements into a game, “Humans love progress bars, if you see a progress bar, you want to complete it.”


    How will games increasingly square with the real world?

    Currently all the value creation happens mostly on Facebook, but that will soon change. The panelists all agreed that this recent integration of social and mobile is beginning of a new computing platform, mainly due to the capabilities introduced by the iOS. Killer apps on this new platform will need to incorporate both a social element and an entertainment element in order to survive.

    According to Pishevar, SGN is “Working on things where you’re placing your phone in the real world and seeing 3D characters walking down the street, games where you have a garden in your actual physical yard that you’re actually tending to and it’s growing and you can see it on the iPhone.

    Decrem elaborates “There’s no difference to me between playing Tapulous on the iPhone and using my Starbucks card in the morning, wanting to get 15 stars so I can get a free coffee … “

    Real life rewards for online behavior are a force to be reckoned with, and will increasingly become more prevalent as developers continue to experience success with them. Yelp for example, saw their usage skyrocket when they incorporated the Check-in element. “You’re checking in with a physical card instead of a mobile. We haven’t invented anything new.”

    Says Priebatsch “We are bringing one very new thing to the game framework, the open graph API. Social traffics in connections, games traffic in influence. By applying that to the real world, we are building a platform that traffics in motivations and rewards.”


    In what new ways can these game mechanics can be applied in the future?

    “We’re really in the first or second inning on the mobile side,” says Pishevar, “The level of creativity and fun that’s coming is incredible.”

    Should businesses rush to apply social mechanics? “It’s just natural evolution,” says DeCrem. Businesses developing a product should ask themselves, How about if you can connect with your friends? How about if we make it fun?

    Piveshar’s one criticism is that the gaming industry could do so much more. “Because of the social graph many have cut corners of quality in order to monetize; We’ve got hypergrowth. Lots of millions have been created and its time to give something back.”

    Acker brought up the idea of games that cure cancer as one way social gaming can actually benefit society, referring to HopeLab’sRe-Mission and Zamzee, “It doesn’t matter how many brochures you show a kid, he’s not going to want to [go to chemo]. But when you build an avatar called Roxy, have her shooting the cancer cells, and then when she feels feel weak you go get her a chemo tap … It’s incredibly powerful.”

    Elements of gaming engender powerful emotions; Chemotherapy can become a positive thing and cancer becomes something you can beat. And that’s pretty formidable.

    Also see
    "Welcome to the Decade of Games," by Seth Priebatsch, Harvard Business Review Blog, September 10, 2010 ---
    http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/09/welcome_to_the_decade_of_games.html


    You may want to liven up your accounting, math or history courses by illustrating the art and science of the Abacus Calculator

    Abacus: The Art of Calculating with Beads --- http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/index.html

    Contents

    Introduction

    Construction  ·  Basics  ·  Java Applet  ·  Technique  ·  The Abacus Today


    History

    Timeline  ·  Salamis Tablet  ·  Counting Board  ·  Roman Hand Abacus  ·  Suan Pan  ·  Soroban  ·  Schoty  ·  Nepohualtzitzin  ·  Khipu  ·  Lee Abacus
     

    Interactive Abacus Tutor

    Sarat Chandran and David A. Bagley's incredible Java abacus with a built-in tutor for counting, addition and subtraction.

    Calculations
    Addition  ·  Subtraction  ·  Multiplication & Division  ·  Square Roots  ·  Cube Roots

    The Lee Abacus

    The manual for the Lee Abacus, c. 1958 is available as Text  ·  Images
     

    The Abacus as Art

    Michael Mode builds exotic abaci as art objects.
     

    Abacus: Mystery of the Bead

    Abacus Techniques by Totton Heffelfinger & Gary Flom.

    Articles, Excerpts and Analysis

    The Abacus vs.The Electric Calculator

    In 1946, a contest held in Tokyo, pitted an abacus against an electric calculator; the abacus won, of course.
     

    Feynman vs. The Abacus

    Richard Feynman battles against the abacus; the result is not surprising (if you know Feynman).
     

    Comparing the Chinese and the Mesoamerican Abacus

    An analysis contributed by David B. Kelley.
     

    The Roman Hand-Abacus

    An analysis contributed by Steve Stephenson.
     

    The Incan Khipu

    String, and Knot, Theory of Inca Writing by John Noble Wilford.
    Talking Knots of the Incas by Viviano and Davide Domenici.
     

    Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge

    An article about the dangers of forgetting knowledge learned from the past, by Eugene Linden.

    All Things Abacus

    Additional Abacus Resources

    Purchase  or build an abacus  ·  An abacus for your Palm  ·  Books about the abacus  ·  Java applet source code  ·  The Mesoamerican abacus
     

    Resources For Teachers

    The abacus in the classroom  ·  Abacus lesson plan  ·  Math and science resources for teachers
     

    Photos

    High-resolution photos of my abacus collection.

    Bob Jensen's threads on early accounting history are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory


    Inspiration: Games versus Teachers
    "Creator of 'The Sims' Talks Educational Gaming," Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2009 ---
    http://chronicle.com/media/video/v55/i41.5/wright/?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
    Bob Jensen's threads on networked learning simulations --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Simulation
    Bob Jensen's threads on virtual worlds in education are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife


    Introduction to (video) Game Design 2009 --- http://pod.gscept.com/intro2gd2009.xml

    Hollywood's Accounting, Ethics, and Business Movies --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm

    Professor Roselyn Morris has a listing of ethics movies and some accounting movies---
    http://ceae.aicpa.org/NR/rdonlyres/1E737CC7-562B-4660-936E-91A817EE669E/0/Morris_2006.pdf

    "Perceptions of accountants' ethics: evidence from their portrayal in cinema.: by Felton, S., Dimnik, T. and Bay, D. (2008, December).  Journal of Business Ethics, 83(2), 217-232.

    Abstract: "This article examines popular representations of accountants' ethics by studying their depiction in cinema. As a medium that both reflects and shapes public opinion, films provide a useful resource for exploring the portrayal of the profession's ethics. We employ a values theoretical framework to analyze 110 movie accountants on their basic ethical character, ethical behavior, and values."

    Hollywood Accounting --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

    Spout's Movies Tagged for Accounting --- http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/accounting/MemberTagFilms.aspx

    Amazon's Wall Street Movies --- http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Movies/lm/R2Q5QMM6BWWEAL

    And here are some entrepreneur movies. Of course there are countless movies that feature business (usually in a bad light).

    "Must-See Movies for Entrepreneurs," by Anthony Tjan, Harvard Business Review Blog, March 12, 2010 ---
    http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2010/03/mustsee-movies-for-entrepreneu.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE

    After the Oscars last weekend, I started to think about which movies have really inspired me as an entrepreneur. Here are three films I believe that you should not only see, but also share with your teams. Each ties to an important entrepreneurial and leadership lesson.

    Man on Wire
    A story of the fanatical pursuit of a dream. Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker, was consumed by the idea of walking a wire between New York's former World Trade twin towers. To do so, he would need years of planning and would have to do it as a covert mission. When I first watched this film, I did not know if it was based on a true story or not. The narrative and grainy black-and-white shots made me constantly question whether I was wishing for this to be true or if it was just brilliant story-telling. The fact that Petit is real and actually accomplished the feat in August of 1974 is beyond incredible. In an earlier post, I wrote about the thin line that great entrepreneurs balance between what Oscar Levant described as genius and insanity. You want someone like Petit to succeed because it seems so improbable and outlandish that it takes a creative visionary with some degree of craziness to pull it off. Seeing this movie is an inspiration for those who dare to think differently and push the boundaries.

    More than a Game
    This is the inspiring story of a high school basketball team and their quest for the national title. It is also happens to be the documentary of the high school basketball team on which superstar Lebron James played. I loved this movie for so many reasons, but the inspiration for entrepreneurs is in the unfolding of how Lebron and four of his closest friends from childhood pursued a dream, Starting as a team of fifth graders playing and growing up together in some of the poorest neighborhoods and practicing in a Salvation Army basketball court with linoleum floors. The movie highlights how the journey is always as important as the ultimate goal and inspires us to believe that almost anything is possible with the right people and right dedication.

    Slumdog Millionaire
    A hugely successful film about how you can create your own luck. So many successful entrepreneurs I have met talk about the role of luck in their careers, but it is equally true that they put themselves in the pathway of opportunity. In some ways this movie was like a modern day Bollywood version of Forrest Gump (we all need a little Bubba Gump shrimp luck in our lives). Both are believable tales because of the attitudes of the protagonists who, like great entrepreneurs, have a boundless optimism and openness that allow luck to come to them.

    That's it for my Siskel and Ebert moment. I'll see you all at Netflix.

    Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
    Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
    Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
    Open Sharing Courses --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Bob Jensen's threads on accounting novels, plays, and movies ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm


    Book Riot --- http://bookriot.com/
    This is a great site --- see for yourself


    "Georgia Tech Plays Video Games to Save Journalism," by Dan Turner, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 5, 2009 --- Click Here

    Ian Bogost, the primary investigator of the Journalism and Games project at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has found the question of how journalism and games intersect to be “much bigger than I originally thought.”

    Mr. Bogost, an associate professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, teaches in the undergraduate Media Computation and the graduate Digital Media programs. He is also a founding partner at video game developer Persuasive Games.

    His goal is to investigate how video games can work within, and perhaps help rescue, the ailing field of journalism. His graduate students ask questions such as: Is there anything in the game-development process that could be applied to the practice of journalism? Can games be used to make an editorial statement? Can the lauded “citizen journalism” model be considered a game and managed as such? Would it help bring new life to a failing industry?

    “If we wanted to design games to interact with journalism” — such as building one with storytelling resources that could be leveraged into longer-form articles and investigative reports, for example, or one that would explore the next equivalent of adding a crossword puzzle to raise sales — “how would one go about doing it?” Mr. Bogost said.

    Mr. Bogost founded Persuasive Games, and wrote a book of the same title, to show how games can make arguments. Video games, he argued, can be a new form of rhetoric through rule-based procedures and interactions. This interactive medium can teach, cajole, challenge, and collect information.

    Using this concept of games as both a medium and a tool, Mr. Bogost centered the Journalism and Games project to explore what each area has to contribute to the other, he said. And the answer may be nothing, he added. But given the number of newspaper closures and downsizings recently, he hopes to contribute something positive.


    XtraNormal --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xtranormal

    Xtranormal is a website which hosts text-to-speech based computer animated videoclips which can be created by any user and uploaded by a downloadable program or created directly online. It has had little online advertising and has spread by word of mouth and by being uploaded to Facebook and other social media sites.One website refers to controversy about an employee from Best Buy being fired for uploading an animated video complaining about customer service.

    The website offers either a free trial program to be downloaded to the computer with a fairly userfriendly interface, though limited to simple animation or creating a video while logged into the website. Popular user-created animations are available to watch.

    A growing collection of amateur animators use a do-it-yourself Web site called Xtranormal to vent comically about the academic life. And to teach.
    The online animation site they use has become a tool for teaching as well as satire

    "So You Think an English Professor's Life Is a Cartoon," by Mark Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/So-You-Think-an-English/125954/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


    Monopoly: How the Original Version Was Made to Condemn Monopolies ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/the-original-monopoly-was-made-to-condemn-monopolies.html 

    The Many and Varied Applications of the Monopoly Game in Accounting in Accounting, Economics, and Other College Courses ---
    Search this document for the word "Monopoly"


    Free online accounting textbooks, videos, and related tutorials at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
    Scroll through economics to get to the accounting items

  • August 15, 2008 message from Glen L Gray [glen.gray@CSUN.EDU]

    I was at a business luncheon today and I was asked a question that I hope you guys can help answer...

    A woman, who manages a large portfolio for a large institution, has a nephew who is a senior in high school who wants to eventual get a job similar to his aunt (investment management). She told him he needs a good grounding in economics and accounting (in addition to finance). He will be doing an independent study in the fall and she thinks that econ and/or accounting would be a good topic for his independent study.

    She asked me if I could recommend some books and/or online courses he could view/research/study. Nothing specifically came to mind. I know there has been some mention of free online courses on the AECM, but I don't recall the specifics.

    So, with all that said, does any AECM members have some answers to her question regarding online courses and/or books that would provide an econ and/or accounting overview to a high school student?

    Thanks in advance. I'll forward your responses to her.

    Glen L. Gray, PhD, CPA
    Accounting & Information Systems, COBAE
    California State University, Northridge
    18111 Nordhoff ST
    Northridge, CA 91330-8372
    818.677.3948
    818.677.2461 (messages)
    http://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f

    August 15, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Glen,

     I have a listing of free online accounting textbooks, videos, and related tutorials at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
    Scroll through economics to get to the accounting items

    At the high school level he may want to take a close look at
    Bean Counter's Dave Marshall online book --- http://www.dwmbeancounter.com/tutorial/Tutorial.html

    More likely, however, he will prefer the free online videos such as those from Janice Cobb (good stuff).

    He might also like some edutainment such as the accounting crossword puzzles --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

    David Fordham's Jeopardy games for basic accounting and basic AIS are also linked for downloading at the above edutainment site.

    And he could play David Albrecht's accounting Monopoly with his mom.

    Crossword Puzzle Maker --- http://worksheets.theteacherscorner.net/make-your-own/crossword/

    Bob Jensen

    August 17, 2008 reply from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

    Yes. I once had an older, non-traditional student whose husband got so enamored with doing the accounting for his monopoly games that he incessantly pestered his wife to play what I named it, "Real Money"

    For the near term I don't have it online any more. If anyone wants a copy (debit/credit version or financial statement equation version), plz send private e-mail to me ( albrecht@profalbrecht.com ). I'll reply with a large pdf file.

    Dave Albrecht

     


    The Atlantic Crossword Language ---  www.theatlantic.com/free-daily-crossword-puzzle


    "Monopoly Game Expansion #5: Income Tax Edition,"  by Penelope Pince, Pecuniarities, May 2009 ---
    http://pecuniarities.com/monopoly-game-expansion-5-income-tax-edition/1091


    Make Your Own Crosswords for Fun and Learning

    Crossword Puzzle Maker --- http://worksheets.theteacherscorner.net/make-your-own/crossword/

    Video
    How a Crossword Puzzle is Made: Behind the Scenes with The New York Times
    ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/how_a_crossword_puzzle_is_made_behind_the_scenes_with_the_new_york_times_.html

    June 4. 2008 message from Andrew PRIEST [a.priest@ECU.EDU.AU]

    I thought I would share this email which came from one of our librarians. It may be of interest.

    Regards

    Andrew

    Hi Andrew

    I came across this free website http://www.eclipsecrossword.com/samples.html  which allows you (anyone) to make up a crossword on any topic.

    They had examples of crosswords which have been setup for Accounting which I thought was rather cute & an alternative to quizzes http://www.accountingcrosswords.com /

    Regards

    Maureen

    Jensen Comment
    Here's a neat interactive Javascript crossword made using Eclipse --- http://lschwake.tripod.com/crosswords/acc22cross.html
    Click on one of the boxes to get started.

    Some of Bob Jensen's Former Tidbits:

    Somewhat related is the Crossword Construction Kit (not free) --- http://www.crosswordkit.com/
    Other word games --- http://www.puzzleconnection.com/

    Discovery Channel School's PuzzleMaker (free) --- http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com
    This puzzle-generation tool helps create and print customized word search, crossword and math puzzles using your own word lists.

    AccountingCrosswords.com (with many subtopics) --- http://www.accountingcrosswords.com/
    Example:  Payroll Accounting Crossword Puzzle --- http://www.accountingcoach.com/crossword-puzzles/payroll-empty.html

    Brenda Kennedy's k-12 Accounting Crosswords ---
    http://ww2.nps.k12.va.us/education/components/docmgr/default.php?sectiondetailid=34838

    Crossword Bank (with a section on taxation) --- Click Here 

    Payroll Accounting Crossword Puzzle --- http://www.accountingcoach.com/crossword-puzzles/payroll-empty.html

    Basic Accounting Example --- Click Here

    Computer defeats humans at the NYT’s crossword Puzzles
    Crossword-solving computer program WebCrow has defeated 25 human competitors in a puzzle competition in Riva del Garda, Italy. The program took both first- and second-place honors in the contest, which was staged as part of the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, New Scientist reported Thursday. The two English puzzles were taken from The New York Times and The Washington Post, while two Italian puzzles were taken from newspapers in the country. A fifth puzzle featured clues in both languages taken from all four sources. "It exceeded our expectations because there were around 15 Americans in the competition," said Marco Ernandes, who created WebCrow along with Giovanni Angelini and Marco Gori. "Now we'd like to test it against more people with English as their first language."
    "Computer defeats humans at crossword," PhysOrg, September 1, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news76345125.html

    Question
    Will daily working of crossword puzzles and similar mental exercise deter the rate of cognitive decline in older brains?

    The last two paragraphs below are important.

    "Oops! Mental Training, Crosswords Fail to Slow Decline of Aging Brain," by Sharon Begley, The Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2006; Page B1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/science_journal.html

    If you thought recent clinical trials of reduced-fat diets and breast cancer, or calcium/vitamin D and hip fractures, were disappointing when the intervention failed to live up to its billing, you haven't seen studies of whether mental training slows the rate of cognitive decline resulting from aging.

    The largest such study, called Active, was launched in 1998 and is still going. It trained 2,832 adults, aged 65 years old to 94, in memory, reasoning or visual attention and perception. Disappointment ensued. Though the trainees did better on the skill they practiced, that didn't translate to improvement on the others (memory training didn't sharpen reasoning, for instance).

    Worse, when the trainees were tested years later, performance fell more than it did in the untrained group, according to a new analysis by Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia, a veteran of studies on aging and cognition. That probably reflects the fact that if performance rises it has further to fall, he says.

    But there is a larger issue. "There is no convincing empirical evidence that mental activity slows the rate of cognitive decline," he concludes from an exhaustive review of decades of studies. "The research I reviewed is just not consistent with the idea that engaging in mentally stimulating activities as you age prevents or slows cognitive decline."

    Many scientists, not to mention the rest of us, believe it does. The "mental exercise" hypothesis has been around since 1920, and studies find that higher mental activity -- more hours per week spent reading, doing crossword puzzles, learning a language or the like -- is associated with better cognitive function. That has spawned the idea that, to keep your brain young(ish), you should partake of intellectual challenges.

    But this logic has a hole big enough to drive a truck through. Just because older adults who are more mentally active are sharper than peers who are cognitive couch potatoes doesn't mean mental activity in old age raises cognitive performances, let alone slows the rate of decline. To conclude that it does confuses correlation with causation.

    Consider an alternative that is gaining scientific support. Say you enter old age (by which I mean your 30s, when mental functioning starts heading south, accelerating in your 50s) with a "cognitive reserve" -- a cushion of smarts. If so, you are likely to be able to remember appointments, balance a checkbook and understand Medicare Part D (OK, maybe not) well into your 60s and 70s. But not because your brain falls apart more slowly. Instead, you started off so far above the threshold where impaired thinking and memory affect your ability to function that normal decline leaves you still all right.

    The Active study isn't the only reason scientists are rethinking the use-it-and-you-won't-lose-it idea. In the Seattle Longitudinal Study, older adults received five hours of training on spatial rotation (what would a shape look like if it turned?) or logic (given three patterns, which of four choices comes next?). As in Active, people got better on what they practiced.

    But seven years later, their performance had declined just as steeply (though, again, from a higher starting point) as the performance of people with no training, scientists reported last year. That supports the cognitive reserve idea -- if you enter middle age with a good memory and reasoning skills you stay sharp longer -- not the mental-exercise hypothesis.

    Even in the most mentally engaged elderly -- chess experts, professors, doctors -- mental function declines as steeply as in people to whom mental exercise means choosing which TV show to watch. Again, profs and docs enter old age with a brain functioning so far above the minimum that even with the equal rate of decline they do better than folks with no cognitive cushion.

    Crossword puzzles do not live up to the hope people invest in them, either. Age-related decline is very similar in people whether or not they wrestled with 24 Downs, Prof. Salthouse and his colleagues find in a recent study. There is "no evidence" that puzzle fans have "a slower rate of age-related decline in reasoning," he says.

    Evaluating use-it-and-you-won't-lose-it in a new journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science, he ends on a grim note: There is "little scientific evidence that engagement in mentally stimulating activities alters the rate of mental aging." He regards the belief as "more of an optimistic hope than an empirical reality."

    But don't write off mental exercise yet. True, neither one-time training nor regular mental challenges such as crosswords slow the rate of cognitive decline. But they do show that "older adults can be made to perform better on almost anything they can be trained on," says Michael Marsiske of the University of Florida, who helped run the Active study. "We're still detecting differences seven years after the training."

    In practical terms, although mental function continues to decline even after mental training, the latter can give old brains enough of a boost that they nevertheless remain higher functioning than untrained brains. A number of scientists think they understand what kind of training provides the biggest, most enduring boost. Next week, I'll look at their ideas.


    Invent with Python (make your own computer games)  --- http://inventwithpython.com/

     



    Question 1
    Would video games entice students into accounting courses?
    Pro 1 has a purportedly has an accounting video game, but I don't know anything about it.
    Multimedia Financial Accounting --- Click Here
     

    Question 2
    How can you make your own video game, possibly an educational game that you put online?
    People who love to create their own blogs, podcasts, and movies have a new outlet for self-expression: home-made video games.
    Erica Naone, "Playing Their Own Way," MIT's Technology Review, August 2, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19137/?a=f

    Question 3
    What are some computer science courses doing to slow the decline in enrollments?
    Could robots play Monopoly in basic accounting and economics courses?
    "U.S. Colleges Retool Programming Classes," by Greg Bluestein, PhysOrg, May 26, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news99378145.html 

     

    "Community College Uses a Video-Game Lab to Lure Students to Computer Courses," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 14, 2007 --- http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i16/16a02601.htm

    A computer lab has become one of the most popular hangouts at Northern Virginia Community College after officials decided to load its PC's with popular video games, install a PlayStation and an Xbox, and declare it "for gamers only."

    On an afternoon this fall, nearly all of the 15 computers were in use, and students stared in concentration — some gunning down bad guys in Counter-Strike, others strumming along with Guitar Hero. No one was doing any classwork.

    But the goal of the lab is very much college-related. It is to entice students to take game-design and other IT courses, says John Min, dean of business technologies on the college's campus here.

    Mr. Min decided to create the Game Pit, as the lab is called, because he noticed that IT enrollment had been falling since 1999. "We need to find ways to get more students," he says.

    Posters and fliers in the gaming lab list the many computer courses offered, and professors sometimes stop in to tout their courses.

    It is too soon to tell whether the effort will raise enrollment, say professors in the department. At least one student playing here, though, says he plans to take a course next semester that he learned about at the Game Pit. "There's actually a gaming class," says the student, Abdullah Alhogbani. "When I saw the poster I was like 'Oh, that's awesome.'"

    David Williamson Shaffer, an associate professor of education psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says the community college could be on to a winning strategy. He is the author of How Computer Games Help Children Learn.

    Continued in article

    Note that video games are not the same as virtual learning such as with Second Life where there is interaction between instructors and students --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
    However, video games may be used in virtual worlds.


    Teaching Accounting With Dominos (watch the video)

    May 27, 2008 message from Richard Newmark [richard.newmark@PHDUH.COM]

    As I was posting my son’s latest domino knockdown video on youtube, I thought that creating domino courses could make a great teamwork exercise. Here are my observations that lead me to this conclusion:

    1.       Setting up a domino course is often very frustrating. You may get it all set up and then part of it does not work. Also, you may accidentally knock down several minutes or hours work.

    2.       When doing it in teams (my son and I often work together), each person is responsible for a part. Everybody’s part must work for the course to be successful.

    3.       Good communication is key. You need a way to resolve disputes. Collaboration can lead to a superior solution to a problem. You need to be able to deal with failures, accidentally ruining someone else’s work.

    4.       For systems courses, you have design, implementation, and control issues. Controls would refer to using “safeties” or buffers between parts of the course in the building stage to prevent an accidental knockdown from ruining the entire course. Of course at the end you have to fill in the gaps, which may be more problematic than not having safeties at all (cost-benefit analysis).

    5.       You can incorporate risk/reward by weighting grades for the project by difficulty factor of the course. A straight line is easier than having branches/spirals/stairs/towers/etc. or builder’s challenges (having to complete part of the course while the dominoes are falling).

    I’m teaching cost accounting this summer and I’m thinking about simulating job-order vs. process costing using domino courses. Maybe I can use it to demonstrate shop floor design differences between manufacturing cells vs. traditional layout.

    You can see my son’s videos at http://www.youtube.com/phduh. In case you think this is kids’ stuff, check out this attempt at the domino world record attempt—current record is 4,079,000 dominoes knocked down http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73pTPDEQeIA.

    If you want to introduce more creativity, you can give teams a bag full of materials and have them construct some type of Rube-Goldberg machine. The same element as I discussed above apply. Here are a couple of examples http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73pTPDEQeIA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ac6DhR9B60 (interesting cooking method).

     

    Rick

    Richard Newmark
    Associate professor, School of Acctg. and Comp. Info. Systems
    Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business
    2004 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Winner
    University of Northern Colorado
    Campus Box 128 Kepner Hall, 2090G
    (970) 351-1213 office
    (970) 351-1078 business fax
    (707) 371-1213 personal fax
    http://student1.unco.edu/phduh/index.html or http://PhDuh.com/unc
    http://www.youtube.com/phduh


    David Fordham's Open Share Jeopardy Games for Accounting Education

    Although my dog and pony show workshops these days are more on FAS 133 derivatives and FAS 159 fair value accounting, I’m still invited now and then to do a dog and pony show on education technology. This forces me to painfully go back over a huge number of modules in my Website, modules that I’ve not looked at myself for a very long time. One such module below can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
    The module in question is quoted below:

     

     

    Have some fun with your students courtesy of David Fordham

    September 11, 2003 message from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU

    For several years, I have been doing some fun things with PowerPoint, more than simply using it as a "bullet-pointed" slide show.

    One of the simplest, yet most unusual, applications I use for PowerPoint is my own parody of the Jeopardy game. If you download it and try it, I think you'll have to agree it is ultra-simple, downright embarrassingly so, yet the students get a kick out of it, since it is so unlike any PowerPoint session they've ever seen. Class participation a la mode! Not a lot of new learning takes place on the day I play the game, but the students have a good time! I use Snickers bars for the winners, and a homework review sheet for the losers!

    Please don't take this game as an indication of how simplistic I make my PowerPoint presentations! I have many better examples of more powerful PowerPoint features. But this game is fun, entertaining, and provides a break from the day-to-day class. You are free to download it, try it, and even use it in your class, changing the questions and answers to your heart's desire. Just be sure to mention me as the original author, and be sure to tell the students that Jeopardy is a registered trademark of the Sony Pictures corporation! (And if you get some good ideas and do your own new presentation game, you don't even have to mention me anymore!)

    David

    See: http://cob.jmu.edu/fordham/AECM1.htm 

     

     

    It dawned on me yesterday that this might be a fun thing to demo in my next audience of about 100 accounting educators in the State of Mississippi. So I contacted David and he indicated that he’s still using these Jeopardy games.

    I admire David for being such a highly competent, albeit sometimes very technical, contributor to the AECM all these years. I also admire David for sharing his work with the world, including his Jeopardy games.

    The message that David sent me today speaks for itself: If you use some of David’s Jeopardy games, please add his name and James Madison University to the first slide in each PowerPoint show. David did not even bother to acknowledge himself in these files. Now that is really open sharing.

     Bob Jensen


    September 27 reply from  David Fordham [mailto:fordhadr@gmail.com]
     

    Bob,
     thanks for the honor.

    I have several versions, because I use this in several different classes:  AIS; Advanced Technology for Accountants; and Information Security.  I am sending the AIS since it is the simplest.  The file contains links to sounds, and my school was able to get copyright permission to use the "Final Jeopardy Think Music", the "Daily Double" sounds, the timer buzzer, and the theme song, but our permission is very explicit in that we can only use it inside our own classrooms on our main campus.  (I have a fundamental aversion to the whole concept of "intellectual property", and I don't consider myself or anyone else to be under obligation to follow ridiculous and ludicrous laws -- but I have a pragmatic streak that says when I'm specifically told by my institution's legal department not to do something, I probably shouldn't do it.  Hence, I am not included the .wav files.... sorry.)

    When you execute the PowerPoint slide show, you see the main board.  Click on a wager to see the answer.  Click anywhere on the answer slide to get the question, then click on the button to return to the main board.  Used wagers are shown in red.

    When the daily double appears, click on the words "Daily Double" to get to the daily double answer slide

    If you are familiar with powerPoint, you should be able to modify the questions and answers, the topic categories, etc. without problem.  By the way, clicking on the far-right-hand category heading square on the main board should take you to final jeopardy.

    By the way, my PowerPoint is not copyrighted so you are free to copy, modify, distribute, etc. to your heart's content. 

    Enjoy....

    David Fordham
    PBGH Faculty Fellow

     

    Bob Jensen's links to educational games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Games  
    Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


    From the Scout Report on November 30, 2007


    Jing --- http://www.jingproject.com/ 

    Trying to grab screenshots for a project can be trying with some applications, but Jing makes the process quite seamless and stress-free. Jing allows users to grab screenshots and screencasts via a yellow interface device that sits on the screen at all times. This particular version of Jing is compatible with computers running Windows 98 and newer.


    Members of the film industry, critics, and others ask: "What is animation?"

    'Beowulf' vs. cartoons: Animated debate rages http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/ae/articles/1125animation1125.html

    Nose on the Prize, but Which Oscar to Sniff? [Free registration may be required] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/movies/awardsseason/28rata.html

    ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

    http://www.animationarchive.org/index.html

    Animation History

    http://animationhistory.blogspot.com/

    Origins of American Animation, 1900-1921 [Real Player, Quick Time] http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/oahtml/oahome.html

    Animation World Network

    http://www.awn.com/

     


    More on (moron?) Learning Styles

    Question
    What is the best way to impress people at a dinner or cocktail party?

    Answer
    Memorize from Study Stack.  Actually this is a serious study aid for students and faculty.

    From the Scout Report on May 16, 2004

    Study Stack --- http://www.studystack.com/ 

    Developed by John Weidner, the Study Stack concept basically assists individuals to memorize information about various subjects, including geography, history, math, languages, and science. Users of the site can select one of the existing stacks, which consists of virtual study cards allowing individuals to learn at their own pace until they are satisfied with their progress. What is also particularly novel about this learning tool is that data entered for customized study stacks can be automatically displayed as a matching game, a word search puzzle, or a hangman game. So far, the site contains dozens of study stacks for each subject, with the areas dedicated to math and science containing quite a number of rather helpful stacks. With its wide range of applications, this site will be very helpful to students at different age levels and teachers who may be seeking to develop a new study tool for any number of topics or themes within a subject area.


    From the June 25 edition of Syllabus News

    Wharton webCafe Earns High Satisfaction Ratings

    A survey of students of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania found that 97 percent rated the school's web-based virtual meeting application -- dubbed web Cafe -- as valuable to their education experience. Since Wharton began using webCafe in 1998 as part of the school's student intranet, use of webCafe has expanded to 5,200 users, 99 percent of full-time MBA candidates, all executive MBA students, and almost all Wharton undergraduates. webCafe is one component of Wharton's plan to reshape its business education. The school's Alfred West Jr. Learning Lab is exploring methods of learning and instruction using interactive multimedia and real-time simulations. This August, it is opening Jon M. Huntsman Hall, which Wharton claims will be the largest and most sophisticated instructional technology center at any business school.

    For more information, visit: http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/learning


    From the Cornell University Library
    Pastimes and Paradigms: Games We Play ---  http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/games/index.html 


    Question
    How can you make your own video game, possibly an educational game that you put online?

    People who love to create their own blogs, podcasts, and movies have a new outlet for self-expression: home-made video games.
    Erica Naone, "Playing Their Own Way," MIT's Technology Review, August 2, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19137/?a=f

    Hoping to cash in on the popularity of user-generated content, a number of companies have set up websites that help average folks create their own video games.

    Sites such as MyGame and Scratch, for example, provide simple personalizing or programming tools so that people with little or no programming experience can create their own kind of fun. Players can personalize games on MyGame in a matter of minutes using a basic home computer, and they can spend anywhere from hours to weeks designing a game, depending on its complexity.

    Reflexive Entertainment, a video-game company based in California, has already had great success with user-generated content. In 2004, the company released a downloadable game called Big Kahuna Reef and included tools so that players could design their own levels. The feature was so popular that it formed the basis for a sequel, called Big Kahuna Reef 2, with 700 user-generated levels. Ion Hardie, director of product development for Reflexive, says that the core community of designers is small--some 30 or 40 people--but the company is working to increase involvement in new releases. Its most recent release, Ricochet Infinity, integrates more design features into the core game, with the idea of encouraging more players to participate.

    Ulrich Tausend, a graduate student in the sociology department at the University of Munich and the founder of the game company Neodelight, says that user-generated content is getting attention in the game-development industry because visible game communities could attract more players. "One main goal of the casual game developers is to tell the nontypical potential computer players ... that gaming is also something for them," he says. The challenge to providing user-generated content, Tausend says, is that companies have to provide tools that are easy to use yet powerful enough to let people express themselves.

    Continued in article


    Question
    What are some computer science courses doing to slow the decline in enrollments?
    Could robots play Monopoly in basic accounting and economics courses?

    "U.S. Colleges Retool Programming Classes," by Greg Bluestein, PhysOrg, May 26, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news99378145.html 

    The lesson plan was called "Artificial Unintelligence," but it was written more like a comic book than a syllabus for a serious computer science class.

    "Singing, dancing and drawing polygons may be nifty, but any self-respecting evil roboticist needs a few more tricks in the repertoire if they are going to take over the world," read the day's instructions to a dozen or so Georgia Tech robotics students.

    They had spent the last few months teaching their personal "Scribbler" robots to draw shapes and chirp on command. Now they were being asked to navigate a daunting obstacle course of Girl Scout cookie boxes scattered over a grid.

    The course is aimed at reigniting interest in computer science among undergraduates. Educators at Georgia Tech and elsewhere are turning to innovative programs like the Scribbler to draw more students to the field and reverse the tide of those leaving it.

    At risk, professors say, is nothing less than U.S. technology supremacy. As interest in computer science drops in the U.S., India and China are emerging as engineering hubs with cheap labor and a skilled work force.

    Schools across the country are taking steps to broaden the appeal of the major. More than a dozen universities have adopted "media computation" programs, a sort of alternate introduction to computer science with a New Media vibe. The classes, which have been launched at schools from the University of San Francisco to Virginia Tech, teach basic engineering using digital art,
    digital music and the Web.

    Others are turning to niche fields to attract more students. The California Institute of Technology, which has seen a slight drop in undergraduate computer science majors, has more than made up for the losses by emphasizing the field of bioengineering.

    "Many of our computer science faculty work on subjects related to biology, and so this new thrust works well for us," said Joel Burdick, a Caltech bioengineering professor.

    At Georgia Tech,
    computing professor Tucker Balch says the brain drain is partly the fault of what he calls the "prime number" syndrome.

    It's the traditional way to teach computer science students by asking them to write programs that spit out prime numbers, the Fibonacci sequence or other mathematical series.

    It's proven a sound way to educate students dead-set on joining the ranks of computer programmers, but it's also probably scared away more than a few.

    That's why Balch, who oversees the robotics class, is optimistic about the Scribbler, a scrappy blue robot cheap enough for students to buy and take home each night after class but versatile enough to handle fairly complex programs.

    The key to the class is the design of the robot. It weighs about a pound and is slightly smaller than a Frisbee, sporting three light-detecting sensors and a speaker that can chirp. And at about $75, it's roughly the price of a science textbook.

    Continued in article

    ASIMO [Flash Player of robot built by Honda] http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/


    Vladimir Nabokov’s Hand-Drawn Sketches of Mind-Bending Chess Problems ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2015/07/vladimir-nabokovs-hand-drawn-sketches-of-mind-bending-chess-problems.html

    It's been 10 years since IBM's Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in chess. A prominent philosopher asks what the match meant.

    "Higher Games," Daniel C. Dennet, MIT's Technology Review, September/October 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19179/

    In  the popular imagination, chess isn't like a spelling bee or Trivial Pursuit, a competition to see who can hold the most facts in memory and consult them quickly. In chess, as in the arts and sciences, there is plenty of room for beauty, subtlety, and deep originality. Chess requires brilliant thinking, supposedly the one feat that would be--forever--beyond the reach of any computer. But for a decade, human beings have had to live with the fact that one of our species' most celebrated intellectual summits--the title of world chess champion--has to be shared with a machine, Deep Blue, which beat Garry Kasparov in a highly publicized match in 1997. How could this be? What lessons could be gleaned from this shocking upset? Did we learn that machines could actually think as well as the smartest of us, or had chess been exposed as not such a deep game after all?

    The following years saw two other human-machine chess matches that stand out: a hard-fought draw between Vladimir Kramnik and Deep Fritz in Bahrain in 2002 and a draw between Kasparov and Deep Junior in New York in 2003, in a series of games that the New York City Sports Commission called "the first World Chess Championship sanctioned by both the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), the international governing body of chess, and the International Computer Game Association (ICGA)."

    The verdict that computers are the equal of human beings in chess could hardly be more official, which makes the caviling all the more pathetic. The excuses sometimes take this form: "Yes, but machines don't play chess the way human beings play chess!" Or sometimes this: "What the machines do isn't really playing chess at all." Well, then, what would be really playing chess?

    This is not a trivial question. The best computer chess is well nigh indistinguishable from the best human chess, except for one thing: computers don't know when to accept a draw. Computers--at least currently existing computers--can't be bored or embarrassed, or anxious about losing the respect of the other players, and these are aspects of life that human competitors always have to contend with, and sometimes even exploit, in their games. Offering or accepting a draw, or resigning, is the one decision that opens the hermetically sealed world of chess to the real world, in which life is short and there are things more important than chess to think about. This boundary crossing can be simulated with an arbitrary rule, or by allowing the computer's handlers to step in. Human players often try to intimidate or embarrass their human opponents, but this is like the covert pushing and shoving that goes on in soccer matches. The imperviousness of computers to this sort of gamesmanship means that if you beat them at all, you have to beat them fair and square--and isn't that just what ­Kasparov and Kramnik were unable to do?

    Yes, but so what? Silicon machines can now play chess better than any protein machines can. Big deal. This calm and reasonable reaction, however, is hard for most people to sustain. They don't like the idea that their brains are protein machines. When Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997, many commentators were tempted to insist that its brute-force search methods were entirely unlike the exploratory processes that Kasparov used when he conjured up his chess moves. But that is simply not so. Kasparov's brain is made of organic materials and has an architecture notably unlike that of Deep Blue, but it is still, so far as we know, a massively parallel search engine that has an outstanding array of heuristic pruning techniques that keep it from wasting time on unlikely branches.

    True, there's no doubt that investment in research and development has a different profile in the two cases; Kasparov has methods of extracting good design principles from past games, so that he can recognize, and decide to ignore, huge portions of the branching tree of possible game continuations that Deep Blue had to canvass seriatim. Kasparov's reliance on this "insight" meant that the shape of his search trees--all the nodes explicitly evaluated--no doubt differed dramatically from the shape of Deep Blue's, but this did not constitute an entirely different means of choosing a move. Whenever Deep Blue's exhaustive searches closed off a type of avenue that it had some means of recognizing, it could reuse that research whenever appropriate, just like Kasparov. Much of this analytical work had been done for Deep Blue by its designers, but Kasparov had likewise benefited from hundreds of thousands of person-years of chess exploration transmitted to him by players, coaches, and books.

    It is interesting in this regard to contemplate the suggestion made by Bobby Fischer, who has proposed to restore the game of chess to its intended rational purity by requiring that the major pieces be randomly placed in the back row at the start of each game (randomly, but in mirror image for black and white, with a white-square bishop and a black-square bishop, and the king between the rooks). Fischer ­Random Chess would render the mountain of memorized openings almost entirely obsolete, for humans and machines alike, since they would come into play much less than 1 percent of the time. The chess player would be thrown back onto fundamental principles; one would have to do more of the hard design work in real time. It is far from clear whether this change in rules would benefit human beings or computers more. It depends on which type of chess player is relying most heavily on what is, in effect, rote memory.

     

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's threads on the shocking future of education technology can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm


    Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles --- http://www.cut-the-knot.org/content.shtml

    Bob Jensen's threads on mathematics and statistics tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics

    Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment


    Matlab (used in virtually every U.S. university) --- --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB


    Bob Jensen's A Glimpse of Tomorrow's World

    July 5, 2007 message from Paul Anderson [pvanderson@APU.EDU]

    Does anyone know of professionally produced DVD presentations of plant tours of some of the major companies.

    Paul Anderson
    Azusa Pacific University
    626 969-3434 X3315

    July 6 reply from Bob Jensen

    Bradley University provides a rather long listing of virtual plant tours --- http://bradley.bradley.edu/~rf/plantour.htm 

    For example, the BMW plant tour in South Carolina features the components of BMW models and discusses manufacturing framing and assembly --- http://www.bmwusfactory.com/build/ 

    You come away wondering what humans in the future are going to do for jobs in a robotic manufacturing plant. Perhaps these plants will be totally automated once maintenance and repair robots can maintain and repair all of the "direct labor" robots. The last human in the plant might as well turn out the lights.

    The discipline of management is in big trouble. There may not be any people left to manage.

    The BMW plant tour certainly illustrates how Manufacturing Overhead has become so huge relative to the incredibly shrinking cost of direct (human) labor in modern plants. This is useful especially in cost/managerial accounting courses.

    This makes me think that one day war, terrorism, and anti-terrorism will be mostly robotic. Unmanned aircraft will one day be sending rockets into unmanned "suicide" ground vehicles and aircraft. Suicide robots will rush into oil and battery recharge "cafes" and blow up themselves while the other robots having their morning "breaks."

    Humans blowing themselves apart will be so decadent. Video games of today will probably be the reality of the future in both war and peace (e.g., automobile manufacturing and driving).

    Where will the humans be found in such a world of tomorrow? They'll probably be inside heavily-guarded (by robots) compounds grazing like cattle at the foot of the Big Rock Candy Mountain --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rock_Candy_Mountain 

    The best recording was from Burl Ives. Unfortunately, you can only get the first few bars at http://www.marysvale.org/brcm/song.htm 

    Bob Jensen

    After receiving the above suggestions, Paul himself favored a Stanford University manufacturing site --- http://manufacturing.stanford.edu/

    Vehicles are getting smarter all the time, thanks to a combination of sensor and wireless communications technologies. Car manufacturers say that tomorrow's drivers will be assisted by a wealth of safety information generated by vehicles that can talk to not only each other but to the roadway itself. But with so much data often comes information overload. And that's why computing giant IBM has launched a project to help the driver get the right information at the right time.
    "A Smarter Car:  IBM wants to improve communication between cars, roads, and drivers," by Clark Boyd, MIT's Technology Review, July 6, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19017/?a=f 

    Bob Jensen's Glimpse of Heaven --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm
    (No Robots in Heaven)


    Second Life (Membership is Free) ---
    http://secondlife.com/?campaignid=54644670&adgroupid=29573981550&loc_physical_ms=9002382&placement=&keyword=secondlife%2520com&matchtype=p&creative=101006625270&utmsource=Google&creativeid=T002099&gclid=CI_ilf7RhM8CFRdahgod_6sPRg
    Also see --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
     

    Second Life Blogs --- https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Blogs/ct-p/Blogs


    Second Life Virtual World --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

    The Atlantic:  The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future ---
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/second-life-leslie-jamison/544149/


    Second Life as a Learning Tool --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

    Bob Jensen's threads on Second Life and other Virtual Worlds ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

    Was Second Life a Virtual Bust?
    MIT:  Serious Games ---
    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/422131/serious-games/


    Second Life (Membership is Free) --- http://secondlife.com/
    Also see --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
    A Second Life Blogs --- https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Blogs/ct-p/Blogs


    Stanford’s Graduate School of Business conducts classes on a virtual campus, with avatars, soccer fields and a beach. Is it a second coming of Second Life?
    https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/11/22/stanford-conducts-classes-virtual-world?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=2362004768-DNU_2019_COPY_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-2362004768-197565045&mc_cid=2362004768&mc_eid=1e78f7c952


    A New Second Life 3-D Application in Higher Education
    "Immersive Learning in Preservice Teacher Education: Using Virtual Worlds," by Paula M. Selvester, The International HETL Review, Volume 2 ISSN 2164-3091, July 8, 2012 ---
    http://hetl.org/

    Abstract

    The purpose of this project was to use virtual world technology in a fully online course to assist preservice teachers in examining their stated and implied beliefs, attitudes, and expectations about social roles related to gender. Second Life was explored as a viable means to enhance interactivity and engagement in an asynchronous entirely online class. Data was generated by a social roles questionnaire, a perception survey, journal entries and written final examinations. Results showed that students’ initially held beliefs about social roles as determined by the questionnaire did not significantly change; however, data generated from journals and final exam indicated that experiences exploring gender and social roles in a virtual environment were powerful and transformative, leading to new insights into gender roles and how these roles impact our beliefs about ourselves and others and how teachers and students are impacted by these beliefs. Preservice teachers surveyed indicated agreement with the idea that Second Life makes online coursework more interactive.

    Key Words: Virtual learning, gender, social roles, teacher beliefs, second life, teacher preparation, online learning.

    INTRODUCTION

    Professors of all disciplines can impact student learning by varying the way in which they engage students in knowledge sharing and creation. Online education technologies have become an important means to provide a more varied and differentiated curriculum, especially in higher education settings. Not only do online technologies provide an alternative or supplement to face-to-face lecture, but they also provide a variety of ways for students to interact with the content of the curriculum as well as the professor. Through technology experiences, especially when social media is employed, students become more actively engaged in their own learning when provided the opportunity to collaboratively work with their peers in constructing information (Norton & Sprague, 2001). Many universities offer courses through an online learning management system such as Blackboard Vista; Discussions, emailing, virtual meetings, instant messaging and a variety of other functions allow for students to interact with each other and with the professor; however, with the advent and development of virtual world technology for use in education, immersive education within these virtual worlds offer an alternative education experience.

    THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

    There is emerging evidence that virtual world technologies supplement and provide the online education experience by providing opportunities for meaningful social interaction, a constructivist element that can improve student learning during online instruction. When students meet together in virtual settings where they can “see” each other via avatars and interact in a virtual world a sense of belonging and an embodied social presence is created (Edirisingha et al., 2009; Holmberg & Huvila, 2008; Omale, Hung, Luetkehans, & Cooke-Plagwitz, 2009; Salmon, 2009; Warburton, 2009).

    How Do Virtual Worlds Enrich Learning?

    Immersive or virtual world learning provides students a multimodality experience.  These technologies are 3D Internet-based simulation environments in which users can play games, they are not games (Dawley, 2009). The virtual learning environment offers the opportunity for students to do what might otherwise be impractical or impossible in the real world (Twinning, 2009). Students can communicate with each other while walking, running, swimming, flying through environments as varied as coral reefs, Antarctic ice caps, volcanoes, or they can visit museums, art galleries, and classrooms that are virtual replicas of the real-world locations. Users can build buildings, cars, upload pictures and watch movies together.

    Web-based applications have facilitated the use of virtual worlds in learning, allowing the development of a range of teaching tools such as document and file sharing, holding meetings, conferences, and class lectures and seminars. In particular, virtual worlds have been studied as environments in which to instruct using problem-based and project-based education methodologies (Mayrath, Sanchez, Traphagan, Heikes, & Trivedi, 2007). Virtual environments appear to provide opportunities for situated learning, contextualized and supported by communities of practice which can provide powerful experiences that engage and inspire education that goes beyond the traditional classroom (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Lave, 1996; Wenger, 1998).

    Research on the use of virtual world learning has shown that learners are motivated to engage in the learning events because of the life-like avatars and the interactivity with digital mentors and role-playing actors within world (Veletsianos, 2008; 2009). Ang & Wang, (2006) studied students using virtual learning environments for science education.  They observed notable improvements in engagement and in attendance.  Scores on science exams were reported to have improved.

    Continued in article


    Businesses and organizations in Second Life --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Businesses_and_organizations_in_Second_Life
    Thank you for the heads up Roberto

  • February 17 messages from Bob Jensen and Jim Martin

    Thanks for the JA heads up Jim,

    It's interesting (but not surprising) how universities lag on using Second Life for education while industry is adopting second life like hot cakes for training purposes. The reason that the technology lag in universities is not surprising is that technology applications (beyond simple minded PowerPoint) are usually not rewarded. Professors invest their time in research, writing, and teaching classes. They are not rewarded for heavy time investments in applying newer technology in education if it takes a heavy time commitment.

    Businesses and organizations in Second Life training --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Businesses_and_organizations_in_Second_Life

    Universities in Second Life accounting education --- http://www.mydebitcredit.com/

     My hat is off to Steve Hornik. He's a rare breed --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife 

     Bob Jensen

     

    -----Original Message-----

    From: AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU] On Behalf Of James R. Martin/University of South Florida

    Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 4:59 PM

    To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU

    Subject: Second Life

     The following article discusses the opportunities for accountants in Second Life. Johnson, R. A. and J. M. Middleton. 2008. Accounting for second life. Journal of Accountancy (June): 54-58.

    According to these authors, Second Life is an engaging 3-D virtual world with economic implications and opportunities for the real world, and CPA Island is the current center of the public accounting profession in Second Life.

     Is this just fun and games, or is there something to be gained by developing an avatar and flying around in the second life environment?

    FEI Second Life Video (thank you Edith) ---
    If I Were an Auditor --- http://www.youtube.com/user/feiblog#p/a/u/0/Q-FR_fkTFKY

  • February 16, 2010 message from Orenstein, Edith [eorenstein@FINANCIALEXECUTIVES.ORG]

    I am a fan of Second Life, particularly training and networking programs offered by the Maryland Association of CPAs (MACPA) on CPA Island www.cpaisland.com , www.slacpa.org (full disclosure: MACPA recently produced the Second Life 'music video' about accounting which has previouly been circ. on this listserve, which I was involved with as well) .

    Separately, I am fascinated by the Roundtables conducted in Second Life (with optional traditional webcast access availalble)  by the FASB Research Initiative (FASRI), http://fasri.net/index.php/officehours/ led by Prof. Rob Bloomfield of Cornell Univ. The FASRI roundtables are fascinating on 2 levels: (1) feeling of 'engagement' by participating via your avatar as one of the 'group' in Second Life (same as for MACPA CPA Island training and networking programs) and (2) very interesting points of view and discussion take place in the FASRI roundtables.

    On balance, for an alternate view, I would note I just saw an article today, published by The Chronicle of Higher Ed on Feb. 14, After Frustrations in Second Life, Colleges Look to New Virtual Worlds http://chronicle.com/article/After-Frustrations-in-Second/64137/

    Edith Orenstein, FEI
    eorenstein@financialexecutives.org www.financialexecutives.org/blog

    February 17 reply from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    I would just like to echo the sentiments of Edith and Bob regarding Second Life.  Edith brings up some of the powerful benefits of using the platform from a professional perspective.  The ability to attend meetings, earn CPE and interact with groups that might otherwise be impossible because of distance can be a huge benefit.  Second Life seems to have a democratizing effect (I think I'm using that term correctly) probably because everyone's avatar looks about the same mid 20's and good looking, normal hierarchies become less important.

    In terms of education (where I use Second Life the most) it has the capability of transforming some (key word there some) content delivery.  As the Chronicle article that Edith referenced suggests building classes and campuses that look just like a real class are not usually that beneficial (The Chronicle article is also heavily riddled with inaccuracies and shows a real lack of understanding on the part of the author but I won't get into all of that here).  But building a cell that a biology student can literally go into and investigate, or being able to become a particle in a particle accelerator that the Department of Energy has created, or even a debit or credit on a T-account can be a pretty powerful learning experience that hopefully is engaging to students.

    And its my belief that this is type of platform (whether Second Life or some other) will become more and more important and accepted in the near future as students who are now in middle school and are growing up with these technologies eventually become our students.  A recent report from Kzero a consultancy specializing in virtual worlds reported that as of Q4 2009 there were 800 million registered virtual world accounts and significantly over 50% of those are in the age range 5-15.  http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/?p=3943

    Steven

    _________________________

    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739
    Second Life: Robins Hermano

    http://mydebitcredit.com
    yahoo ID: shornik

    Other Videos --- Click Here

    Social Networking for Education:  The Beautiful and the Ugly
    (including Google's Wave and Orcut for Social Networking and some education uses of Twitter)
    Updates will be at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

    Inspiration: Games versus Teachers
    "Creator of 'The Sims' Talks Educational Gaming," Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2009 ---
    http://chronicle.com/media/video/v55/i41.5/wright/?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
    Bob Jensen's threads on networked learning simulations --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Simulation
    Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment and learning games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
    Bob Jensen's threads on virtual worlds in education are shown below.


    It's Beginning to Look Like Second Life Pulled a Fast One

    "Academics Discuss Mass Migration From Second Life," by Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 14, 2010 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/academics-discuss-mass-migration-from-second-life/27672?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    October 14, 2010 reply from Steve Hornik

    First, yes I suppose pulling a fast one is is good explanation of the sudden announcement of the price increase. However as usual the Chronicle and at least the authors who write articles on SL are to be kind somewhat biased with little actual experience with the company or the platform.

    So this is what happened, LL has decided to no longer offer 50% discounts on land purchases (ie. server space) and the accompanying monthly maintenance fees. The edu and non-profit community was pretty upset as they were accustomed to this and some were using grants funds for their work in Second Life. Linden Labs has never understood academics and our different time frames based on semesters, quarters and annual grant budgeting. However, and this is important and of course not reported, once LL understood this they reached out and have offered anyone who wishes to renew their land purchase/maintenance for an additional 24 months at the same rates. I can tell you with first hand experience that they (LL) have gone out of the way to accommodate me and my project and have agreed to allow me to pay for continuing maintenance every 6 months as my grant funding comes in. I'm sure I'm not a special case.

    The bigger issue is why LL decided to do this now. One reason is that the edu market is actually pretty small in Second Life (despite what edu people's usually overblown egos tend to think). Another speculation is that they are getting their ducks in order for some type of acquisition. I've heard companies from Microsoft to Google. It's always a bit tenuous being a pioneer with new platforms and isn't always for the weak of heart but it is still my opinion that virtual worlds/environments will be a tool in most educators toolbox in the years to come.


    _________________________
    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739
    Second Life: Robins Hermano
    Twitter: shornik

    http://mydebitcredit.com
    yahoo ID: shornik


    "Really Engaging Accounting: Second LifeTM as a Learning Platform," by Steven Hornik and Steven Thornburg, Issues in Accounting Education 25(3), 361 (August 2010) (Not Free) --- Click Here

    ABSTRACT: This position paper argues that the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) be integrated across the accounting curriculum, in a manner relevant to the temporal stage and content of particular courses within the curriculum. XBRL is a metadata representation language for the Internet, based on the World Wide Web consortium's eXtensible Markup Language (XML). XBRL provides an important foundation for the automated transfer of accounting information and associated metadata. The design of XBRL is fine-tuned to meet the particular needs of accounting and related disclosures. Several countries have adopted XBRL in a variety of information value chains, notably in the USA context the Securities and Exchange Commission's interactive data program. XBRL has implications for the totality of the accounting curriculum and pedagogy. A program for the integration of XBRL across a typical accounting curriculum is developed. The proposed XBRL assignments, as part of this program, are aligned with Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Objectives. Recommendations are made for faculty, case and textbook writers, and the leadership of the XBRL and academic accounting communities

    PS
    The entire August 2010 issue of IAE is a special issue devoted to AIS, XBRL, and related topics.


    Second Life passes on to its Life Number Two

    June 10, 2010 message from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    Yesterday Linden Labs announced a significant restructuring laying off 30% of their workforce with the stated intent to focus on two endeavors:

    1) Create a browser based Second Life vs. the downloaded client you need today and

    2) Extend Second Life into more Social networks.

    The twitterverse, etc. among educators is pretty active now wondering what this means for us.  As a pretty big supporter of Second Life I wish I knew as one of the laid off employees Claudia Linden was the point person for education, and this follows on the heals of the layoff of Pathfinder Linden who was the initial trailblazer for Second Life and the education community.

    It does seem that this is intended to position Second Life more towards the mass consumers and in that respect I look forward to the changes that might come.  One of the biggest hurdles to using SL is overcoming the learning for the software that needs to be used and the hardware requirements that many students newly bought laptops, netbooks, and coming soon iPads and other tablets don't have - not to mention iPhones and Android devices.  So if this change enables students to access 3-D learning objects and environments on those devices than this will be a huge plus.

    What most educators are unsure about is that in the PR release that mentions the 2 areas of focus, the CEO of Linden Lab, Marc Kingdon states: ""We've emerged from a two-year investment period during which, among other things, we've spent a considerable amount of time improving reliability and the overall user experience. Today's announcement about our reorganization will help us make Second Life® even simpler, more enjoyable, relevant and engaging for consumers starting with their first experience."  So many are asking are the consumers a general term for your virtual clothing creating/buying individuals, business' for meetings, and educators?  Or is it just the former that will be the focus for LL.

    To be honest I'm not sure it matters that much.  When I first began to explore SL for use in my class it was probably 95% focuses on the former and educators like myself simply saw SL as a platform or tool that might be used (same thing that happened with the web if my memory serves me ).

    _________________________

    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739
    Second Life: Robins Hermano
    Twitter: shornik

    http://mydebitcredit.com
    yahoo ID: shornik


    Second Life 3-D and Interactive Virtual World Free Software (including learning experiments) ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

    Professor James Martin provides a summary of the following article in his MAAW Blog on February 25, 2010 at
    http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumKaplanHaenlein09.htm

    Kaplan, A. M. and M. Haenlein. 2009. The fairyland of Second Life: About virtual social worlds and how to use them. Business Horizons 52(6): 563-572.

    February 22, 2010 message from James R. Martin/University of South Florida [jmartin@MAAW.INFO]

    For those who would like to learn more about Accounting in the Second Life environment, I've developed a section on Second Life with a brief summary of the Johnson-Middleton article, a bibliography, and a links page. See http://maaw.info/SecondLifeMain.htm 

    There are a considerable number of related books, articles, and You Tube videos, but I have not found much in the accounting literature. When I find more and learn more I will place it on the pages mentioned above.

    I joined Second Life, developed and avatar, and have been looking around, but don't know how to do much. Those who are using Second Life for accounting education purposes have an opportunity to write about it for publication in the accounting education journals. Many accounting faculty members would be interested in what they are doing, and unfortunately, if they don't write about it, they are not likely to get any credit for their work in the academic environment.

    Another idea, perhaps there should be a Second Life section on AAA Commons. I call the MAAW section "Second Life, Avatars, and Virtual Worlds".


    How to Create 3-D Popup Books

    May 21, 2010 message from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    Fun for the weekend?  I just came across an interesting site that enables creations of short (up to 10 pages currently) pop-up books.  Whether or not this is useful for delivering basic concepts to our students is debatable but is certainly another technique to try.  It also has the added fun of being an augmented reality book, so you can use the website to read your 3-D pop book as if its resting on your hand - neat in a very geeky way, but pedagogically I'm not so sure.

    The website is at:  http://alpha.zooburst.com/index.php and is currently in Alpha stage testing, I wrote up a blog article on it replete with pictures, a video and of course an accounting pop-up book:

    http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2010/05/21/zooburst-3d-augmented-reality-story-telling/

     Let me know what you think,

    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739
    Second Life: Robins Hermano
    Twitter: shornik

    http://mydebitcredit.com
    yahoo ID: shornik

    Jensen Comment
    Steve Hornik is a pioneer in the use of Second Life in his accounting courses ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife


    Penn State requires academic advisors to be available in Second Life virtual worlds
    Plenty of colleges have a presence in Second Life. Pennsylvania State University is taking that a step further, requiring academic advisers at its online campus to be available for meetings with students in the virtual world.
    "Second Life Duty Is Now Required for Penn State's Online Advisers," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 9, 2009 --- Click Here

    November 11, 2009 reply from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

  • I'm not sure what I think of this. It is not for all students. Students taking face-to-face classes still get advised the traditional way. I imagine the traditional way at Penn State is much like the traditional way at a lot of other public universities, in which students largely figure out things on their own.

    I tried out second life, and found that there were significant start-up or learning costs. Therefore I simply stopped making the effort. A factor was that my fairly new computer had difficulty in rendering the graphics. A lot of people use laptops that don't quite have the muscle of many desktops, and hence have problems.

    I keep asking students how familiar they are with second life, and it is rare that anyone indicates ever having been on it.

    I wonder, is Second Life a failed experiment. It has never caught on in a big way.

    Now, if Penn State required academic advisors to be available on Facebook, they might have lots of traffic.

    David Albrecht

    November 12. 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi David,

    You’re correct about the startup costs of Second Life. In retirement I just am not interested in that kind of second life.

    However, you’re wrong in your conjecture about Second Life being a “failed experiment” (at least at this point in time until something better comes along for virtual world communicating and learning at reasonable costs). High end virtual reality is still too costly for widespread collegiate applications even though it is great for deep-pockets pilot training and battlefield training of military officers. Before launching the infamous Gulf War I retaking of Kuwait, the U.S. commanders purportedly invaded a virtual Kuwait in a high-end virtual reality.

    Google closed down Lively rather than upgrading it to be a serious competitor to Second Life.

    Second Life has become ubiquitous inside and outside academe, although Steve Hornik reported that in his early experiments in accounting education some students question the benefits relative to their costs in time and trouble --- (See below)

    Bob Jensen

    November 2, 2009 reply from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    Just to add to Bob's (as usual thorough coverage of a topic) here's a link to a Second Life blog devoted to covering education in Second Life:
    https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/learninginworld

    You'll see in 2 out of the 3 most recent posts two are for the Texas Statewide roll out of Second Life and Open Universities new presence in the virtual world.  Coupled with Penn State's announcement I'd say this data suggests that Second Life is growing in importance for educational institutions not declining.

    To the comment about learning curves, the curve is there but its really not that more difficult from learning any new piece of software.  I think many of us have become accustomed (perhaps too much) to expecting everything to be easy with similar if not the same interfaces.  And certainly its true that without believing there is a reward at the end for your effort many feel that its not worth it to learn the interface.  To that end Linden Lab is working on what they call the first 5 minute (or some similarly small amount of time) experience and the interface to try to make it easier for new users to a) understand the interface and b) understand how/what second life can be used for. But we will have to wait to see if their efforts are successful as these changes haven't been rolled out yet.

    And as Bob correctly pointed out, my students consistently fall into 3 groups, 1/3 who really like it (they "get" it), 1/3 who really don't like it (much of that I believe has to do with hardware issues as David pointed out), and 1/3 who use it and view it as just another tool assigned by me.  And while it still takes time to implement the students who are using it in general outperform those who don't.

    _____________________________
    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739
    Second Life: Robins Hermano

    http://mydebitcredit.com
    yahoo ID: shornik
     


    Student Evaluation of Learning Using Second Life

    January 8. 2010 message from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    I've written a blog post about how my students have assessed Second Life since Fall 2007 when I first began using it.  The post only examines one question from a semester end survey that I ask the students to complete.  It may not be classified as rigorous empirical research but I think it's interesting nevertheless.  Here's the link if anyone's interested:  http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2010/01/08/second-life-what-do-the-students-think/

     Enjoy your weekend,

    Steven

    _________________________

    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739

    Second Life: Robins Hermano --- http://mydebitcredit.com
    yahoo ID: shornik


    "City Tech Gets a ‘Second Life’,"  by Converge Staff , Converge Magazine, January 4, 2010 ---
    http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/City-Tech-Gets-a-Second-Life.html?elq=4768d02be55741bb9e3e0bc860e41996

    At Brooklyn's New York City College of Technology (City Tech), faculty and students aren't just attending classes on campus, they're attending virtually as well — in Second Life.

    Several classes are involved with developing the City Tech's presence in Second Life, a virtual digital world created by its more than nine million “residents.” In this world, alter egos (avatars) they have constructed live, play and work in immersive environments — artificial, interactive, computer-created scenes or “worlds” within which users can immerse themselves and interact with others. In Second Life, students can manipulate their avatars’ movements to walk around in, fly through and thoroughly explore such virtual environments as the Sistine Chapel, foreign cities, lecture halls and workplaces.

    On “CityTech Island,” City Tech's Second Life site, students from various academic disciplines not only observe, but also, along with their professors, help create that world, which challenges them to use and master 3-D modeling skills in some cases or
    script-writing skills in others.

    “Some consider Second Life only a game,” says City Tech Entertainment Technology Professor David Smith, “but we see it as a huge outlet for creative activity, allowing students and faculty to work on projects as a team.”


    Second Life's introduction

    Smith introduced Second Life to the college and uses it in the Introduction to Interactive Technology, Design Process course and for his senior students’ final projects.

    City Tech professors currently using Second Life in their classes, in addition to Smith, are Isaac Barjis and Walied Samarrai (biological sciences); Reneta Lansiquot (English) and Jenna Spevack (entertainment technology). All of them have presented papers on their work or have reached out to involve segments of the larger community — Brooklyn artists, for example. 

    Spevack and her Introduction to Media Design Process students planned, designed and developed the virtual "
    Brooklyn is Watching" Museum. It houses photos of artwork created by the Brooklyn is Watching Project, which invites interaction between the thriving art communities of Second Life and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Project and Museum will continue to evolve during the spring 2010 semester.

    CityTech Island features a virtual laboratory where professor avatars lecture and conduct experiments. Biology students can take a special ride — inside a virtual cell. At the International Summer Simulation Multiconference, held in Istanbul, Smith, Barjis and Samarrai presented a research paper, “Modeling and Simulation of 3-D Virtual Cell as a Game,” to an audience of top simulation and modeling researchers.


    Actively engaged students more apt to learn

    Their paper, published in Simulation Journal, proposed Second Life as a tool enabling students to enter, observe and visit a cell’s components, ask questions and interact with those components as one would in a video game. “Students can tour the cell, take a quiz and test their knowledge after and before the tour,” Samarrai explained. “We are working now on other processes such as transportation and diffusion of molecules, ions and water across the cell membrane.”

    Continued in article

     


    Creating Lives in the Classroom," by Edith Sheffer, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 22, 2009 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Teaching-Matters-Creating/49211/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    At the beginning of my course on German history at Stanford University last fall, each student drew an identity at random that he or she would keep throughout the quarter—creating a unique historical character who was born in 1900 and lived through Germany's tumultuous 20th century. Through weekly posts to individual pages on the course Web site, students researched the texture of everyday life, untangled pivotal events, and weighed questions of humanity. Although fictional, the lives that the students developed offered a unique entree into the past, stimulating their curiosity and critical thinking about history.

    Each student had one sentence to go on with his or her character's birthplace, gender, religion, and parents' occupations. Characters were born into all walks of life: the son of a prostitute in Berlin, the daughter of Jewish banker in Munich, the son of East Prussian nobility. The rest was up to students to decide. I gave weekly assignments to help structure their posts, requesting diary entries for key dates or eyewitness responses to certain events, and would note any historical inaccuracies in their writings. But I did not interfere with individual choices as to how the avatars would feel, live and act, placing just three restrictions on them: The characters could not die or be otherwise incapacitated, leave Germany permanently, or change the course of history.

    That open-endedness engendered a sense of ownership, fostering seriousness and self-correction. Students showed humility in their approach to the material; in the words of one senior, "I kept asking myself, Is this realistic?" Perhaps more than anything, the high standards of the class Web site helped sustain the quality of the work and a productive exchange of ideas.

    Over the quarter, the avatars lived through two world wars and the cold war, experiencing monarchy, democracy, fascism, and communism. They each saw Hitler at the Beer Hall Putsch and had to decide whether to vote for him a decade later. They were at the Berlin Wall when it went up in 1961 and came down in 1989. Building upon course readings, they had conversations with the writer Joseph Roth in Weimar Berlin, with the Holocaust perpetrators of Police Battalion 101, and with estranged family and friends on the opposite side of the Iron Curtain. They witnessed and, in some cases, participated in the violence of Germany's 20th century, even as they lived at the pinnacle of Germany's cultural and economic achievements. The characters also reflected upon the meaning of it all as they met together at the close of the century.

    As the avatars became increasingly three-dimensional, the project resonated beyond the classroom. Students endowed them with personality quirks, discussed them with friends and family, and incorporated their own histories. One based his character's persecution and emigration from Nazi Germany on his own family's experience; another wrote his grandfather into his story. They also explored individual interests. A history major, prompted by election campaigning over Proposition 8 in California, had her character outed as gay in the Third Reich; she researched the treatment of homosexuals in Germany's successive regimes, integrating details like the number of gay bars in East and West Berlin into her weekly updates.

    Students sent their characters on divergent paths. Some plunged head long into radical events and ideologies; others "took the path of least resistance" and "just let history pass [them] by." Some characters' values and personalities stayed consistent; others took "fluctuating, elastic political positions." Some characters spent their whole lives in one place; others ranged far and wide—a colonist to Southwest Africa, Jewish émigrés to Britain and America (they had to return to Germany), a priest to counsel killers in Poland, a resisting factory worker to Auschwitz, and a POW to Siberia.

    The project inspired an unusual level of academic commitment. Students often went well beyond the required material in developing their avatars. Their research included Internet searches for images, period-appropriate children's names, and food specialties as well as reading scholarly works on particular topics of interest. They wrote an average of 1,120 words per post, equivalent to four and a half pages a week, in addition to their regular work. Most important, the students integrated all of the information into a coherent whole and uncovered their own historical lessons along the way.

    Students said they gained a greater appreciation for everyday complexities—how ordinary people adjusted to extraordinary times, and how adaptations propelled new social and political realities. Their simple vignettes expressed complicated ideas. One farm woman from Dachau supported but had visceral misgivings about the local concentration camp: "I dislike the communists as much as anyone else, but smelling [their ashes] on the wind turned my stomach." Students felt that they came to understand how history makes individuals and individuals make history. A sophomore reflected: "The project forced us to see the situation as much from within as a student can, years later and thousands of miles away. Oskar, to whom I grew attached, had a past, a family, thoughts, ideas. There were justifications for his actions that were intricately tied in with all of these, ones that I would never have considered without a specific persona in mind."

    The project also underscored how bound the characters' perceptions and opinions were to the circumstances of the moment—and how decisions made in one decade reverberate in the next. One character, an armaments-manufacturer-turned-democratic-leader, observed that "the only way to begin to make sense of the five very different Germanys I have lived in is to understand the malleable nature of the human mind and human society."

    Creating lives can be an effective way to develop individual interests within the bounds of a survey course, as a complement to traditional lectures, exams, and papers. Students commented that it provided a sense of freedom rare in their course work, allowing space for imagination, authorship, and identification. The personal narratives were more work than traditional weekly papers, yet students agreed it was a rewarding way to expand upon the standard approach. As one said, "It was more than worth it. It allowed us to fuse the course material with our own creativity and take away so much more than a typical survey of history."

    Although the experience involved a small group of motivated Stanford students, mostly history majors, the basic method can be adapted to different fields and classroom environments. The core concept—creating continuing lives within a Web-based community forum—could have broad appeal. In turn, the personal investment fosters enthusiasm and lasting learning.

    Edith Sheffer is an Andrew W. Mellon fellow in the humanities at Stanford University. Her book, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain will be published by Oxford University Press in 2011.

     

    Jensen Comment
    It struck me that this might be a good way to teach the Enron/Andersen Scandal by letting assigning students to play the parts of David DuckIt, Carl BassFishing, Ken LayLie, Jeff StirFry, Andy FasToad, Bob JaedickeSleepAlot, and the rest ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm

    The Enron Home Video (in praise of HFA, Hypothetical Future Accounting at Enron)
    This is a home movie played by the real players, not actors
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/enron3.wmv


    The IRS Embraces the Virtual World of Second Life Software
    The virtual world of Second Life is home to entrepreneurs, visionaries, crackpots, nerds, CPAs (!), Fortune 500 businesses - basically anyone with a computer and a willingness to explore a 3-D world - and it also includes the IRS among its denizens. The IRS uses Second Life as a recruiting tool, and claims that, depending on how one looks at it, the taxing agency is actually saving millions of taxpayer dollars by devoting some time and money to this virtual world instead of using its resources in more expensive venues, like, say, NASCAR?
    Gail Perry, "IRS might be saving millions by recruiting in Second Life," AccountingWeb, August 19, 2009 ---
    http://www.accountingweb.com/topic/irs-might-be-saving-millions-recruiting-second-life


    Virtual worlds are being put to serious real-world uses—and are starting to encounter some real-world problems
    With the popularity of virtual worlds such as Second Life and games such as “World of Warcraft” and “Sims Online”, companies, academics, health-care providers and the military are evaluating virtual environments for use in training, management and collaboration. Superficially, such uses look a lot like playing a video game. “The thing that distinguishes them from games is the outcome,” says Mr Wortley. Rather than catering to virtual thrill-seekers, the aim is to find new ways for people to learn or work together. Blitz Games, for example, the firm behind “Karaoke Revolution” and other games, has applied its technology in a rather more serious field: the development of a medical-triage simulator. The idea is to use it to train paramedics, doctors and firefighters in prioritising care immediately after a disaster. “We are simulating the scene of an explosion on a high street,” says Mary Matthews of Blitz's TruSim division. Players observe the virtual patients and gauge their respiration, pallor, bleeding and level of distress; then they use this information to determine which of them is in greatest need, all against the clock. Each player's performance is scored according to an industry-recognised training protocol. Real-life exercises could achieve the same objective, but the simulated environment cuts costs and improves access . . . With such large sums at stake, it is not surprising that other unpleasant aspects of real life are starting to appear in virtual worlds too. In May two players were banned from Second Life for depicting sexual activity between an adult and a child. Eros, a company that sells sex-related add-ons in Second Life, filed a lawsuit in July against an inhabitant of the virtual world for selling unauthorised copies of its SexGen bed, which facilitates sex between in-game characters. “When you have a community that is an extension of Newark, eventually you will have the ills of Newark going on,” says Edward Castronova, a virtual-worlds expert at Indiana University. Some people think the very nature of virtual worlds can inspire bad behaviour. Such environments provide “anonymity along with a lack of social recourse,” notes Gus Tai, a venture capitalist at at Trinity Ventures in California's Silicon Valley.
    "Getting Serious," The Economist, December 6, 2007 -- http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10202591


    "Virtual Medical Training Comes to Second Life," by Erica R. Hendry, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3890&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Students have graduated, earned law credit, and held debates on Second Life. Now some universities are using the virtual world to train nurses.

    Virtual medical training is nothing new — medical students have used CD-ROM’s and other interactive programs to practice diagnosis for years. And MyCaseSpace, a virtual medical-training program created by a professor at the University of Central Florida, will allow professors to create simulated cases to test students at Central Florida’s College of Medicine this fall.

    What makes the Second Life approach different, according to an article in Discover magazine, is its ability to call on real-life participants, giving students access to professors or volunteers who act as patients, as well as a range of medical experts who teach or practice at colleges and universities across the country.

    Students can interact with the patients and doctors, order tests, diagnose problems, and recommend treatment, according to the article.

    For example, a professor at San Jose State University created a Heart Murmur Sim, which uses real cardiac sounds to train students to listen to a patient’s chest — called a cardiac auscultation exam — and identify heart murmurs, the article said.

    Another program is the Nursing Education Simulation, created earlier this year by a nursing instructor in Washington. The program requires students to wear a headset with a display, like pilots use, to “monitor” and “use” defibrillators, IV pumps, and medication to treat a computer-generated patient who is experiencing certain symptoms.

    While no studies have emerged about the benefits of using Second Life to train medical students, it offers a richer set of resources, with lower costs, than training in a physical, simulated operating room, said John Lester, an education and health-care market developer at Linden Lab, the company that created Second Life.

    “If there’s an expert in Brussels who is a specialist in a procedure that I want to teach my students, I can bring him or her into the virtual space to train them,” Mr. Lester said in the article. “Moving around in the physical world is expensive and the biggest obstacle in medical training.”

    Jensen Comment
    The University of Central Florida in mentioned above. At UCF our Second Life expert in accounting education is Steve Hornik --- http://www.bus.ucf.edu/shornik/

    Second Life Video Tutorials --- http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials


    "American U. in Cairo Presents a Documentary About Second-Life Journalism," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 13, 2009 ---
    http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3710&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

    Those who attended the Virtual Journalism Conference at Washington State University this week may have glimpsed the future of global journalism in a brief documentary about an avatar-to-avatar news conference. The news conference, which took place in February in the virtual platform Second Life, gave eight Egyptian political bloggers a chance to directly question James K. Glassman, the public-diplomacy czar under form President George W. Bush.

    “This is the ultimate situation of breaking down barriers of time and space,” said Lawrence Pintak, director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo—or, rather, his slightly-less-gray-haired avatar said that in the documentary. “We’re putting together people who are on opposite sides of the world for a real-time conversation.”

    The Second-Life news conference was the final stage of a project, overseen by American University in Cairo and paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development, that brought the Egyptian bloggers to the United States to cover last fall’s presidential election.

    Technology that allows journalists anywhere in the world to connect with each other and with newsmakers could make reporting less costly at a time when many newspapers are cutting back on travel. And while some might dismiss a Second-Life meet-up as little more than a glorified conference call, Rita J. King, a former journalist, said the difference is tremendous. Ms. King is CEO and creative director of Dancing Ink Productions, which designed the virtual space where the news conference was held and also helped create the documentary.

    First of all, “teleconferences put people to sleep,” she told The Chronicle. They’re also expensive. But most importantly, the experience of interacting in a three-dimensional space is much richer, sensationally and psychologically.

    “Neurologically, people feel they are sharing an experience if the brain perceives that they are sharing space,” she said. “I have found that people are very likely to be candid in interviews that are conducted virtually, much more so than over the phone or even in person.… It is safe physically, first of all, but it also eliminates elements of discomfort that are part of the physical world, related to socioeconomic status, age, gender, race.… There are all sorts of limiting factors that prevent people from being candid with one another in person.”

     


    January 30, 2009 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    TEACHING IN VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

    "In the past two years, over 300 colleges and universities have claimed virtual land in Second Life and in other virtual environments in an attempt to enhance content delivery, raise institutional profiles, and explore new frontiers in education." The latest issue of INNOVATE (vol. 5, no. 2, December 2008/January 2009) explores how virtual environments provide opportunities and challenges for educators and their institutions. Papers include:

    "Hacking Say and Reviving ELIZA: Lessons from Virtual Environments" By Rochelle Mazar and Jason Nolan
    http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=547 

    "Using Second Life with Learning-Disabled Students in Higher Education" By Stephanie McKinney, et al.
    http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=573 

    "Knowledge-Driven Design of Virtual Patient Simulations" By Victor Vergara, et al.
    http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=579 

    The entire issue is available at http://innovateonline.info/ 
    Registration is required to access the complete articles; registration is free.

    Innovate: Journal of Online Education [ISSN 1552-3233], an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal, is published bimonthly by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University. The journal focuses on the creative use of information technology (IT) to enhance educational processes in academic, commercial, and governmental settings. For more information, contact James L. Morrison, Editor-in-Chief; email: innovate@nova.edu ;
    Web: http://innovateonline.info/ 

     


    "College Debate Teams to Face Off in Second Life (Virtual World), by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 23, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3571&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Watch the video at
    http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3571&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    College debate matches can be physically intense — with participants rattling off arguments at top speed and gesturing dramatically. So it will be interesting to see if a debate contest can work in Second Life, the virtual world.

    This week Stephen Llano, the director of debate at St. John’s University, in New York, announced what is billed as the first tournament debate held in Second Life. It will take place on February 4 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time in the university’s virtual campus (shown here). A two-person team from St. Johns will go head-to-head with two students from the University of Vermont. The topic will be whether or not colleges should limit tenure for professors.

    The event will not be an official competition, but if it goes well, it could lead to virtual matches in the future that would count toward tournament scoring, said Mr. Llano.

    He said the technology could be particularly helpful in letting students compete against teams in other countries. “Not everyone gets a chance to travel internationally to debate against universities all over the world,” Mr. Llano said. “We could have some international debate online where people could stay at home and particpate in an international debate at very low costs.”

    He said he was not sure how well the technology would work. The plan is to use a voice-chat feature of Second Life so that competitors can hear each other. Meanwhile, the participants can use their cartoon-like virtual characters, or avatars, to gesture to emphasize their points.

    Mr. Llano said Second Life was chosen for the event over other types of online chat environments because so many colleges have built virtual campuses there. In the past, some debates have been held online using Web cams rather than virtual worlds like Second Life, he said.


    Google closed down Lively --- http://www.lively.com/goodbye.html

    "Google ventures into virtual reality with 'Lively,'" MIT's Technology Review, July 8, 2008 ---
    http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/21055/?nlid=1196&a=f

    In the latest expansion beyond its main mission of organizing the world's information, Internet search leader Google Inc. hopes to orchestrate more virtual socializing on the Web.

    Google debuted a free service Tuesday in which three-dimensional software enables people to congregate in fantasy rooms and other computer-manufactured versions of real life. The service, called "Lively," represents Google's answer to an already well-established site, "Second Life," where people deploy animated alter egos known as avatars to navigate virtual reality.

    Google thinks "Lively" will encourage even more people to dive into alternate realities because it isn't tethered to one Web site like Second Life, and it doesn't cost anything to use. After installing a small packet of software from lively.com, a user can enter Lively from other Web sites, like social networking sites and blogs.

    Google already has created a Lively application that works on Facebook.com, one of the Web's hottest hangouts, and is working on a version suitable for an even larger online social network, News Corp.'s MySpace.com.

    "We know people already spend a lot of time online socializing, so we just want to try to make it more enjoyable," said Niniane Wang, a Google engineering manager who oversaw Lively's creation over the past year.

    Lively's users will be able to sculpt an avatar that can be male, female or even a different species. An avatar can assume a new identity, change clothes or convey emotions with a few clicks of the mouse.

    The service also enables users to create different digital environments to roam, from a child's room to an exotic island. The rooms can be decorated with a wide variety of furniture, including large-screen televisions that can be set up to play different clips from YouTube.com, Google's video-sharing service.

    Lively users can then invite their friends and family into their virtual realities, where they can chat, hug, cry, laugh and interact as if they were characters in a video game.

    As a precaution, Google is requiring Lively's users to be at least 13 years old -- a constraint that hasn't been enough to prevent young children from running into trouble on other social spots on the Web.

    Google spent several months testing Lively among a group of Arizona State University students before opening the service to the public through its "Labs" section -- a technology sandbox that the Mountain View-based company set up for its experimental products.

    Although Google is best known for the search engine that generates most of its profits, the company has introduced other services that are widely used without making much, if any, money. Google's peripheral products include its 3-D "Earth" software and Picasa for sharing photos.

    Google has no plans to allow advertising within Lively, Wang said.

    Aaron Delwiche, an assistant professor of communications at Trinity University, is disappointed that Lively does not allow people to create their own content, a feature of the virtual world Second Life. "Google has given us an impoverished space in which content can only be developed in-house or by 'trusted developers,'" he writes. Vili Lehdonvirta, a researcher at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, says this about Mr. Delwiche's observation. "I don't think it's true that Second Life style dedicated tools for creating complex 3D content are a prerequisite for creativity and expression. People used to build pianos out of fish steaks and chessboards in Ultima Online," he writes of the popular three-dimensional game. "Still, I agree that it would be really cool if Google came out with advanced content creation tools that are easy to use."
    Andrea L. Foster, "Scholars Are Skeptical of Google's New Virtual World," Chronicle of Higher Education, July 9, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3155&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    July 10, 2008 reply from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    There are myriad virtual worlds coming online each day, of course when your name is Google you get a lot of press.  Most of these worlds will likely fail and the one's left will also likely offer different functionality.  Lively, is a simple 2.5D social chat tool, a way to bring immersion and presence to chat, and from the look of it aimed at a certain younger demographic (which as I reminded by another email list, Google does demographics pretty well).  For a much more learned discussion of what might happen in the next few years as this space attracts more and more players I invite you to read this blog post from Terra Nova by Bruce Damer, http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2008/06/virtually-etern.html
     
    Lastly, the Chronicle article blurb ended with this quote: "Still, I agree that it would be really cool if Google came out with advanced content creation tools that are easy to use."
     
    They do, it's called Sketchup, http://sketchup.google.com/ and it's quite amazing.  What would be really cool is if you could import that content into Second Life!
     

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Carolyn Kotlas [mailto:kotlas@email.unc.edu]
    Sent: Friday, October 03, 2008 2:54 PM
    To: Jensen, Robert

    TL INFOBITS September 2008          No. 27            ISSN: 1931-3144

    About INFOBITS

     INFOBITS is an electronic service of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ITS Teaching and Learning division. Each month the ITS-TL's Information Resources Consultant monitors and selects from a number of information and instructional technology sources that come to her attention and provides brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators.

    NOTE: You can read the Web version of this issue at  http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/bitsep08.php

    You can read all back issues of Infobits at http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/

    ......................................................................

     Virtual Worlds in Higher Education Instruction
    Games and Learning 
    Distance Learning
    Journal Archives Now Online 
    Carolina Conversations
    Recommended Reading

    Bob Jensen's related threads are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    ......................................................................

    EDITOR'S NOTE: Normally, Infobits does not focus on a single topic or theme, However, the recently-published abundance of papers, reports, and articles on using games or virtual worlds for teaching and learning has prompted me to devote most of this issue to these resources.

    ......................................................................

     VIRTUAL WORLDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTRUCTION

     "Clearly there is a large and growing group of educators who believe that many good things, many very good things, are connected with virtual worlds. There are also still staunch critics yelling about what is wrong with virtual worlds. With many people engaging in this robust conversation today, it would be a great disservice to both the local and the global community not to have more institutions participating in the discussion."

          -- A. J. Kelton, "Virtual Worlds? 'Outlook Good'"

     The theme of the September/October 2008 issue of EDUCAUSE REVIEW is learning in virtual worlds. In "Higher Education as Virtual Conversation" Sarah Robbins-Bell explains how "using [virtual worlds] requires a shift in thinking and an adjustment in pedagogical methods that will embrace the community, the fluid identity, and the participation--indeed, the increased conversation--that virtual spaces can provide."

    Cynthia M. Calongne ("Educational Frontiers: Learning in a Virtual World") draws on the experience of teaching nine university courses using Second Life to discuss what is required for success in this teaching environment.

    In "Drawing a Roadmap: Barriers and Challenges to Designing the Ideal Virtual World for Higher Education," Chris Johnson provides a "roadmap for designing an 'ideal' virtual world for higher education, pointing decision-makers in a general direction for implementing virtual worlds and noting various barriers along the way."

    These and other papers and articles are available online at  http://connect.educause.edu/apps/er/index.asp?time=1222867545

     

    EDUCAUSE Review [ISSN 1527-6619], a bimonthly print magazine that explores developments in information technology and education, is published by EDUCAUSE (http://www.educause.edu/ ). Articles from current and back issues of EDUCAUSE Review are available on the Web at http//www.educause.edu/pub/er /

    See also:
    "B-Schools in Second Life: It's More Than Just Fun and Games; It's the Confluence of Playing, Learning, and Working," By Vivek Bhatnagar, THE SLOAN-C VIEW, vol. 7, no. 8, September 2008 --- http://www.sloanconsortium.org/viewarticle_SL  

     "The Mean Business of Second Life: Teaching Entrepreneurship, Technology and e-Commerce in Immersive Environments," By Brian Mennecke, Lesya M. Hassall, and Janea Triplett, JOURNAL OF ONLINE LEARNING AND TEACHING, vol. 4, no. 3, September 2008 http://jolt.merlot.org/vol4no3/hassall_0908.htm

    JOURNAL OF VIRTUAL WORLDS RESEARCH --- http://jvwresearch.org/  
    This new open access, peer-reviewed publication, hosted by the Texas Digital Library consortium (http://jvwresearch.org/) is a "transdisciplinary journal that engages a wide spectrum of scholarship and welcomes contributions from the many disciplines and approaches that intersect virtual worlds research."
    The theme for volume 2, number 1, to be published in March 2009, will be "Pedagogy, Education and Innovation in 3-D Virtual Worlds."

     

    Bob Jensen’s related threads are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

    ......................................................................

     

    "UCLA Professors Use Virtual Reality to Explore Ancient Egypt," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 24, 2009 --- Click Here

    To Willeke Wenderish, an associate professor of Egyptian archaeology at the University of California at Los Angeles, exploring the ruins of an ancient temple within an air-conditioned computer classroom can be even more useful than visiting the site in person.

    Ms. Wenderish recently co-produced a virtual-reality project called “Digital Karnak,” which allows students (and visitors to the project’s Web site) to learn how the Egyptian religious center has evolved over two millennia. Milling about the ruins or studying a two-dimensional map of the Karnak site can be disorienting, she said. Virtual modeling, on the other hand, allows scholars to observe what in the structure changed and when—using a more sophisticated tool than the mind’s eye.

    “It helps them think through all the things that you wouldn’t have thought through if you were looking at a map,” she said—“which areas were roofed, not roofed, how high would the walls have been, how large would a doorway have been.” It also allows scholars to more vividly illustrate contrasting theories of how the site evolved over time, she said.

    Ms. Wenderish said she plans to evangelize on the advantages of virtual modeling at this weekend’s annual conference of the American Research Center in Egypt, in Dallas. She thinks virtual technology, while increasingly popular, is still underused in archaeology. One reason is that “they’re costly endeavors,” she said, but illuminating ones.

    And not just for understanding architectural sites, either: Ms. Wenderish said she is also working on virtual-reality projects on topographical sites, such as the Faiyum oasis, which contains some of the earliest evidence of Egyptian agriculture. “We model different levels of lake,” she said, “changes in landscape over time, where we find material and how it relates to the landscape—really to map out how the movement of the lake relates to human occupation in the area.”

     

     

    GAMES AND LEARNING

    The theme of both Fall 2008 issues of COMPUTERS AND COMPOSITION and COMPUTERS AND COMPOSITION ONLINE is "Reading Games: Composition, Literacy, and Video Gaming" -- "a look at the computer and video gaming industry and its influence on our literacy practices. Articles include a variety of interesting topics, from encouraging reflective gaming/play, to adapting games for writing courses, to writing in World of Warcraft, to collaborative writing in Alternate Reality Games, and more." Although the theme is the same for both publications, there is no overlap in their contents.

    Computers and Composition: An International Journal [ISSN: 8755-46150] is a refereed online journal hosted at Ohio State University and "devoted to exploring the use of computers in composition classes, programs, and scholarly projects. It provides teachers and scholars a forum for discussing issues connected to computer use." While all papers are available online only by subscription, your institution may provide access through Elsevier's ScienceDirect eSelect ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/ ); check with your campus library for availability. For more information and to access current and back issues, go to http://computersandcomposition.osu.edu/

    Computers and Composition Online is the companion journal to Computers and Composition. Current and back issues are available at no cost at http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/

    See also:
    "Teens, Video Games, and Civics," By Amanda Lenhart, et al, September 16, 2008 --- http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/263/report_display.asp

    The Pew Research Center recently reported that "virtually all American teens [97% of teens ages 12-17] play computer, console, or cell phone games and that the gaming experience is rich and varied, with a significant amount of social interaction and potential for civic engagement."

    "The Civic Potential of Video Games," By Civic Engagement Research Group at Mills College, September 7, 2008 --- http://www.civicsurvey.org/White_paper_link_text.pdf

    "Although it shares some text and findings with the Teens, Games, and Civics report, it provides a more detailed discussion of the relevant research on civics and gaming. In addition, this report discusses the policy and research implications of these findings for those interested in better understanding and promoting civic engagement through video games."

    "Literacy through Gaming: The Influence of Videogames on the Writings of High School Freshman Males," By Immaculee Harushimana , JOURNAL OF LITERACY AND TECHNOLOGY, vol. 9, no. 2, August 2008, pp. 35-56 --- http://www.literacyandtechnology.org/volume10/harushimana.pdf  

     "While videogames often evoke concerns among parents, politicians, and educators, they pervade the lives of the youth in today's world and constitute a major component of the 'new literacy studies' field. In an era when young generations are digital-friendly and video game savvy, the role of video gaming in children and adolescents' cognitive development must not be overlooked. Educating today's generation of learners requires an understanding of the new digital environment into which they were born."

     Bob Jensen’s related threads are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

    ......................................................................

     

    DISTANCE LEARNING JOURNAL ARCHIVES NOW ONLINE
    The complete archives (1986-2008) of THE JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION are now online and searchable at http://www.jofde.ca/  
    Papers in the current issue include:

    "Disciplinary Differences in E-learning Instructional Design, " By Glenn Gordon Smith, Ana T. Torres-Ayala, and Allen J. Heindel

    "Teacher and Student Behaviors in Face-to-Face and Online Courses:  Dealing With Complex Concepts, " By C. E. (Betty) Cragg, Jean Dunning, and Jaqueline Ellis

    "The Effect of Peer Collaboration and Collaborative Learning on Self-efficacy and Persistence in a Learner-paced Continuous Intake Model," By Bruno Poellhuber, Martine Chomienne, Thierry Karsenti, The Journal of Distance Education [ISSN: 1916-6818 (online), ISSN: 0830-0445 (print)] is an "international publication of the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) [that] aims to promote and encourage Canadian scholarly work in distance education and provide a forum for the dissemination of international scholarship." For more information, contact: British Columbia Institute of Technology, Learning & Teaching Centre, 3700 Willingdon Ave., Burnaby, BC, Canada V5G 3H2; tel: 604-454-2280; fax: 604-431-7267; email: journalofde@gmail.com ; Web: http://www.jofde.ca/  

    ......................................................................

     CAROLINA CONVERSATIONS

    Carolina Conversations, launched in September 2008, is a series of live interviews with members of the UNC-Chapel Hill community conducted in the virtual world, Second Life. Guests will discuss their work and interests and will also respond to questions from the Second Life audience attending in-world. The next interview will be on October 7, 2008. For more information, to get the SLurl, or to view videos of past conversations, go to http://its.unc.edu/tl/conversations/

    Carolina Conversations is sponsored by UNC-Chapel Hill Information Technology Services' Teaching and Learning division, the group that publishes TL INFOBITS.

    ......................................................................

     

    RECOMMENDED READING
    "Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column.

    "Is Stupid Making Us Google?"  By James Bowman, The New Atlantis, no. 21, Summer 2008, pp. 75-80 ---
    http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/is-stupid-making-us-google

     "Generally speaking, even those who are most gung-ho about new ways of learning probably tend to cling to a belief that education has, or ought to have, at least something to do with making things lodge in the minds of students--this even though the disparagement of the role of memory in education by professional educators now goes back at least three generations, long before computers were ever thought of as educational tools. That, by the way, should lessen our astonishment, if not our dismay, at the extent to which the educational establishment, instead of viewing these developments with alarm, is adapting its understanding of what education is to the new realities of how the new generation of 'netizens' actually learn (and don't learn) rather than trying to adapt the kids to unchanging standards of scholarship and learning."

     Editor's note: The article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" mentioned in Bowman's article was the June 2008 Infobits "Recommended Reading" suggestion (http://its.unc.edu/tl/infobits/bitjun08.php#7 ).

     


    "Co-Founder of Second Life Says Academics Are Biggest Trailblazers in Virtual Worlds," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 8, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2983&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Cory Ondrejka, the co-founder of the virtual world Second Life who is now a visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, said in a speech today that virtual worlds are here to stay, and that professors are among the most active pioneers.

    “In my view the academy has been blazing the trail of adoption of virtual worlds far more than gamers or industry,” said Mr. Ondrejka, who spoke at a conference at Case Western Reserve University called Collaboration Technology and Engaging the Campus 2008.

    Naturally, the event was broadcast within Second Life, in Case Western’s campus in the virtual world. I attended the conference virtually, and was able to ask Mr. Ondrejka what the biggest challenge for Second Life was in being able to be more than just a passing fad in higher education.

    “The challenges with Second Life is it has significant technical challenges for use,” he said, noting that it takes powerful computers and fast network connections for Second Life to function properly. “You can’t assume that your students are going to be able to run Second Life within the school’s network infrastructure.”

    He argued that some form of 3-D virtual environment will catch on, though he admitted that it might not be Second Life that wins the race. The reason that the idea is powerful, he said, is that studies show that humans respond to a visual Internet, and that they express greater trust for the people they communicate with when they see a virtual representation of the person. “Learning in a place in 3-D affects us differently than text,” he said.

    Mr. Ondrejka said that when professors first build a virtual campus, they usually try to exactly replicate a classroom in Second Life, with desks, chairs, and walls. But then they realize that the world allows different kinds of movement and communication than the real world. “You realize that in a world where you can fly, classrooms aren’t really that useful,” he said. So professors have built new kinds of classrooms online with no roofs. “Suddenly you see this explosion of classroom forms that matches what they’re trying to teach,” he added.

    Continued in article


    Second Life Video Tutorials --- http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials


    Canada Virtual Science Fair --- http://www.virtualsciencefair.com/


    A Stanford University professor makes a case for virtual learning from digital avatars

    "Why Digital Avatars Make the Best Teachers advertisement Related materials Article: What Happens in a Virtual World Has a Real-World Impact, a Scholar Finds," by Jeremy Bailenson, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 4, 2008 ---
    http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b02701.htm?utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

    My virtual representation of me, commonly known as an avatar, can outperform me as a teacher any day. It can pay unwavering attention to every student in a class of 100 or more; show my most spectacular actions while concealing any lapse, like losing my cool; and detect the slightest movement, hint of confusion, and improvement in performance of each student simultaneously.

    Most people may think of avatars as too primitive to show such details. But at Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab ( http://vhil.stanford.edu ), my colleagues and I use cutting-edge technology. We could build an avatar that looked just like you (the heads we produce look real enough that they are used in police lineups), gestured like you, even touched like you, thanks to haptic devices that relay the speed and force of hand movements. And the technology can be transmitted over a network.

    The prevailing wisdom in teaching, as in just about every form of social interaction, is that face-to-face contact is the gold standard, trumping all forms of mediated interactions. But as virtual reality moves from games into rigorous scientific applications, it is inevitable that we will rethink the importance of physical location. We know that gasoline is expensive and travel can be a nuisance. But more important, a teacher's avatar has powers that just don't exist in physical space.

    Virtual reality functions in cycles — the computer figures out what someone is doing, then redraws his or her avatar to show changes based on that behavior.

    For example, as a student in Chicago moves his head, looks toward the teacher, and raises his hand, sensing technology measures those actions. As the student moves, the computer of the teacher in New York, which already has an avatar with the student's facial features and body shape, receives that information over the Internet and modifies the avatar to make it move, too. Tracking the actions of teacher and students, transmitting them online, and applying them to the respective avatars all occur seamlessly, and all the participants feel as if they are in the same virtual room, in a movie together.

    No participant needs to try to behave in a particular way, either. In a video game, a person must act intentionally to produce behavior. But in virtual reality, tracking equipment, like magnetic sensors and video cameras, detects what a person does and instructs the computer to redraw the avatar performing the same action. Everyone's computer sends the other machines a stream of information summarizing the user's current state.

    However, users can alter their streams in real time for strategic purposes. For example, a teacher can choose to have his computer never display an angry expression, but always to replace it with a calm face. Or he can screen out distracting student behaviors, like talking on cellphones.

    Research by Benjamin S. Bloom in the 1980s and subsequent studies have demonstrated that students who receive one-on-one instruction learn at least an order of magnitude better than do students in traditional classrooms. Virtual reality makes it possible for one teacher to give one-on-one instruction to many students at the same time.

    The use of the Web to tailor messages to different recipients has received ample discussion, most notably in the arena of advertising; we all know about spam messages that appear to be from one of our colleagues. In a virtual classroom, the teacher can tailor not simply a message, but her identity.

    Of course we must be careful not to cross the line between strategic transformations and outright deception. Probably none of us would want to see politicians, a few years in the future, take advantage of new technology to tailor electronic messages by combining their faces with an undetectable share of those of the recipients — knowing that including the citizen's face can sway his vote. But good teachers already use psychology to help students learn, and standard techniques can be made more effective in virtual education.

    Students in a given classroom, like most large groups of people, include a wide range of personality types — for example, introverts and extroverts. Some students might prefer communication accompanied by nonverbal cues, like gestures and smiles; others may prefer a less-expressive speaker. A number of psychological studies have demonstrated what is called the "chameleon effect": When one person nonverbally mimics another, displaying similar posture and gestures, he maximizes his social influence. Mimickers are seen as more likable and more persuasive than nonmimickers.

    In a number of laboratory studies of behaviors including head movements and handshakes in virtual reality, my colleagues and I have demonstrated that if a teacher practices virtual nonverbal mimicry — that is, if she receives the students' nonverbal actions and then transforms her nonverbal behavior to resemble the students' motions — there are three results.

    First, the students rarely are conscious of the mimicry.

    Second, they nonetheless pay more attention to the teacher: They direct their gaze more at mimicking teachers than they do at teachers who are behaving more normally.

    Third, students are influenced more by mimicking teachers — more likely to follow their instructions and to agree with what they say in a lesson.

    When I teach a class of 100 students face to face, I try to match my nonverbal behavior to that of a single student, and I am forced to devote ample cognitive resources to that effort. But in a virtual classroom, my avatar can seamlessly and automatically create 100 different versions, which simultaneously mimic each student. Without my having to pay any attention to my actions, let alone to type commands on a keyboard, my computer changes my gestures and other behaviors to imitate each student's gestures and behavior. In effect, I can psychologically reduce the size of the class.

    The virtual classroom, too, can be tailored for each student. Rooms have a sweet spot — the location varies from room to room but is often front and center, a few meters away from the teacher. Other experiments, in my lab and at the Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior at the University of California at Santa Barbara, have shown that students randomly assigned to sweet spots in real-world classrooms do about 10 points better on exams than do students sitting elsewhere in the rooms.

    Of course, in the physical world, only one student can sit in the sweet spot. But because virtual rooms are drawn separately for each user, every single student's avatar can be sitting in the sweet spot — and will see classmates' avatars sitting in other locations. In a series of studies, we demonstrated that putting multiple students simultaneously in the virtual sweet spot substantially increased the learning of the group.

    Another advantage of the virtual classroom is that a teacher can use data collected by the computer to improve students' learning as well as his or her own performance. Given that decades of research have pointed to the importance of eye contact during speaking, my colleagues and I created an algorithm that showed teachers exactly how much eye contact they gave each student in a large virtual classroom. If the teacher was not looking at a student's avatar, it would slowly become translucent until the teacher looked at the student again, when the avatar would once more become opaque to the teacher. With that algorithm, teachers looked much more evenly around the classroom. Virtual technology can guarantee that no child gets left behind.

    In dozens of experimental paradigms, we have demonstrated similar advantages of virtual classrooms. The advantages are most effective in classes with large student-to-teacher ratios, where they are needed most. Although the actual classrooms of Ivy League universities may never lose their prestige, the practical implications are clear: The digital transformations of virtual classrooms can increase students' learning.

    Jeremy Bailenson is an assistant professor of communication at Stanford University.

    April 1, 2008 reply from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    Jeremy recently talked about this at the Metaverse U conference held at Standford. They are slowly putting up videos of the talks and his is one of them which can be accessed here: http://metaverse.stanford.edu/conference-videos/conference-videos 
    Scroll down it's the 3rd one or watch them all.

    _____________________________
    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739
    Second Life: Robins Hermano
    http://mydebitcredit.com 
    yahoo ID: shornik


    Second Life (3-D) Virtual Worlds in Ernst & Young Training Programs

    March 12, 2005 message from Steve Hornik

    Ernst & Young Uses Avatars to Test the Use of Virtual Worlds as a Way to Enhance Training for New Auditors.

    E&Y set up a virtual warehouse where they could train employees on Inventory counting.  The article and the video highlight the benefits of using Second Life for doing such training.  Some of the lessons learned from the article are:

        * Ernst & Young found 3-D learning better prepared new auditors by giving them real-world experience. It compared the results with new auditors who took a traditional instructor-led class.
        * 3-D learning is a cost-effective alternative to on-site training sessions because it can deliver the two goals of the meeting: training the employees and creating camaraderie and collaboration.
        * 3-D learning captures learning digitally, providing a record of what has been informal, on-the-job training. It is a good tool to capture the knowledge of retiring employees.
        * 3-D learning is a good way for adults to learn because they can retain more knowledge.
        * Don't underestimate the time and effort needed to introduce learners to this new platform. Plan to help your learners through the initial set-up and orientation. Once they've been properly introducd, e
    most enjoy the experience.
        * Consult with others working in this space. Old instructional design approaches simply don't work in the virtual world.

    The link to full article (make sure to watch the video) is at:

    http://www.outsourcing-journal.com/mar2009-acs.html?email011369

    _____________________________
    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739
    Second Life: Robins Hermano

    http://mydebitcredit.com
    yahoo ID: shornik


    "Accounting for Second Life," by Richard A. Johnson and Joyce M. Middleton, Journal of Accountancy, June 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/jun2008/second_life.htm 

    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    Second Life is a virtual world with education, public relations, and economic implications. CPA Island is the center of the public accounting profession in Second Life.

    At a minimum, CPA Island presents a creative communication medium to appeal to a new generation. This generation has grown up with high-speed Internet connectivity, instant messaging, and multiplayer online gaming.

    The spirit behind CPA Island goes beyond clearly demonstrating an awareness of the different skill set of this new generation. It embraces and celebrates these skills as important to the future of the accounting profession.

    The economic implications of Second Life are just now unfolding. Suspend disbelief, log on, and experience CPA Island and the other aspects of Second Life for yourself.


    Question
    Today's students have a spectacular hunger for experience — real and virtual. But can they hold still long enough to learn?

    "Dwelling in Possibilities:  Our students' spectacular hunger for life makes them radically vulnerable." by Mark Edmundson, Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, March 14, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i27/27b00701.htm?utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

    This hunger for life has a number of consequences, for now and for the future. It's part of what makes this student generation appealing, highly promising — and also radically vulnerable. These students may go on to do great and good things, but they also present dangers to themselves and to the common future. They seem almost to have been created, as the poet says, "half to rise and half to fall." As a teacher of theirs (and fellow citizen), I'm more than a little concerned about which it's going to be.

    Internet technology was on hand for my current students from about the time they were eight years old; it was in 1995 that the Netscape browser made the Internet accessible to everyone. And the Internet seems to me to have shaped their generation as much as the multichannel TV, with that critical device, the remote control, shaped the students who registered for my classes a decade ago. What is the Internet to current students?

    Consider first what it is not. A friend of mine, who has assiduously kept a journal for 40 years, calls the journal, which now runs to about 40 volumes, a "life thickener." His quotations and pictures and clips and drawings and paintings give density and meaning to the blind onrush that life can be. He looks back through the volumes and sees that there was a life and that to him it meant something. To my students, I suspect, my friend would look like a medieval monk, laboring over his manuscripts, someone with a radically pre-postmodern feel for time, someone who did not, in fact, understand what time actually is.

    An Internet-linked laptop, one may safely say, is not a life thickener. At the fingertips of my students, the laptop is a multiplier of the possible. "I dwell in possibility," says Emily Dickinson, "a fairer house than prose." Well, my students want to dwell there with her and, it seems, to leave me in the weed-grown bungalow, prose.

    My university recently passed an edict: No one, damn it (insofar as edicts can say damn it), is going to triple major. Everyone now who is worth his tuition money double majors: The students in my classes are engineering/English; politics/English; chemistry/English. An urban legend in my leaf-fringed 'hood is that someone got around this inane dictum about triple majors by majoring in four subjects — there was, it seems, no rule against that. The top students at my university, the ones who set the standard for the rest, even if they drive the rest a little crazy, want to take eight classes a term, major promiscuously, have a semester abroad at three different colleges, connect with every likely person who has a page on Facebook, have 30 pages on Facebook, be checked in with and check in at every living moment.

    One day I tried an experiment in a class I was teaching on English and American Romanticism. We had been studying Thoreau and talking about his reflections (sour) on the uses of technology for communication. ("We are in great haste," he famously said, "to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.") I asked the group, "How many places were you simultaneously yesterday — at the most?" Suppose you were chatting on your cellphone, partially watching a movie in one corner of the computer screen, instant messaging with three people (a modest number), and glancing occasionally at the text for some other course than ours — grazing, maybe, in Samuelson's Economics rather than diving deep into Thoreau's "Economy" — and then, also, tossing the occasional word to your roommate? Well, that would be seven, seven places at once. Some students — with a little high-spirited hyperbole thrown in, no doubt — got into double digits. Of course it wouldn't take the Dalai Lama or Thoreau to assure them that anyone who is in seven places at once is not anywhere in particular — not present, not here now. Be everywhere now — that's what the current technology invites, and that's what my students aspire to do.

    Internet-linked computers are of course desiring machines — machines for the stimulation of desire. But so is a TV, so in a certain sense is a movie screen. What makes the Internet singular is its power to expand desire, expand possibility beyond the confines of prior media. (My students are possibility junkies.) You can multiply the number of possible clothing purchases near to infinity and do it with stunning speed. You can make all the pleated skirts in the world appear almost all at once, for you to choose from. As we talked about this in class — with Thoreau's disapproving specter looking on (sometimes it appears that Thoreau disapproves of everything, except the drinking of cold water) — something surprising came out. The moment of maximum Internet pleasure was not the moment of closure, where you sealed the deal; it was the moment when the choices had been multiplied to the highest sum. It was the moment of maximum promise, when you touched the lip of the possible: of four majors and eight courses per term and a gazillion hits on your Facebook page, and being everyplace (almost) at once, and gazing upon all the pleated skirts that the world doth hold.

    This is what Immanuel Kant, were he around to see it, might have called the computer sublime (he called something like it mathematical sublimity). The moment when you make the purchase, close the deal, pick a girlfriend, set a date: All those things, the students around the Thoreau table concurred, were a letdown, consummations not really to be wished for. The students were a little surprised by the conclusions they came to about themselves. "It's when I can see it all in front of me," one young woman said, "that's when I'm the happiest."

    Ask an American college student what he's doing on Friday night. Ask him at 5:30 Friday afternoon. "I don't know" will likely be the first response. But then will come a list of possibilities to make the average Chinese menu look sullenly costive: the concert, the play, the movie, the party, the stay-at-home, chilling (or chillaxing), the monitoring of SportsCenter, the reading (fast, fast) of an assignment or two. University students now are virtual Hamlets of the virtual world, pondering possibility, faces pressed up against the sweet-shop window of their all-purpose desiring machines. To ticket or not to ticket, buy or not to, party or no: Or perhaps to simply stay in and to multiply options in numberless numbers, never to be closed down.

    And once you do get somewhere, wherever it might be, you'll find that, as Gertrude Stein has it, there's "no there there." At a student party, about a fourth of the people have their cellphones locked to their ears. What are they doing? "They're talking to their friends." About? "About another party they might conceivably go to." And naturally the simulation party is better than the one that they're now at (and not at), though of course there will be people at that party on their cellphones, talking about other simulacrum gatherings, spiraling on into M.C. Escher infinity.

    It's possible that recent events in the world have added intensity to students' quest for more possibilities, more and more life. The events of September 11, which current college students experienced in their early teens, were an undoubted horror. But they had the effect, I think, of waking America's young people up from a pseudo-nihilistic doze. Before New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the middle-class American teenager's world had been a pleas-ure dome, full of rare delights. It was the reign of television: the oracle that knows everything and can take you anywhere. Television brought images of bliss, and its ads showed you the products that you needed to buy in order to achieve it. The well-known Jeep ad that depicted hip kids tossing Frisbees and laughing like rock stars had nothing to do with the properties of a Jeep. It was a persona ad that advertised the sort of person you'd be when you acquired the product. The ad was an emblem of the consumer moment: Buy in order to be.

    Students wanted to be cool. They wanted to be beyond reproach. There was a sense abroad that if you simply did what you were supposed to do, kept low to the ground and stayed on the conveyor belt, the future that TV promised would be yours. Everything was a mode of entertainment, or could be transformed into one, after it had been submitted to Letterman-like or Leno-like ridicule. The president was a genial boy from Arkansas who awoke one day and found himself in office. But that had not slaked his boyishness at all. He still wanted a version of what everyone did: all-nighters, pizza, and his pals. The president was a dog who couldn't stay on the porch. My students — the guys in particular — often found him the perfect image of success: You need never grow up; need never abandon college-boy mode. The couch where you sat, hours a day, in lordly condescension, monitoring the box, would in time morph into an airship to swoosh you into your dreams.

    But then there came the day of near apocalypse in America, September 11, 2001. The prospect of hanging, Doctor Johnson observed, does wonders to concentrate the mind. Well, the mind of America has been concentrated. No one believes that the whole edifice is likely to come down around us soon. But everyone now lives charged with the knowledge that today, tomorrow, next week, we can suffer an event that will change everything drastically. A dirty bomb in the middle of a great city, poison wafting in soft clouds through a subway system, a water supply subtly tainted: Such things would not only derange the lives of those they touch directly, they'd discompose and remake America in ways that would be, to say the least, none too sweet. Tomorrow the deck may be shuffled and recut by the devil's hand. So what shall we do now?

    Continued in article

    "Harsh Realities About Virtual Ones," by Michael Bugeja, Inside Higher Ed, March 10, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/03/11/bugeja

    Since the 1990s, educators have been focusing on access to Internet as a means of engagement, concerned about the digital divide; now that the divide has been bridged, we are concerned about access to education.

    Cause and effect here correlate.

    Rising costs of a college degree at our wireless colleges and universities have resulted in increasing public scrutiny, student debt and budget models based on marketing rather than pedagogical concepts. Academe’s insatiable investment in virtual worlds, social networks and other consumer applications is a benchmark of how far we will go and how much money we will spend in the name of engagement.

    In the past decade we have seen consumer technology used as delivery system, then as content in the classroom and finally as classroom, building and campus itself, and in every case, pedagogy changed to accommodate the application and the interface, adding courses to the curricula and fees to tuition.

    In the past two years, tuition has spiked about 12 percent at most four-year institutions. Room and board rates have been rising on average 5 percent annually over the same time period. Driving these rates is an engagement industry, largely corporate, relying on wireless campuses to vend their virtual products and on teaching excellence centers to advertise their brands in the name of engagement.

    The marketing strategy is stupefyingly rhetorical. Few administrators bother to explicate “engagement,” a generic term whose synonym has come to mean “retention” — the only factor that matters in funding formulas. The student pays tuition here rather than elsewhere or not at all.

    While the generic meaning of engagement is “to occupy the attention or efforts of a person or persons,” according to my unabridged Random House Dictionary, the specific meaning relates to business, as in “to secure for aid, use, or employment, etc., hire” and “to bind, as by pledge, promise, contract, or oath; make liable.”

    We are outsourcing our environment when we invest in virtual worlds and social networks, and their vendors bind us by service terms that make our institutions liable.

    Moreover, these corporations and the public relations agencies that represent them (often “engaging” early adopters to promote their brand) have schooled academics in advertising basics, which contain two messages, manifest and latent, as in: Purchase this toothpaste (manifest). Get the girl or guy (latent). Adapted to academe, the advertisement plays as follows: Purchase this virtual-life game (manifest). Get engaged (latent).

    Advertisements also include endorsements, as in “a recent dental association survey found that 3 of 4 dentists prefer this brand over another.” In academe, any use of the word “engagement” suggests an endorsement by the National Survey on Student Engagement, whose philosophy gauges the quality of institutions by activities that give meaning and value to collegiate life.

    Those activities, I contend, have proliferated technologically beyond the intent but nevertheless in the name of NSSE whose four-page survey contains only four of some one hundred questions related to technology … or, should I say, technostalgia:

    • [Have you] used an electronic medium (listserv, chat group, Internet, instant messaging, etc.) to discuss or complete an assignment?
    • [Have you] used e-mail to communicate with an instructor?
    • [To what extent does your institution emphasize] using computers in academic work?
    • [To what extent has your experience at this institution contributed to your knowledge, skills and personal development in] using computer and information technology?

    I coded the NSSE 2007 College Student Report, eliminating questions on demographics, and found 23 related to interpersonal contact, 11 to critical thinking, 9 to reading and writing, 6 to commitment or work ethic, 6 to financial and other support, 5 to diversity, and 20 on a range of topics from commuting to learning communities. (Some questions contained elements of two or more categories, as in how often students included diverse perspectives in their discussions and writing assignments.)

    Certainly, you might code the questions differently than I and argue that technology factors heavily now in discussions with professors or sessions with academic advisers, deleting those from interpersonal contact and adding them to technology; but keep in mind that this survey dates back to 2000 with the intent behind questions suggested by distinct terminology such as “electronic medium” to discuss an assignment or “e-mail” to communicate with a professor.

    Students not only use electronic media to discuss or complete an assignment; they have become the assignment in virtual worlds as avatars and check e-mail out of boredom as well as text each other, download music, visit social networks and make online purchases in wireless classrooms during lecture.

    Attempting to engage today’s students, we have embraced consumer technologies on the flawed assumption that students want to learn through the same devices that amuse and distract them.

    My own profession, journalism, abandoned its constitutional responsibility to inform the electorate using these very same technologies, with this result: The public interest now is what interests the public. Media moguls embrace that notion to engage their audience, giving us a steady diet of news about Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and American Idol augmented by outsourced war and foreign correspondence with unremitting follow-ups about school violence, beautiful women gone missing, athlete and celebrity scandals, and health reporting that plays to the advertising base and is cheaper than investigative journalism.

    Continued in article

    Concerns about video game addiction and cyberpsychology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#CyberPsychology

     


    Before reading this article you may want to read about Second Life at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

    "A New Vision for Second Life:  Linden Lab's new CEO outlines his plans to help Second Life mature," by Erica Naone, MIT's Technology Review, April 25, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20678/?nlid=1029 

    Earlier this week, Linden Lab, creator of the well-known virtual world Second Life, announced a new CEO: Mark Kingdon, currently CEO of digital marketing firm Organic. He will be taking over in mid-May.

    Kingdon inherits Linden Lab after a flood of press coverage last year made Second Life one of the best-known virtual worlds and got people excited about its potential. Major brands flocked to establish a presence in-world. But some, such as AOL and Wells Fargo, pulled out amid the turmoil created by some of Second Life's Wild West atmosphere. According to an official blog post by Linden Lab founder and outgoing CEO Philip Rosedale, Kingdon "will have an intense focus on improving the in-world experience and stability and reliability of Second Life."

    Kingdon's arrival is the most recent in a series of changes to Linden Lab's management. CTO Cory Ondrejka, who wrote the scripting language used in Second Life to create and control user-generated content, left the company in December. Rosedale announced his resignation in March, along with his intention to become Linden Lab's chairman of the board.

    Technology Review assistant editor Erica Naone spoke with Kingdon earlier this week about his plans for Second Life.

    Technology Review: How much time do you spend inside Second Life?

    Mark Kingdon: I'm spending a lot more time in-world now. I'm still in that place where I'm surveying the landscape, because it's pretty vast, and I'm collecting experiences that are amazing. It's just mind-blowing that this is all user-generated content. I haven't yet created anything myself other than clothing, but I think that's the next step for me because I like to make things.

    TR: Creating things seems like a Second Life rite of passage.

    MK: That's definitely the story of Second Life. Once you cross that magical "Aha!" place, it becomes very compelling.

    TR: A lot of new users seem to have trouble getting to that place. They get confused by the controls, and aren't sure what to do inside the world. Do you have any thoughts about how to make it easier to get started?

    MK: I've got a lot of background in the kind of user-centered design work that's going to be important for Second Life, especially as you look at the first-hour experience. I haven't come to any specific conclusions yet, but I think it starts with understanding what the resident needs in order to make a powerful experience, and looking at the kinds of people that you want to attract and bring in-world. The answers will emerge very clearly from that.

    TR: How do you plan to get different types of users acclimated? For example, business users might just want to get in-world quickly to have a meeting, while other users might be looking for a more playful experience.

    MK: I think the first thing that I need to do ... is really immerse myself in the different user bases and then think about if, by giving them additional tools, they can create that entry point for themselves, or if it's something we need to encourage, or if it's something that we need to create for them. I think the question is, how do you make that happen without becoming the primary content creator?

    Continued in article

     


    Second Life 3-D Accounting Model

    To his credit, Professor Hornik (see video link below) at the University of Central Florida has been experimenting with a Second Life 3-D Accounting Model for accounting education. The PBS update called the "The Rise (and Hype) of Second Life" may be of interest to those of you who are thinking experimenting with Second Life.

    First read about Second Life at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

    Moodle Homepage --- http://moodle.org/

    The good news is that Moodle is free. A lot of colleges, especially small colleges, changed to Moodle after Blackboard commenced monopoly pricing.

    You can track Moodle News (the good, the bad, and the ugly) at http://eduspaces.net/moodlenews/weblog/160022.html

    Moodle purportedly is very flexible, in part, because it has open source coding. Many of the positives are outlined at http://moodle.com/
    There is also a help desk.

    Like many open source options, including Open Source Office, Moodle keeps getting better and better. Old criticisms may no longer be applicable. I recently gave an education technology workshop for accounting educators in Mississippi. Many of the users were happy with Moodle.

    And there's Sloodle for open source virtual learning software --- http://www.sloodle.com/

    December 4, 2007 message from Vidya

    Second Life is a 3D virtual environment and in that regard not a competitor to Moodle at all. Sloodle is actually the Moodle counterpart to courses taught in Second Life and in that sense it's symbiotic relationship of sorts between the 3D immersive virtual environment and astandard 2D learning environment :-).

    Vidya Ananthanarayanan
    Instructional Support Manager
    Center for Learning and Technology
    Trinity University

    vidya@trinity.com/210.999.7346|
    http://www.trinity.edu/clt  

     


    March 2008 Update on Second Life Virtual Worlds in Accounting, Finance, and Business

    March 8, 2008 message from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    I just wanted to pass these along for those interested in using Virtual Worlds.  The first three articles are related to business school uses of Second Life that appeared in the Financial Times earlier this week.  Followed by a link to a story about Deloitte's involvement with a virtual world to help teens learn business.  Finally, I've provided links to my blog in which I briefly discuss the announcement and release yesterday by Second Life of a new viewer in which Web pages can be brought in-world and thus shared - its static right now but gives a glimpse of what is coming down the road. And one describing students using Second Life for completing financial accounting HW assignments.

    Financial Times Articles:

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/42855396-e8c3-11dc-913a-0000779fd2ac.html
    --From first steps to flight - an avatar's journey

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5689e7bc-e8c3-11dc-913a-0000779fd2ac.html
    -- A Second Life for classrooms with vision

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2f81e8e4-e8c4-11dc-913a-0000779fd2ac.html
    --Students take a leap into the virtual world


    Deloitte uses Virtual World to Teach Teens About Business

    http://snipr.com/21a4z  [publications_mediapost_com]

    Web on a Prim (almost there):

    http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2008/03/07/second-lifes-web-on-a-prim-is-getting-closer/
    SL HW assignments:
    http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2008/02/29/91-avatars/

    _____________________________
    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739
    Second Life: Robins Hermano

    http://mydebitcredit.com
    yahoo ID: shornik
     


    May 1, 2008 message from Abacus Capalini [abacuscapalini@YAHOO.COM]

    Hello again Bob. Thanks for the references. I've have visited with Steven Hornik and have utilized the resources on his SL plot. The credit and debit sim was interesting as it focused students on where credits and debits go on the T-account and the offsetting accounts. I would definitely encourage anyone interested in virtual worlds and accounting to visit Steven's plot.

    I have been teaching using second life the past two semester. Whether in accounting classes or in general business classes the Gingko Bank Run is the students' favorite project. They really like the internal control concerns of the virtual banks prior to the recent changes. I am looking for accounting conferences or accounting education journals that may be interested in this research.

    Thanks in advance to everyone,

    Chris Luchs/Abacus Capalini


    "Second Life Closes Banks After months of scandals, virtual banks get an eviction notice," MIT's Technology Review, January 10, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20037/?nlid=797 

    For months, as banking meltdowns in the virtual world Second Life cost participants steep losses of real money, corporate owner Linden Lab of San Francisco stuck to a laissez-faire line, essentially saying, We just host the software; residents should avoid deals that sound too good to be true. But this week, Linden Lab abruptly banned virtual banks that can't furnish "proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter." The requirement appears likely to shut down all of Second Life's banks.

    "There is no workable alternative," Linden Lab wrote in an announcement posted Tuesday. "The so-called banks are not operated, overseen or insured by Linden Lab, nor can we predict which will fail or when. And Linden Lab isn't, and can't start acting as, a banking regulator." The company wrote that "these 'banks' have brought unique and substantial risks to Second Life, and we feel it's our duty to step in. Offering unsustainably high interest rates, they are in most cases doomed to collapse--leaving upset 'depositors' with nothing to show for their investments. As these activities grow, they become more likely to lead to destabilization of the virtual economy."

    A Linden Lab spokesman said that the company was not offering further interviews or comment on the decision or its timing.

    The about-face came six days after Technology Review posted a story that described avatar losses and cited the possibility that one virtual-bank meltdown may have produced aggregate losses of some $700,000 in real money to many hundreds of Second Life "residents" in a manner that would be illegal in the real world. (See "The Fleecing of the Avatars.") "I think the timing may well have been due to [that]story," says Ben Duranske, an Idaho lawyer who has been closely following the complaints of Second Life participants.

    Last year, some Second Life residents--subscribers whose digital alter egos, or avatars, populate the virtual world--deposited their virtual money, called Linden dollars, into a "bank" called Ginko Financial that had popped up in-world, promising high interest rates. Last summer, Ginko restricted withdrawals and eventually vanished. Since Linden dollars can be exchanged for real U.S. dollars, the losses were painfully real. (See "Money Troubles in Second Life.") It is not clear who was behind the Ginko operation.

    Duranske yesterday posted this blog entry praising the bank ban as a "positive step that will save a lot of people a lot of unhappiness in the long run." The policy, which pertains to in-world companies that offer transfers of Linden dollars and payment of interest, takes effect January 22.

    Robert Bloomfield, a Cornell University economist and virtual-world watcher who had argued that self-regulation deserved a chance to fix Second Life's financial problems, says he believes that banks will face runs and be unable to pay depositors, triggering new losses. (See "Second Chance for Second Life.") But he says that the larger Second Life economy, which by one recent measure has more than 300,000 participants, would not be profoundly affected because people will still be able to make, buy, and sell digital goods and exchange virtual and real dollars.

    Yesterday, within Second Life, depositors appeared to rush to withdraw money from remaining banks, such as Midas Bank and BCX Bank, and some waved signs saying, "Linden Lab: Give Us Back Our Banks Now!" By one account, avatars of bank owners gamely stood guard outside their virtual institutions. "In a half-dozen of the largest banks, I saw the owners, CEOs, and chief financial officers all standing in the foyers, putting up notices and attempting to reassure their depositors. The bling! The prim hair! One man even wore white gloves," wrote Prokofy Neva (whose real name is Catherine Fitzpatrick) in her blog.

    Bloomfield is hosting a forum on the matter in Second Life today at 2:00 p.m.; the forum can be found here. One open question, Bloomfield says, is whether the ban would pertain not just to banks but to stock-market exchanges that have also popped up in Second Life. Linden Lab declined to participate in the forum, Bloomfield says.

    January 10, 2008 reply from Aaron Delwiche at Trinity University

    Hi Bob,

    Thanks for sending these links to Tiger Talk. In your list of resources, you might want to include pointers to the archives of the Second Life Educators List (SLED), as it is a terrific repository of thoughtful suggestions for how to use Second Life in the classroom. If your readers point their browsers at: https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators , they will find a link to the mailing list archives and the Second Life Educators wiki.

    You might be interested in an article on Second Life that I recently published in the Journal of Educational Technology (see: http://www.ifets.info/journals/9_3/ets_9_3.pdf#page=165 ) . The article describes a classroom case study that was conducted at Trinity back in 2004. An updated list of readings on virtual worlds can be found in this syllabus from a Trinity course that explored on-line marketing and promotions (see: http://www.trinity.edu/adelwich/metaverse/readings.html ). There also some useful links on the Elastic Collision site ( http://www.elasticcollision.com).

    There is plenty of hype out there about Second Life, and it's important to remind people that SL is not an educational panacea. When instructors transplant archaic instructional methods into the virtual world, SL is likely to be a complete failure. On the other hand, if the course content is designed to take advantage of the platform's unique characteristics, it is possible to create instructional environments that foster situational learning.

    Virtual worlds are still in their infancy, but they are growing and changing at an accelerating rate. The experiments unfolding in college classrooms around the world are just a taste of what we will see two or three years from now. There will be many failures along the way, but that's just part of the learning process. These are exciting times!

    Warm regards,
    Aaron Delwiche

     

    The history of Second Life is outlined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
    (Especially note the sections on real estate, businesses, and organizations)

     


    Second Life 3-D Accounting Model

    July 13, 2007 message from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    Since there has been some interest regarding Second Life on this list from time to time, I wanted to share a demo of a model I created in Second Life that I will be using with my class this coming Fall. It's a 3-D interactive accounting model (A=L+E). If you are in Second Life and want to play with it let me know. It's currently on my Parcel in Sweetbay, but will be moving to Teaching 4, part of the New Media Consortium's archipelago, where University of Central Florida's accounting department has just leased a plot!

    Link to blog post about the model:
    http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2007/07/12/beginning-journey/ 

    Link to YouTube video (no reading required):
    http://youtube.com/watch?v=4T4zTStVK6Y 

    My Second Life Avatar is Robins Hermano if you wish to chat 'in-world'

    _____________________________
    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    College of Business Administration
    (407) 823-5739


    Second Life is Not Always a Better Life

    January 4, 2008 message from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    I surveyed my students at the end of the Fall semester to get a sense of how they were using Second Life for my accounting course. I had 125 responses. I've blogged about the results here:

    http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2008/01/04/was-second-life-engaging/ 

    Highlights are:

    * Second Life was difficult to use / required better hardware
    * If Second Life were easier they would have used it more
    * Students appreciated the ability to interact with each other and with me (Social aspect #1 value)
    * They watched lectures more then they interacted with 3-d content

    I have more data that I'll be crunching in the next few weeks, once I get Spring semester underway, but wanted to share this with the list.

    _____________________________
    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    Dixon School of Accounting
    407-823-5739

    Second Life: Robins Hermano http://mydebitcredit.com  yahoo ID: shornik

     


    Question
    Is Second Life catching on in academe?

    November 15, 2007 message from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

    I attended a session on Second Life today. My university has purchased an island and has erected a few buildings along with a huge sand box. Along with other Web 2.0 technologies, faculty are told that second life has many educational possibilities?

    Does it open up anything for accounting? Does anyone currently use it? How should it be used?

    Dave Albrecht
    Bowling Green State University

    November 15, 2007 from Bob Jensen

    Hi David,

    Steve Hornik at the University of Central Florida uses Second Life for accounting courses. He also has a YouTube video about his applications.

    Go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife 

    His last email indicates that he's perhaps become a bit discouraged with it, although I don't want to put words in his mouth. You should contact him directly.

    Bob Jensen

    November 15, 2007 reply from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    Dave,

    First to Dave and anyone intersted, I'd be happy to show you around my area in Second Life, just let me know a good time and send me an e-mail or IM me in-world, I'm Robins Hermano.

    I've used Second Life this semester, and as Bob mentioned to somewhat good results.  I should say that my expectations were way to high and for the high-end technology that is SL I actually am quite pleased and will be looking at some data once the semester ends.  My biggest disappointment came from students who didn't want to try it or thought it was too difficult to learn.  I think this mostly comes from the poor, very poor orientation that SL provides.  However, since the semester started there have been at least two independent orientations that have opened up which are quite good - One via the New Media Consortium, and the other is called Orientation Station. 

    I teach financial accounting to undergrads (the debits/credits course) to mostly non-majors.  So my primary reason for using SL was to create an engaging environment for the students to overcome the non-engaging nature of accounting (to many).  I also used SL to create models that would allow my students to view (in 3-D) concepts that they consistently have trouble with - debits and credits do not mean positive and negative.  Being able to view the accounting equation and 'play' with it helps (or should help) reinforce how the model works and how various business transactions effect it.

    I think there are quite many other things that can be modeled and I'll be working on them during the semester break to roll out this Spring.  Primarily how the temporary close, students just don't get what Retained Earnings is and how it ties the two Financial statements together.

    From just a pedagogical point of view, SL inherently fosters collaboration.  Having students learn together to build things, interact with merchants, other accounting students, state CPA socities, the AICPA can only be a plus.  As an online learning platform it's still in its infancy, but has huge potential because of the presence it invokes.  Below is a small bit of a session I had with one of my students when we met in SL (she works, has a baby, and couldn't get to my office hours) to go over some concepts before an exam, when I asked her if she thought using SL has been valuable....

    [20:47]  You: Quick question, compared to using meebo (if you have) how does doing this in SL help?
    [20:47]  You: Now a days it is
    [20:48]  Krisira Vollmar: oh well talking here makes me aware that i'm having an actual conversation
    [20:48]  Krisira Vollmar: not to mention i really can't do anything else online so i have to concentrate on what is being said
    [20:48]  Krisira Vollmar: which is VERY good in my case
    [20:48]  Krisira Vollmar: i can't help but multi task online
    [20:48]  You: That's one good thing about SL hogging up the computer, lol
    [20:49]  Krisira Vollmar: and its just more interesting than typing in a white box
    [20:49]  Krisira Vollmar: nice shirt btw


    From Media Shift (PBS) , October 11, 2007 --- http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/

    The Rise (and Hype) of Second Life

    While other worlds were withering, Linden Labs was developing a new world called Second Life, first launched in 2003. It languished for a few years until 2006, when Second Life grabbed the attention of the media and marketers who saw it as a new way of communicating and selling online. BusinessWeek ran a cover story called My Virtual Life, breathlessly explaining that “big advertisers are taking notice.” And Wired Magazine ran a special travel guide to Second Life, while Reuters assigned a full-time reporter, dubbed “Adam Reuters,” to cover news in the world (now there are two).

    In Second Life, you can create your own objects and buildings in the world, and you own the intellectual property of what you build Plus, “Linden dollars” are a currency you can trade with real dollars; real-world businesses sell customized stores, avatar wear and just about any kind of “bling” you could want in the virtual world. Universities offer distance learning courses through Second Life, and bands play live shows and chat with fans in special in-world venues. Linden says it has registered nearly 10 million avatars for Second Life.

    The buzz around Second Life led many people to explore virtual worlds for the first time, but many ended up disappointed. Even though computer hardware and bandwidth have improved since the ’90s virtual worlds, Second Life still requires high-end systems and a lot of practice to master the interface. The number of registered Second Life avatars is misleading: Many people simply try it out and give up, while others have multiple avatars. A more representative number for regular users is the number who have logged in during the past seven days, which was 338,068 as of October 7.

    That lower number also presents a problem for the crush of marketers such as Coca-Cola and Adidas who have set up virtual spaces in Second Life, only to have them largely vacant. After Wired magazine hyped Second Life with its travel guide, the magazine then did an about-face and ran an article titled, How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life. Many marketers spent the money — in the tens of thousands of dollars — to build a virtual island as an experiment but then got little payoff. Residents are dispersed throughout the virtual world so it’s difficult to get their attention en masse, plus there’s a limit to the number of people who can congregate in one place without crashing Linden’s servers.

    (For a detailed argument on Wired’s story and the problem of empty spaces in Second Life, check out this blog post by Wired editor Chris Anderson and the ensuing debate in the comments.)


    The Financial Accounting Standards Board recently approached Bloomfield about studying how to create financial accounting standards that will assist investors as much as possible, he quickly turned to the virtual world for answers.

    "Theory Meets Practice Online: Researchers and academics are looking to online worlds such as Second Life to shed new light on old economic questions," by Francesca Di Meglio, Business Week, July 24, 2007 --- Click Here 

    In fact, many economics researchers, including Bloomfield, professor of accounting at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, are using the virtual environment to test ideas involving staples of economics such as game theory, the effects of regulation, and issues involving money. Since 1989, Bloomfield has been running experiments in the lab in which he creates small game economies to study narrow issues. But when the Financial Accounting Standards Board recently approached Bloomfield about studying how to create financial accounting standards that will assist investors as much as possible, he quickly turned to the virtual world for answers.

    "It would be very difficult to look at the complex issues that FASB is trying to address with eight people in a laboratory playing a very simple economic game," he says. "I started looking for how I could create a more realistic economy with more players dealing with a high degree of complexity. It didn't take me long to realize that people in virtual worlds are already doing just that."

    . . .

    At Indiana University, researcher Edward Castronova has posed the idea of creating multiple virtual economies to study the effects of different regulatory policies. At Indiana, Castronova is director of the Synthethic Worlds Initiative, a research center to study virtual worlds. "The opportunity is to conduct controlled research experiments at the level of all society, something social scientists have never been able to do before," the center's Web site notes (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/1/06, "Virtual World, Virtual Economies").

    A virtual stock market is certainly not the only online entity that opens itself up to research. Marketers are already using the virtual world to test campaigns, packaging, and consumer satisfaction. Pepsi (PEP) famously tracks use of its products in There.com. Architects seek reaction to design. Starwood Hotels (HOT) test-marketed its new loft designs in Second Life (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/23/06, "Starwood Hotels Explore Second Life First").

    Continued in article

    November 23, 2007 reply from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    Robert Bloomfiled has been conducting panel sessions in Second Life where discussions have ranged from the taxing virtual economies, financing activities and last week a discussion with Edward Castronova (all done withint Second Life).  On Nov. 26th, the discussion will be on Higher Education in Second Life.  You can view arhcived videos of these from SLCN.TV at http://www.slcn.tv/programs/metaversed  For those unfamiliar with SL this gives you an idea of one it's best features, bringing people together from all over the world to discuss ideas, compare the cost of doing this via SL as opposed to attending a conference!
     
    And here is a link to Robert's blog about the Metanomics series: http://metanomics.metaversed.com/
    _____________________________
    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    College of Business Administration
    (407) 823-5739

    Canadian Professor Peter J. Ludlow's Second Life in Virtual Worlds as "Urizenus"

    First read about Second Life at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

    Then read about Second Life at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

    "The Second Life of Peter J. Ludlow: A philosophy professor challenges the rules of virtual worlds with his alter ego, a muckraking journalist," by Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 7, 2007--- Click Here

    He leads an audacious life, but only online. As the digital character Urizenus, he muckrakes in virtual worlds and describes as dictatorial the companies that run them. His reporting can be read in the brassy, tabloid-style Web newspaper he founded, the Second Life Herald.

    Offline, Mr. Ludlow is a mild-mannered linguist and a tenured professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. Also in reality, he has just celebrated the release of a book that chronicles his journalistic adventures in The Sims Online and Second Life, a pair of digital environments inhabited by lots of characters, or avatars. The book is called The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse (MIT Press). He wrote the book with Mark Wallace, a freelance journalist.

    It's not easy juggling two such different lives, so Urizenus, also known as Uri, is easing up on his exploits to allow Mr. Ludlow to concentrate on writing a linguistics book.

    But although his lives are separate, they are in fact related. Uri dissects virtual worlds like a political philosopher. And while digital venues are often stereotyped as mindless entertainment for nerds who sit in front of computer screens slaying monsters, Mr. Ludlow is among a growing number of scholars who see virtuality as something to study. He delves into issues of sovereignty in cyberspace, arguing that game enthusiasts should wrest control of virtual worlds from game companies. He also paints an unflattering portrait of colleges in Second Life. (See article, Page A26.)

    "Digital campuses are drab, and Second Life is a dubious venue for online instruction: That's the message from Peter J. Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, to colleges with campuses in the virtual world Second Life," by Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 7, 2007 --- Click Here

    Digital campuses are drab, and Second Life is a dubious venue for online instruction. That's the message from Peter J. Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, to colleges with campuses in the virtual world Second Life.

    It's a scathing assessment from a scholar who is ordinarily an enthusiast of virtual environments, who founded a Web-based tabloid newspaper about Second Life, and has just come out with a book about his journalistic escapades in this make-believe world, where digital characters, or avatars, walk, fly, chat online, and talk through the voices of their human operators.

    Colleges worldwide are establishing their presence in Second Life to advertise their programs, conduct online classes or conferences, and do research. At least 170 such campuses can be found there, says an article in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Social Sciences.

    But the virtual campuses he has seen, says Mr. Ludlow, lack imagination because they duplicate real institutions.

    "Is that what you've got if you could start over, and you're not constrained by the laws of physics, and you could build whatever you want to enhance learning?" he asks. "What kind of message are you sending when you say, 'If I could create the ideal learning environment, I would duplicate Building 7 and go to work?'"

    Colleges should be promoting originality, he says. For example, they should create digital buildings that are architecturally unusual.

    Looks aren't the only problem. Mr. Ludlow tried to teach a freshman seminar in Second Life on issues arising in multiplayer online worlds. He and his students were represented by avatars. But it wasn't successful, he says, because avatars don't communicate as richly as people do.

    "When I'm teaching in a classroom, I can read the body language of students," says the philosopher. "I can tell if it's too warm. I can tell if they're tired. I can tell if they're looking quizzical because they don't understand. I don't get any of that feedback when I'm trying to address students online."

    Continued in article

    December 6, 2007 reply from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

    Bob, how do you do it? How do you keep up with all of this? Anyway here's a scoop that maybe Bob hasn't read yet. The Economist has a short article on virtual worlds, including Second Life. The interesting part for us as accountants, and perhaps and answer that David posed a few weeks ago as to how to leverage these virtual environments. Here's a link to the article:

    http://snipr.com/1uvha 

    And here is one of the pieces I found interesting (sorry I don't know how to do different colors like Bob does)

    "The same technology can also be used to simulate the more mundane environment of an office. PIXELearning, a British company based in Coventry, has developed a simulator for a big international accounting firm in order to train interns who are fresh out of university. The role-playing simulator lets them develop their skills by interacting, for example, with a difficult client who is being aggressive on pricing. This is invaluable, says Kevin Corti, PIXELearning's boss, because it allows them to make mistakes before being unleashed on a client. Similarly, a big American bank is using PIXELearning's simulator for “diversity and inclusion” training."

    _____________________________

    Dr. Steven Hornik
    University of Central Florida
    College of Business Administration (407) 823-5739

    Virtual Environments, Virtual Worlds, and Applications --- http://www.aee.odu.edu/special_pages/VECourses/contact.php

    Bob Jensen's threads on Second Life are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife


    Stanford Scientists Build a Better Virtual World
    A group of Stanford computer scientists has designed a program that could help users create a more realistic virtual environment in which to interact.
    The Stanford Virtual Worlds group announced this week that they have created
    Dryad, a program in which users can easily “construct” trees in a virtual space. Using the wealth of information about trees already collect by botanists, Dryad populates the virtual space with trees created from 100 different variables. Users navigate the space and pick their desired tree from thousands of possibilities. A social-networking component refines the software by “nudging” users to trees with popular characteristics. This, in effect, allows users to pick an item they want without having to go through a complicated creation process, or being able to shape a realistic-looking object manually.
    Chronicle of Higher Education, January 11, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2655&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


    Question
    In this edutainment generation of students, does virtual learning have to be fun?

    "Virtual Labor Lost:  The failure of a highly anticipated game shows the academic limits of virtual worlds," by Erica Naone, MIT's Technology Review, December 5, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19817/?nlid=719

    Academics are flocking to use virtual worlds and multiplayer games as ways to research everything from economics to epidemiology, and to turn these environments into educational tools. But one such highly anticipated effort--a multiplayer game about Shakespeare meant to teach people about the world of the bard while serving as a place for social-science experiments--is becoming its own tragedy.

    The game, called Arden, the World of Shakespeare, was a project out of Indiana University funded with a $250,000 MacArthur Foundation grant. Its creator, Edward Castronova, an associate professor of telecommunications at the university, wanted to use the world to test economic theories: by manipulating the rules of the game, he hoped to find insights into the way that money works in the real world. Players can enter the game and explore a town called Ilminster, where they encounter characters from Shakespeare, along with many plots and quotations. They can answer trivia questions to improve their characters and play card games with other players. Coming from Castronova, a pioneer in the field, the game was expected by many to show the power of virtual-world-based research.

    But Castronova says that there's a problem with the game: "It's no fun." While focusing on including references to the bard, he says, his team ended up sidelining some of the fundamental features of a game. "You need puzzles and monsters," he says, "or people won't want to play ... Since what I really need is a world with lots of players in it for me to run experiments on, I decided I needed a completely different approach."

    Castronova has abandoned active development of Arden; he released it last week to the public as is, rather than starting up the experiments he had planned. Part of the problem: it costs a lot to build a new multiplayer game. While his grant was large for the field of humanities, it was a drop in the bucket compared with the roughly $75 million that he says goes into developing something on the scale of the popular game World of Warcraft. "I was talking to people like it was going to be Shakespeare: World of Warcraft, but the money you need for that is so much more," he says. Castronova also says that he was taking on too much by attempting to combine education and research. He believes that his experience should serve as a warning for other academics.

    Ian Bogost, a video-game researcher and assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, agrees. "It's very, very hard to make games in the best of circumstances, and a university is never the best of circumstances," he says. "I have serious doubts about not just the potential for success but even the appropriateness of pursuing development work of this kind in the context of the university." If researchers are going to build games for the purposes of research, Bogost says, he thinks it's important to look at the process realistically, and with a scientific eye. "In most disciplines, it's okay to fess up to what worked and what didn't. In laboratory work, you do this all the time ... If this is really research and not just production, then of course there are going to be these kinds of surprises."

    Question
    In this edutainment generation of students, does virtual learning have to be fun?

    "Virtual Labor Lost:  The failure of a highly anticipated game shows the academic limits of virtual worlds," by Erica Naone, MIT's Technology Review, December 5, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19817/?nlid=719

    Academics are flocking to use virtual worlds and multiplayer games as ways to research everything from economics to epidemiology, and to turn these environments into educational tools. But one such highly anticipated effort--a multiplayer game about Shakespeare meant to teach people about the world of the bard while serving as a place for social-science experiments--is becoming its own tragedy.

    The game, called Arden, the World of Shakespeare, was a project out of Indiana University funded with a $250,000 MacArthur Foundation grant. Its creator, Edward Castronova, an associate professor of telecommunications at the university, wanted to use the world to test economic theories: by manipulating the rules of the game, he hoped to find insights into the way that money works in the real world. Players can enter the game and explore a town called Ilminster, where they encounter characters from Shakespeare, along with many plots and quotations. They can answer trivia questions to improve their characters and play card games with other players. Coming from Castronova, a pioneer in the field, the game was expected by many to show the power of virtual-world-based research.

    But Castronova says that there's a problem with the game: "It's no fun." While focusing on including references to the bard, he says, his team ended up sidelining some of the fundamental features of a game. "You need puzzles and monsters," he says, "or people won't want to play ... Since what I really need is a world with lots of players in it for me to run experiments on, I decided I needed a completely different approach."

    Castronova has abandoned active development of Arden; he released it last week to the public as is, rather than starting up the experiments he had planned. Part of the problem: it costs a lot to build a new multiplayer game. While his grant was large for the field of humanities, it was a drop in the bucket compared with the roughly $75 million that he says goes into developing something on the scale of the popular game World of Warcraft. "I was talking to people like it was going to be Shakespeare: World of Warcraft, but the money you need for that is so much more," he says. Castronova also says that he was taking on too much by attempting to combine education and research. He believes that his experience should serve as a warning for other academics.

    Ian Bogost, a video-game researcher and assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, agrees. "It's very, very hard to make games in the best of circumstances, and a university is never the best of circumstances," he says. "I have serious doubts about not just the potential for success but even the appropriateness of pursuing development work of this kind in the context of the university." If researchers are going to build games for the purposes of research, Bogost says, he thinks it's important to look at the process realistically, and with a scientific eye. "In most disciplines, it's okay to fess up to what worked and what didn't. In laboratory work, you do this all the time ... If this is really research and not just production, then of course there are going to be these kinds of surprises."


    Question
    Do you suppose there will ever be sonic accounting, golf, calculus, economics, etc.?

    With every swing, the club transmitted a noise that sounded like the flourish of a pipe organ. A computer recorded data from each swing in colorful arcs as Grober sent balls clacking around his laboratory and echoing through the building’s halls ... Fifteen years after Grober, 44, first put an electronic sensor into a club to study the golf swing, his scientific journey has produced a company, Sonic Golf, and a technology that he says can help professionals and amateurs in the complex, frustrating game of golf.
    Damon Hack, "Professor Puts Swing’s Rhythm to Music," The New York Times, August 6, 2007 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/sports/golf/06golf.html

    Sonic Golf --- http://www.sonicgolf.com/


    Is Facebook the New MySpace?
    MySpace has an impressive lead today, but things can change quickly in the fluid world of mass-market social networking sites. Just ask Friendster. First Friendster was everybody's favorite social networking site. Then Friendster fell out of vogue--precipitously--and people stopped going there. In its place, MySpace became the darling of the Web. MySpace provided not only a free place to host your own online identity, but a full set of tools for meeting and interacting with others. Now everybody is talking about Facebook, which fits the same description, but in a very different way. Will Facebook become the next MySpace? I think so, and here's why.
    Mark Sullivan, PC World via The Washington Post, July 20, 2007 --- Click Here


    Jeopardy Game

    Have some fun with your students courtesy of David Fordham

    September 11, 2003 message from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU

    For several years, I have been doing some fun things with PowerPoint, more than simply using it as a "bullet-pointed" slide show.

    One of the simplest, yet most unusual, applications I use for PowerPoint is my own parody of the Jeopardy game. If you download it and try it, I think you'll have to agree it is ultra-simple, downright embarrassingly so, yet the students get a kick out of it, since it is so unlike any PowerPoint session they've ever seen. Class participation a la mode! Not a lot of new learning takes place on the day I play the game, but the students have a good time! I use Snickers bars for the winners, and a homework review sheet for the losers!

    Please don't take this game as an indication of how simplistic I make my PowerPoint presentations! I have many better examples of more powerful PowerPoint features. But this game is fun, entertaining, and provides a break from the day-to-day class. You are free to download it, try it, and even use it in your class, changing the questions and answers to your heart's desire. Just be sure to mention me as the original author, and be sure to tell the students that Jeopardy is a registered trademark of the Sony Pictures corporation! (And if you get some good ideas and do your own new presentation game, you don't even have to mention me anymore!)

    See: http://cob.jmu.edu/fordham/AECM1.htm 

     


    "AMA Considers a New Addiction: Video Games --- While noting the risks, it makes sense to also note the rewards," by Erica Naone, MIT's Technology Review, June 25, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/17628/

    The American Medical Association (AMA) votes this week on a set of recommendations that caused a stir earlier this month by suggesting that video-game addiction might belong in the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders. Other recommendations include calls for parents to pay more attention to what games kids play and for how long, and calls for the industry to better regulate itself. The recommendations are part of a report by the Council on Science and Public Health with the subject "Emotional and behavioral effects, including addictive potential, of video games."

    The report singles out massive multiplayer, online, role-playing games (MMORPGs) as a cause for concern, saying that video-game overuse is most common in the 9 percent of gamers who play MMORPGs:

    "MMORPGs are simultaneously competitive and highly social, and provide interactive real-time services. Researchers have attempted to examine the type of individual most likely to be susceptible to such games, and current data suggest these individuals are somewhat marginalized socially, perhaps experiencing high levels of emotional loneliness and/or difficulty with real life social interactions. Current theory is that these individuals achieve more control of their social relationships and more success in social relationships in the virtual reality realm than in real relationships."

    Current evidence of video-game addiction comes from case studies and surveys that recognize varying symptoms of addiction. The report loosely defines overuse as "a constellation of behaviors observed in persons using the Internet to such an extent that it began to cause other aspects of their lives to become dysfunctional," and it compares video game addiction to pathological gambling. Anywhere from very few to 15 percent of players may overuse video games, according to the report, which calls for more research.

    In light of the danger of overuse and the well-known concerns about violence in video games, the report recommends that parents be sure that their children under 18 limit their "screen time" (video games, television, and the Internet) to one to two hours a day. Martin Wasserman, executive director of MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society, explains, "There are many tasks you have to learn in adolescence, and you don't have time to do that if you're playing seven hours a night."

    Continued in article

    But then the AMA backs off calling gaming an addiction --- http://physorg.com/news102311722.html

    Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side of education technologies are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm


    "Catching Cheaters with Their Own Computers:  Anti-cheating hardware could keep online game players honest," MIT's Technology Review, July 3, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19005/?a=f .

    Researchers at Intel are working on a system that could make it much harder to cheat at online games. Unlike current software-based anti-cheating technology, Intel's Fair Online Gaming System would be built into a player's computer, in a combination of hardware, firmware, and software.

    Since the early days of video games, players have cheated. Some players tried altering the game's programming, for example, to give themselves benefits such as infinite lives or infinite ammunition. When large groups of people began playing shared games online, these cheats--which seemed harmless in single-player games--became a cause for concern, especially since many of them allow players to make devastating attacks on others.

    Too many cheaters in an online game can destroy the group atmosphere that makes online gaming fun, says Mia Consalvo, an associate professor at Ohio University who researches cheating in video games. Although game developers and third-party specialists are always working to combat cheaters, the problem has continued. Some cheaters simply want to wield more power, while others are lured by prize money offered in tournaments.

    Gamers can opt to play on servers that block those who haven't installed anti-cheating software. Such software scans a player's computer and alerts other players if it detects cheats. But anti-cheating software can only catch cheats once they become known: like antivirus software, it works by scanning for things that look like known cheats, and the list of cheats requires constant updating.

    Intel's researchers say that their system would work without needing updates. By watching at the hardware level for cheating strategies, the system should be able to detect current and future cheats, says Intel research scientist Travis Schluessler.

    For example, the system would go after input-based cheats, in which a hacker feeds the game different information than he enters through the keyboard and mouse. A cheater playing a shooting game might use an input-based cheat known as an aimbot, for example, to point his guns automatically, leaving him free to fire rapidly, and with deadly accuracy. Schluessler says that the Fair Online Gaming system's chip set would catch an aimbot by receiving and comparing data streams from the player's keyboard and mouse with data streams from what the game processes. The system would recognize that the information wasn't the same and alert administrators to the cheat. In tests, Schluessler says, the system ran without slowing the play of a game.

    In addition to input-based cheats, Schluessler says that the system would go after network-data cheats that extract hidden information from a game's network, such as the location of other players, and display it to the cheater. Intel's system would also target cheats that attempt to disable anti-cheating software. Schluessler says the goal isn't to replace anti-cheating software but to strengthen and augment it.

    Tony Ray, president of Even Balance, which makes the anti-cheating software PunkBuster, says this type of system could go a long way toward addressing continuing problems with cheaters. "There are a couple of things that can only be done properly with hardware," he says. "These are things we expend considerable effort in addressing with software ... Having real-time hardware verification that PunkBuster has not been compromised in memory after loading would go a long way toward thwarting even the best private hack authors."

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm


    Boys who play video games on school days spend 30 percent less time reading and girls spend 34 percent less time doing homework than those who do not play such games, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
    Julie Steenhuysen, "Video games rob reading, homework time: U.S. study," Reuters, July 2, 2007 --- http://uk.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUKN0235135620070702
    Also see http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070702/tc_nm/videogames_dc


    Chess Videos
    June 8, 2007 message from Ben Portman [ben@defeatmyticket.com]

    HI Bob, great site, I just ran across it for the first time today. It is always cool to see a site like yours that goes back to the "good ole days" of the internet when yahoo had almost no graphics on it and the internet was in its infancy...

    I'm a chess fanatic and I thought you'd be interested in this guy's (Chad Kimball) site: http://www.chessvictory.com 

    You have to give your email address to get the videos, which sort of a bummer, but it is still a great resource.

    This guy has taken a chess book by edward lasker and created a bunch of videos out of it, and is offering them for free.

    I've checked out the videos and they're awesome.

    Could you add that site for me?

    Ben

    Jensen Comment
    Ben Portman's connection with Chad Kimball is unknown to me. I'm really not a serious chess player and have not signed up for the above free videos. I pass this information along for those of you who want to take up the offer of these free videos. Apparently this is a promo for personalized training and sales of Chad's other chess videos and books --- http://www.chessvictory.com/index2.htm
    Chad sells at least 14 books on chess --- http://www.comparetobuy.com/chess.htm

    Other references include the following:
    "How to Use the Internet to Dramatically Improve Your Chess Strategy," by Chad Kimball , Selfgrowth.com --- http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Kimball1.html

    Ranges Chess Club ---
    http://www.rangeschessclub.com.au/PHITE.php?sitesig=PT&page=PT_500_Links


  • Just-In-Time Teaching --- http://134.68.135.1/jitt/

    What is Just-in-Time Teaching?

    G. Novak, gnovak@iupui.edu
    Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT for short) is a teaching and learning strategy based on the interaction between web-based study assignments and an active learner classroom. Students respond electronically to carefully constructed web-based assignments which are due shortly before class, and the instructor reads the student submissions "just-in-time" to adjust the classroom lesson to suit the students' needs. Thus, the heart of JiTT is the "feedback loop" formed by the students' outside-of-class preparation that fundamentally affects what happens during the subsequent in-class time together.

    What is Just-in-Time Teaching designed to accomplish?

    JiTT is aimed at many of the challenges facing students and instructors in today's classrooms. Student populations are diversifying. In addition to the traditional nineteen-year-old recent high school graduates, we now have a kaleidoscope of "non-traditional" students: older students, working part time students, commuting students, and, at the service academies, military cadets. They come to our courses with a broad spectrum of educational backgrounds, interests, perspectives, and capabilities that compel individualized, tailored instruction. They need motivation and encouragement to persevere. Consistent, friendly support can make the difference between a successful experience and a fruitless effort. It can even mean the difference between graduating and dropping out. Education research has made us more aware of learning style differences and of the importance of passing some control of the learning process over to the students. Active learner environments yield better results but they are harder to manage than lecture oriented approaches. Three of the "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" encourage student-faculty contact, increased time for student study, and cooperative learning between students.
    To confront these challenges, the Just-in-Time Teaching strategy pursues three major goals:

    What JiTT is Not

    Although Just-in-Time Teaching makes heavy use of the web, it is not to be confused with either distance learning (DL) or with computer-aided instruction (CAI). Virtually all JiTT instruction occurs in a classroom with human instructors. The web materials, added as a pedagogical resource, act primarily as a communication tool and secondarily as content provider and organizer. JiTT is also not an attempt to 'process' large numbers of students by employing computers to do massive grading jobs.

    The JiTT Feedback Loop

    The Web Component

    JiTT web pages fall into three major categories:

    The Active Learner Classroom

    The JiTT classroom session is intimately linked to the electronic preparatory assignments the students complete outside of class. Exactly how the classroom time is spent depends on a variety of issues such as class size, classroom facilities, and student and instructor personalities. Mini-lectures (10 min max) are often interspersed with demos, classroom discussion, worksheet exercises, and even hands-on mini-labs. Regardless, the common key is that the classroom component, whether interactive lecture or student activities, is informed by an analysis of various student responses.
    In a JiTT classroom students construct the same content as in a passive lecture with two important added benefits. First, having completed the web assignment very recently, they enter the classroom ready to actively engage in the activities. Secondly, they have a feeling of ownership since the interactive lesson is based on their own wording and understanding of the relevant issues.
    The give and take in the classroom suggests future WarmUp questions that will reflect the mood and the level of expertise in the class at hand. In this way the feedback loop is closed with the students having played a major part in the endeavor.
    From the instructor's point of view, the lesson content remains pretty much the same from semester to semester with only minor shifts in emphasis. From the students' perspective, however, the lessons are always fresh and interesting, with a lot of input from the class.
    We designed JiTT to improve student learning in our own classrooms and have been encouraged by the results, both attitudinal and cognitive. We attribute this success to three factors that enhance student learning, identified by Alexander Astin* in his thirty year study of college student success:
     
    • increased amounts and quality of student-student interaction
    • student-faculty interaction
    • student study outside of class.
    By fostering these, JiTT promotes student learning and satisfaction.

    *Astin, Alexander: What matters in college? Four critical years revisited (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993).


  • September 1, 2006 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    PLAYING GAMES

    Several recently-published articles discuss the role of game playing as tools for education or social engagement.

    "Simulations, Games, and Learning" By Diana Oblinger EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, May 2006 http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI3004.pdf 

    "Today's games are complex, take up to 100 hours, require collaboration with others, and involve developing values, insights, and new knowledge. They are immersive virtual worlds that are augmented by a more complex external environment that involves communities of practice, the buying and selling of game items, blogs, and developer communities. In many ways, games have become complex learning systems."

    "Digital Game-Based Learning: It's Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Restless" By Richard Van Eck EDUCAUSE REVIEW, vol. 41, no. 2, March/April 2006, pp. 16–30. http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm0620.asp 

    According to the author, "The combined weight of three factors has resulted in widespread public interest in games as learning tools." These factors are (1) "ongoing research conducted by DGBL [digital game-based learning] proponents;" (2) "today's 'Net Generation,' or 'digital natives,' who have become disengaged with traditional instruction;" and (3) "the increased popularity of games. . . nearly as many digital games were sold as there are people in the United States (248 million games vs. 293.6 million residents.)"

    "Scavenger Hunt Enhances Students' Utilization of Blackboard" By Dianne C. Jones JOURNAL OF ONLINE LEARNING AND TEACHING, vol. 2, no. 2, June 2006 http://jolt.merlot.org/Vol2_No2_Jones.htm

    "The use of the Scavenger Hunt game has made the use of a web-based course management system, like Blackboard, less threatening for students and has significantly reduced the need for additional instructor time to deal with technology-related issues throughout the course."

    "Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as 'Third Places'" By Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams JOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, vol. 11, issue 4, 2006 http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue4/steinkuehler.html 

    The authors studied how massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) provide a means for establishing informal social relationships beyond the workplace and home. (This issue has other articles related to games and play. Link to other articles at http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue4/ )

    October 5, 2006 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    MORE FUN AND GAMES

    Continuing last month's topic on using games in learning environments (TL Infobits, August 2006 http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/bitaug06.html#2), more can be read in the October 2006 issue of ITALICS (vol. 5, issue 3, http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/italics/vol5iss3.htm).

    Papers include:

    "Innovations in Learning and Teaching Approaches using GameTechnologies -- Can 'The Movies' Teach How to Make a Movie?"
    By Ryan Flynn and Nigel Newbutt

    "Using A Virtual World For Transferable Skills in Gaming Education"
    By M. Hobbs, E. Brown, and M. Gordon

    "Providing the Skills Required for Innovative Mobile Game Development Using Industry/Academic Partnerships" By Reuben Edwards and Paul Coulton

    ITALICS, Innovation in Teaching And Learning in Information and Computer Science [ISSN 1473-7507] is an electronic journal published by the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) to provide a "vehicle for members of the ICS communities to disseminate best practice and research on learning and teaching within the subject disciplines." Current and past issues are available at http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/italics/index.htm. For more information about the ICS, see http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/.

    See also:

    "Living a Second Life" THE ECONOMIST, September 28, 2006
    http://www.economist.com/business/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=7963538

    The article describes how Second Life, a virtual world environment, is being used as an educational tool.


    xTREME Accounting Games from PwC
    PwC launched the xTREME Games in 2002, to increase students' exposure to professional services and the world of public accounting. Since then, the games have grown substantially with over 85 schools involved, more than 2,500 teams comprising 13,000 participants, and 1.5 million in prize money awarded. Over the years, more than 150,000 hours have been logged to the xTREME Games by competing students. The xTREME Games continue to have a significant impact on our participants, helping them to better understand the vast career opportunities in public accounting and connecting them with professionals in the industry. The characteristics that winning teams exhibit are critical thinking, presentation skills, teamwork, and using time wisely
    --- http://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/xtreme/what-it-takes.jhtml

    "PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS LAUNCHES NATIONWIDE COMPETITION TO ENHANCE CAREER READINESS OF COLLEGE STUDENTS," by Andrew Priest, Accounting Education News, September 10, 2009 ---
    http://accountingeducation.com/index.cfm?page=newsdetails&id=150210

    As college students across the country continue to face a highly competitive job market, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) has announced the launch of the firm's 8th Annual xTREME Games, a unique competition that enables undergraduates at schools across the country to experience and solve real-world business challenges. Participants in PwC's xTREME Games compete for school bragging rights and nearly $300,000 in total prize money while broadening and enhancing valuable skills such as decision making, communication and team building, which are critical to success in the professional world. Approximately $1.5 million in total prize money has been awarded to students since xTREME began.

    As one of the nation's largest employers of college graduates, PwC collaborates with schools across the country to provide meaningful, relevant learning programs and opportunities to ensure that students are well prepared to enter the profession. The xTREME Games competition is part of PwC's larger, ongoing commitment to corporate responsibility and youth education.

    xTREME, beginning this week at the University of Alabama, includes xTAX, short for "Extreme Tax," and xACT, short for "Extreme Accounting." Both challenge undergraduates to solve cases designed to expose them to real tax and accounting scenarios, including policy and planning issues. Over the next six weeks, hundreds of the best accounting students representing nearly 80 schools nationwide will compete in five-person teams for the right to potentially represent their schools at the national finals in January.

    "When it comes to preparing students for successful careers in the accounting profession, there is no substitute for hands-on, real-world experience," said Christina Fitzpatrick, National Campus Sourcing Programs Leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers. "With the xTREME Games, students get a firsthand look at the type of intricate challenges that tax and accounting professionals face on a daily basis. The competition builds collaboration and problem-solving skills while also requiring that ideas are effectively presented -- all crucial skills in a competitive job environment."

    Created by PwC in 2002, the xTREME Games competition has grown steadily to include nearly 80 schools and more than 2,500 teams comprised of 13,000 participants. More information about xTREME can be found at www.pwc.com/xtreme.

    PwC has a strong history of investing in education and talent development. For the past two years, PwC has been ranked #1 in Training magazine's "Training Top 125" annual ranking of organizations that excel at employee training and development (the firm also ranked #2 in 2007). PwC has also consistently been named to FORTUNE magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list, and has been highly ranked on BusinessWeek's lists of "Best Internships" and "Best Places to Launch a Career."

    Also see "EXTREME-ACCOUNTING: ACCOUNTANTS' (in Wales) WACKY RACES" ---
    http://accountingeducation.com/index.cfm?page=newsdetails&id=137526

    The PwC xTreme Games Site ---
    http://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/xtreme/index.jhtml

    Have you got the right stuff?

    Business is the place where theory is executed in real time. It's a place where decisions are made with consequences, where communication is key, and collaborative, team-oriented thinking is a must. These are the conditions created in the xTREME Games, PwC's Tax and Accounting Campus Competitions.

    No longer within the safe confines of the classroom, PwC seeks students who are eager to plunge briefly into the environment of the real business world to show what they're made of as critical thinkers, able collaborators and persuasive advisors on important business issues.

    No number crunching exercises, the xTREME Games are focused on high-level issues designed to test and improve your decision-making skills. Detailed accounting or tax knowledge is not required to participate. What is required is your desire to learn, meet new people, experience new challenges, and have fun!

    Our 2009 xTREME campuses are designated for either the xACT competition OR the xTAX competition. Read on for more information about how it works, what it takes to succeed, and to see if your school is a participant!

    Build your team --- http://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/xtreme/how-it-works.jhtml

    Find your five-member team. Two must be sophomores—each must be enrolled in the first accounting course or be an accounting major/minor One junior—must be an accounting major One “other” team member may be at any level: freshman to fifth year student. This team member does not have to be an accounting major, e.g., a general business or business-related major, such as Finance or Information Systems is acceptable. One team member can be any level but must either be enrolled in the first accounting course or be an accounting major/minor at the undergraduate or graduate level.

    3 Attend official mission meeting on campus

    In your mission meeting, you and your teammates will meet with PwC representatives to receive your official case packet, with instructions and further information about the xTREME Games. 4 Develop your case

    You and your team will have two weeks to develop your case and consult with your faculty and PwC mentors for guidance and encouragement along the way. The average time it takes a team to complete the case assignment is 10-15 hours. 5 Present your case in 12 minutes to PwC professionals

    Your team will be charged with clearly communicating your position, presenting in a dynamic way, and backing up your case solution in an interactive question and answer session. Each team member must speak for at least one minute. 6 Celebrate!

    All participants will receive an invitation to a PwC celebratory event following the competition where they’ll have an opportunity to network with our professionals. The winning team on each campus will receive $1,000 and consideration for the national finals. 7 Five lucky winners to compete in the national finals

    Five teams will be chosen as national finalists and awarded $10,000 per team and a trip either to New York City (xACT) or Washington, D.C. (xTAX). There, each team will get a chance to join with experts from PwC for a fun-filled, exciting two-day final competition. Winners of the xACT competition receive our prestigious Montgomery Award, while winners of the xTAX competition receive our prestigious Hamilton Award. The xACT Montgomery Award

    Named after Robert Montgomery, founding partner of Lybrand, Ross Brothers & Montgomery in 1898, who wrote the first American book on the practice of auditing. He was instrumental in the founding of the AICPA and served as its first president.

    The award, a silver bowl, resides at PwC headquarters in New York City.

    Names of each member of the winning team are inscribed on its base. Each winning team member and their faculty mentor receive a replica of the award to keep. The xTAX Hamilton Award

    Named after Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the US Treasury, who set the first tax policy and defended it in a decision that was the Supreme Court's first ruling on the constitutionality of a law.

    The award, a silver bowl, resides at PwC's Washington National Tax Service office in Washington, DC.

    Names of each member of the winning team are inscribed on its base. Each winning team member and their faculty mentor receive a replica of the award to keep.

    Home How it works What it takes Who's competing Winner's circle Register now Recently visited pages xTREME Games: PwC's tax and accounting competition

    Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/BookBob1.htm#careers


    Using the Monopoly board game and other games in edutainment, learning, and research

    Good starting references include the following:
     

    "Google-Powered Monopoly (Game) Still Under Construction," by Gus Mastrapa, Wired News, September 11, 2009 ---
    http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/09/monopoly-city-streets/

    Monopoly from Parker Bros. has been used across the years by various accounting, finance, economics, and sociology instructors to interest students in accounting, finance, and social studies. Years ago I lived next door to an economics instructor who extended the game to "Corporate Monopoly." Dissertations have even been written based up this board game, e.g., Models of Risk and Strategies in Gameplay --- http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~williamt/Thesis.pdf

    David Albrecht at Concordia College took it to a new level for basic accounting. Terms and conditions for students (Real Money, 2003 Edition©, by W. David Albrecht, is a financial accounting and investment simulation game for use in accounting classes) are given at http://www.profalbrecht.com/publish/realmoney2003/copyright/
    Albrecht's book is summarized at http://www.profalbrecht.com/publish/realmoney2000/


    The Math Behind a Game of Monopoly ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/we-swear-this-image-will-change-the-way-you-see-the-monopoly-board-forever-2013-6

    Jensen Comment
    Monopoly is widely used to teach accounting, economics, and other courses.
    Bob Jensen's threads on the Game of Monopoly (and its variations) in college courses ---
    See below


    Monopoly Redesigned --- http://www.studio360.org/2011/may/20/monopoly-redesigned/


    Parker Bros. Monopoly Update and Other Games and Edutainment Applications

    From the Scout Report on October 23, 2009

    As the World Monopoly Championships come to an end, a curious case involving the popular game is remembered How A Fight Over a Board Game Monopolized an Economist's Life http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125599860004295449.html

     Tourists, Vegas residents bring Monopoly game to Las Vegas Strip
    http://snipurl.com/monopolylvstrip  [www_lasvegassun_com] 

    Official Site for Monopoly
    http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/en_US/

     Anti-Monopoly
    http://www.antimonopoly.com/

    What's the significance of the Monopoly playing pieces?
    http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2009/whats-the-significance-of-the-monopoly-playing-pieces 

    Computers Generate Monopoly Game Strategy
    http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/20/arts/computers-generate-monopoly-game-strategy.html

    The popularity of certain video games and other entertainment options seems to change with the seasons, but the board game Monopoly has remained tremendously popular with the American public for more than seven decades.

    One member of the American public, retired economics professor Ralph Anspach, continues to actively promote his own version of the game. It's titled "Anti-Monopoly", and the controversy surrounding the game has included a lengthy legal battle with the company Parker Brothers that has seen many twists and turns. Among other things, Anspach takes exception to the official company line regarding the original game's origins, which state that Charles B. Darrow developed the game during the Great Depression.

    Anspach refers to this creation story as a "corporate fairy tale". Parker Brothers remains less than thrilled about the "Anti-Monopoly" created by Anspach back in the early 1970s. He created the game in order to inform his son about the potential downside of monopolies, and several years afterwards Anspach received a letter from a Parkers Brothers attorney requesting him to stop selling his new game. Over the past three decades, Anspach has attempted to schedule events around past World Monopoly Championships in order to bring attention his cause. After a lengthy and very costly court battle, Anspach was, in a sense, victorious, as the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled in 1979 that the trademark "Monopoly" was generic, and using the name was not in fact a trademark violation. As of this writing, Professor Anspach had not made plans to attend the World Monopoly Championships, which are being held in Las Vegas this week.

    The first link will take visitors to a piece from this Tuesday's Wall Street Journal that discusses the ongoing saga surrounding "Anti-Monopoly". The second link whisks interested parties away to a news article from this Monday's Las Vegas Sun that talks about an oversized Monopoly board that's all the rage on the Strip. Moving on, the third link leads to the official Monopoly site. Here, visitors can learn about the various officially sanctioned spinoff products, game history, and of course, Mr. Monopoly. The other side of Monopoly can be found at the fourth site, which is the official homepage of the "Anti-Monopoly" board game. The fifth link leads to a classic piece of reporting from the Straight Dope about the significance of the Monopoly playing pieces. Lastly, the sixth link leads to a 1987 article from the New York Times that profiles "Winning Monopoly", a popular paperback guide to succeeding at Monopoly created by Kaz Darzinskis.

    Bob Jensen's threads on Monopoly and other board games applied to education/edutainment can be found at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

     


    May 4, 2007 message from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

    A few years ago, I had the good fortune to be involved in refining how Monopoly could be used in financial accounting classes so that students can learn by doing. In recent years, I've taught sections of introductory managerial accounting and have searched for something similar to Monopoly to use there.

    I think I've found it. I started playing business computer games over the winter break and discovered one that would be well suited for use in managerial accounting. I created some instructions, had students in a small honors class buy $20 copies of the game (I have no ownership interest in either the game or its distribution), and throughout the course students practiced managerial accounting topics for themselves. I was able to have students identify cost drivers classify costs as variable, fixed or whatever develop cost equations using multiple variables of activity consider revenues and develop equations for computing profit conduct multiple-product CVP analysis conduct capital budgeting analyses identify relevant factors for making decisions create budgets for operations and cash flow compare actual results to budget, and compute variances analyze the variances for insight as to activities that need to be changed evaluate strategies project if actual earnings will help realize future goals In the fall, I hope o incorporate: have multiple students involved in the same game work from a strategic cost management perspective product pricing strategies have students go through the project a second time, but doing it better and being summative-evaluated for a grade

    In the coming fall term, I have two regular sections of managerial accounting. In one section I intend to continue with my learning centered and mastery teacher approach (which I would also consider partnering with someone to study its effectiveness). In the other section I intend to use the simulation game.

    My goal is to eventually share everything in an article sent to a well regarded journal.

    I'm looking for someone intrigued enough with the idea to consider using the game in a section of managerial accounting for the coming fall. If you are interested please contact me via private e-mail at albrecht@profalbrecht.com .

    The project and instructions are rough enough at this time that I'm not ready to share them publicly.

    David Albrecht
    Bowling Green State University

    Jensen Comments
    Clever students in Professor Albrecht's class might study the top 1,000 strategies for winning the game.
    From The Business of Inventing (Chapter 11) --- Click Here

    Begin Quote
    ************
    Monopoly is a familiar game for Jay Walker, the company’s founder and driving force.2As a student at Cornell University he took on the task of mastering the Parker Brothers game of that name and, within a couple of years, won the world champion-ship. To describe the situation using one of Jay Walker’s favorite metaphors, he unraveled the DNA of Monopoly. Naturally, he decided to profit from his research, and so, continuing the metaphor, he published a book that contained the DNA sequencing for Monopoly, titled 1,000 Ways to Win Monopoly Games.

    One might have expected Parker Brothers to see such a book as free promotion for the game—a good thing. But instead the company reacted as if Walker really were publishing Monopoly’s DNA sequencing and, before the book appeared, sued Walker to stop publication. Walker hired attorneys and fought the suit, arguing that Parker Brothers was attempting to exercise prior restraint against his right to publish freely. He won the case and ended up using the proceeds from the book to pay for his legal expenses.
    ************
    End Quote

    1000 Ways to Win Monopoly Games by Jay Walker and Jeff Lehman
    Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 1975
    Click Here

     

    History of the Monopoly Game --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_%28game%29
    Also Click Here 
    Also Click Here
    Also see --- http://800ceoread.com/products/?ISBN=0306814897

    Also see http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/monopoly.htm

    Begin Quote
    ************
    Decades later, when they attempted to suppress publication of a game called Anti-Monopoly, designed by Ralph Anspach, the trademark suit went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1983, and the court found in favor of Anspach because Darrow did not actually invent the game.

    There is no accounting for the unrivaled devotion that the MONOPOLY® game has garnered over the past sixty years. Some say it is the chance to build a fortune, take a risk, make an acquisition. Others insist it is the drama of competition. Edward P. Parker, former president of Parker Brothers suggested that the magic of the game MONOPOLY® is "clobbering your best friend without doing any damage."
    ************
    End Quote


     

    March 3, 2009 mesage from Ravenscroft, Sue P [ACCT] [sueraven@IASTATE.EDU]

    Issues in Accounting Education had at least two articles on how to use Monopoly in Introductory Accounting. You could check out volume 4 (2) from Fall 89 and volume 10(1) from Spring 95 to get more information.

    When I used it in the second semester of Introductory, I had students in teams of four meet outside of class, do 25 rounds each, and come back to class with individual financial statements showing their individual transactions, along with a reconciliation amongst the four players that reconciled total revenues and expenses that were player to player. Some transactions are between the bank and the players....It's been a long time, so I can't recall the details of that team reconciliation. But students loved playing the game, I gave silly prizes for the biggest winner and the biggest loser, and it took very little class time...For me it was in lieu of the traditional practice set, which we used as a sort of filter to make sure students had learned the basic in the first semester.

    Regards,

    Sue Ravenscroft

    March 3, 2009 reply from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

    There are many ways to do it. In Rober Kneckle's 1989 Issues article, a version was described in which students play a game of Monopoly to conclusion, then prepare financial statements. In my 1995 article, I describe a version in which students play quarters of a game, and prepare financial statements after every quarter. In my version students also get a chance to invest or bet on who will win each game. Of course, they are examining financial statements as their source of information.

    When I do it, I plan on 1.5 weeks to play game and prepare financials, and about 1.5 weeks for me to grade the financial statements and receive student investments. Four quarters makes for 12 weeks. But, that is how I do it, and I'm usually doing it for 40-60 students. Things go very quickly if you have 16-20 students.

    Things go much differently, depending on whether it is used in financial accounting (I don't use debits/credits here), intermediate accounting (I use debits/credits here) or MBA accounting (lots of it wheeling/deeling and joint ventures here. Usually all four tokens are bankrupt after two fourths of an MBA game.

    When I do it, it is completely out of class. However, I have arranged for students to play the first fourth of the game at the same time, and I'm there to answer questions.

    It goes much better, IMO, if the classic board version is used and not the computerized version.

    I've experimented with other computer business games. As long as it isn't an economic simulation, things go well. I especially like using Gazillionaire for managerial/cost accounting, and Billionaire 2 as a replacement for Monopoly.

    My debit/credit instructions are at the following link: http://profalbrecht.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/real-money-2003.pdf

    David Albrecht

    March 3, reply from Zane Swanson [ZSwanson@UCO.EDU]

    In response to Roger and Pat

    Roger
     My classes were capped at 40 (probably because of the room size). Do a Google search on “accounting monopoly game” You might find something appropriate to your school/class environment.

    Pat
    I ran the monopoly game like a continuous practice set over several classes during the beginning chapters on journal entries / ledgers / accounting cycle. First, I would lecture on the accounting and then in the latter 15/20 minutes of the class the students would be hands on. The student teams did have to turn in financial statements at the end of the “monopoly practice set”, but I did not have them calculate anything other than the game operations (i.e. no depreciation, salaries, taxes, etc.) I liked to keep it simple because in order to interest students with that “math phobia” syndrome which is present in non-accounting major students’ mindset about accounting.

    Zane Swanson

    March 3, 2009 reply from Neal Hannon [nhannon@GMAIL.COM]

    Hi Pat,

    A "tune-up" could be accomplished with very little game playing in class. After 20 or so rolls of the dice per each student enough data can be captured to create differences in the net worth of participants. It also allows the other students to coach the proper entry for students playing at their table and can be used to foster teamwork. What i find fascinating about the exercise is that students finally see a connection from a business process to an accounting entry and learn that accounting can be an excellent way to judge PAST performance of a company. The chance/community chest cards can be used to add any level of complexity you would like to have the students experience including fair value, depreciation, leases, pensions, etc. I personally would avoid the online version of the game because student's attention will wander into instant messaging and email.

    Neal

    March 3, 2009 reply from Meredith Jackson Snead State [mjackson@SNEAD.EDU]

    I have been playing this in my Principles of Accounting I classes for 3 years and still have students comment on it. I see more “ah ha” moments while playing this game than I do all semester long. I spend 2 class days on the Monopoly game. Four students per board, each student turns in his/her own work - journal entries, t-accounts, trial balance, financial statements, closing entries, and post-closing trial balance. They do the journal entries and t-accounts in class; the rest is done for homework. I give little prizes for the largest net income in each class.

    I do this activity before the first test, which covers the entire accounting cycle. I do not make them do depreciation, since we have not yet covered that at the time of the assignment.

    I will be glad to share my handouts with you.

    Meredith

    Meredith P. Jackson
    Accounting/Business Instructor
    Snead State Community College

    mjackson@snead.edu  (256) 840-4163 (256) 558-0237

     


    Credit Where It's Due
    Anti-Monopoly, a game put out briefly in the 1970's before Parker Brothers (owner of the Monopoly monopoly) sued for copyright infringement. Instead of accumulating money, players vied for "social consciousness points." In all other respects the game was exactly like Monopoly. If we tied social status to "social consciousness points," it's quite obvious that they would soon play the role of money, subject to the same abuses.

    "Credit Where It's Due," by  Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay --- http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/WestTech/CreditWhereDue.HTM
    By the way, this is a nice history outline!!!!

    There is a version of the Parker Brothers' Monopoly that uses a Visa debit card (also scores a nice product placement in the process) --- http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/#1527795
    Also see http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060725/0233223.shtml
    Also see http://irregularpayments.com/2006/07/
    Also Click Here

    FOR FUN OR PROFIT? AN EVALUATION OF AN ACCOUNTING SIMULATION GAME FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, by Ralph Kober and Ann Tarca, Department of Accounting and Finance The University of Western Australia Nedlands, WA 6907 --- http://www.af.ecel.uwa.edu.au/__data/page/9426/00-126.pdf

    Computerized versions of the board game --- http://www.muurkrant.nl/monopoly/computer_programs.htm
    Also see http://www.tutor2u.net/economics/economics_blog_july2006.html
    Linux versions --- http://www.linuxsoft.cz/en/sw_list.php?id_kategory=25
    Also see http://www.myfamilysoftware.com/ind.html

    A version of Monopoly for your cell phone --- http://cosmicvariance.com/category/entertainment/

    Rich Uncle and other "Forgotten Games" --- http://www.theswitchingyard.com/forgottengames.html

    St. Louis Monopoly --- http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2004/11/15/editorial1.html

    “Children First: A Game of Irony”, Parker Bros. game based on the NY City school system.--- http://www.uft.org/news/teacher/feature/children_first_game/

    Capitalizing on the national visibility of New York City’s educational reforms, Parker Brothers, makers of Monopoly, announced today that they will be producing a new game based on the city’s education system. Entitled “Children First: A Game of Irony”, the game is slated to come out in time for the 2007-2008 school year. According to a company spokesperson, this will be a board game, the object of which will be to amass the highest number of points, which in the game are referred to as “test scores”.
    GBN News, March 10, 2007 --- http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2007/03/new-game-in-town.html

    "What's Wrong with Monopoly (the game)?" by Bejamin Powell --- http://www.mises.org/story/1451

    McDonalds had a promotional version of the game that clever criminals exploited.
    See http://www.jointventuresecrets.com/dbechtle/
    MONOPOLY FRAUD!
    "FBI Arrests 8 in McDonald's Game Fraud," by KAREN GULLO
    http://www.rajuabju.com/elat/monopolyhistory.htm

    Begin Quote
    ************
    Federal authorities working with McDonald's broke up a criminal ring they say rigged the popular Monopoly and ''Who Wants to be a Millionaire'' games played by millions of the fast-food chain's customers over the past six years.
    ************
    End Quote
     

    Examples of some experiments using Monopoly in edutainment, learning, and research are listed below:

    TEACHING RESOURCE Using MONOPOLY  and Teams-GamesTournaments in accounting education: a cooperative learning teaching resource
    by Margaret M. Tanner; Tim M. Lindquist
    http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713757618~db=all

    Using the Parker Brother's Game Monopoly to Teach Journal Entries in an Introductory College Accounting Course
    by Susann Cuperus (University of Mary)
    http://worldcat.org/wcpa/oclc/51537960

    Games Economists Play
    Non-Computerized Classroom-Games in College Economics

    http://www.aug.edu/~sbajmb/paper-games.pdf

    Wealth Distribution and Imperfect Capital Markets: A Classroom Experiment --- http://www.indiana.edu/~econed/pdffiles/fall01/stanley.pdf

    Using Monopoly to Teach Social Stratification and Inequality ---
    http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p106595_index.html?type=info

    An Experimental Approach to the Development of a Socio-Economic Model --- Click Here

    Also see Richard Campbell's tutorial at http://faculty.rio.edu/campbell/aaa2007.htm


    "Are Video Games Evil?" by Chris Suellentrop, The Wilson Quarterly, October 2006 --- http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=193155

    On a Monday evening last fall, in the Crystal Gateway Marriott a few blocks from the Pentagon, a group of academics, journalists, and software developers gathered to play with the U.S. military’s newest toys. In one corner of the hotel’s ballroom, two men climbed into something resembling a jeep. One clutched a pistol and positioned himself behind the steering wheel, while the other manned the vehicle’s turret. In front of them, a huge, three-paneled television displayed moving images of an urban combat zone. Nearby, another man shot invisible infrared beams from his rifle at a video-screen target. In the middle of the room a player knelt, lifted a large, bazooka-like device to his shoulder, and began launching imaginary antitank missiles.

    The reception was hosted by the Army Game Project, best known for creating America’s Army, the official video game of the U.S. Army, and was intended to demonstrate how the military’s use of video games has changed in just a few years. America’s Army was released in 2002 as a recruiting tool, the video-game version of those “Be All You Can Be” (now “An Army of One”) television ads. But the game has evolved beyond mere propaganda for the PlayStation crowd into a training platform for the modern soldier.

    If you have absorbed the familiar critique of video games as a mindless, dehumanizing pastime for a nihilistic Columbine generation, the affinity between gaming and soldiering may seem nightmarishly logical: Of course the military wants to condition its recruits on these Skinner boxes, as foreshadowed by science fiction produced when video games were little more than fuzzy blips on the American screen. The film The Last Starfighter (1984) and the novel Ender’s Game (1985) depict futuristic militaries that use video games to train and track the progress of unknowing children, with the objective of creating a pools of recruits. (The code name for America’s Army when it was in development was “Operation Star Fighter,” an homage to its cinematic predecessor.)

    Some members of today’s military do view video games as a means of honing fighting skills. The director of the technology division at Quantico Marine Base told The Washington Post last year that today’s young recruits, the majority of whom are experienced video-game players, “probably feel less inhibited, down in their primal level, pointing their weapons at somebody.” In the same article, a retired Marine colonel speculated that the gaming generation has been conditioned to be militaristic: “Remember the days of the old Sparta, when everything they did was towards war?” The experiences of some soldiers seem to bear out his words. A combat engineer interviewed by the Post compared his tour in Iraq to Halo, a popular video game that simulates the point of view of a futuristic soldier battling an alien army.

    To view video games merely as mock battlegrounds, however, is to ignore the many pacific uses to which they are being put. The U.S. military itself is developing games that “train soldiers, in effect, how not to shoot,” according to a New York Times Magazine article of a few years ago. Rather than use video games to turn out mindless killers, the armed forces are fashioning games that impart specific skills, such as parachuting and critical thinking. Even games such as those displayed at the Marriott that teach weapons handling don’t reward indiscriminate slaughter, the shoot-first-ask-questions-later bluster that hardcore gamers deride as “button mashing.” Players of America’s Army participate in small units with other players connected via the Internet to foster teamwork and leadership.

    Nor is the U.S. military alone in recognizing the training potential of video games. The Army’s display was only one exhibit at the Serious Games Summit, “serious” being the industry’s label for those games that are created to do more than entertain. Games have been devised to train emergency first-responders, to recreate ancient civilizations, to promote world peace. The Swedish Defense College has developed a game to teach UN peacekeepers how to interact with and pacify civilian populations without killing them. Food Force, an America’s Army imitator, educates players about how the United Nations World Food Program fights global hunger. A group of Carnegie Mellon University students, among them a former Israeli intelligence officer, is developing PeaceMaker, a game in which players take the role of either the Israeli prime minister or the Palestinian president and work within political constraints toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    The very phrase “serious games,” however, suggests that unserious games may well be the societal blight that many believe them to be. It’s easier to vilify games such as those in the Grand Theft Auto series, in which the player’s goal is to rise to power in various criminal organizations by carjacking vehicles and killing their owners with a variety of weapons—a baseball bat, a Molotov cocktail, an AK-47. But Grand Theft Auto and its sequels are popular not just because of their transgressive content, but also because they are designed to allow players to roam freely across a gigantic three-dimensional cityscape. (With their combination of technical accomplishment and controversial subject matter, the Grand Theft Auto titles might be the video-game analogues of movies such as Bonnie and Clyde or, more recently, Pulp Fiction.)

    As far back as 1982, when video games consisted of simple fare like Space Invaders—a two-dimensional arcade game—a rabbi warned on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour about their dehumanizing effects: “When children spend hours in front of a screen playing some of these games that are inherently violent, they will tend to look at people as they look at these little blips on the screen that must be zapped—that must be killed before they are killed. And it is my concern that 10, 20 years down the line we’re going to see a group of children who then become adults who don’t view people as human beings, but rather view them as other blips to be destroyed—as things.”

    The rabbi articulated an objection that has been heard repeatedly as video games have grown from a pastime for awkward, outdoors-fearing children into a form of mass entertainment enjoyed mostly by adults. Last year, Americans spent a total of $7 billion on almost 230 million computer and video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association, an industry group. Both of those numbers—sales revenues and units sold—have roughly tripled over the past 10 years. Defining who is a “gamer” can be tricky, as the definition can include everyone who has played Minesweeper on a personal computer or who kills time at the office with computer mahjong, but studies conducted by the ESA and others estimate that roughly half of all Americans play computer and video games. According to a study released in May by the ESA, the average American gamer is 33 years old. A full quarter of gamers are over 50, while only 31 percent are younger than 18. Playing video games is still a predominantly male pastime, but almost 40 percent of gamers are women; more adult women play video games than do boys 17 and under.

    Those who assume that video-game players are a bloodthirsty lot might be surprised to learn that of last year’s 10 best-selling games for the PlayStation and Xbox consoles, not one was a shoot-’em-up. Six of the most popular games were sports titles—including Madden NFL, a cultural juggernaut among athletes and young men—and the other four were Star Wars games. The bestselling PC game last year was World of Warcraft, a multiplayer swords-and-sorcery game that millions of subscribers pay a monthly fee to play. World of Warcraft is the latest and most popular in the genre of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, commonly called “virtual worlds.” In these games, thousands of players can interact with each other by connecting simultaneously over the Internet. (There’s a debate among specialists whether some of these worlds, such as Second Life, which offers its “residents” no competitions or quests, even qualify as games.)

    Despite their popularity, video games remain, in the opinion of many (particularly those who don’t play them), brainless or, worse, brain-destroying candy. But for as long as critics have decried video games as the latest permutation in a long line of nefarious, dehumanizing technologies, others have offered a competing, more optimistic vision of their role in shaping American society. Opposite the rabbi on that MacNeil/Lehrer broadcast a quarter-century ago was Paul Trachtman, an editor for Smithsonian magazine, who argued that video games provide a form of mental exercise. Ignore the dubious content, the “surface or the imagery or the story line,” he suggested, and you will see that games teach not merely how best to go about “zapping a ship or a monster.” Underneath the juvenilia is “a test of your facility for understanding the logic design that the programmer wrote into the game.” Games, in short, are teachers. And electronic games are uniquely suited to training individuals how to navigate our modern information society.

    As the gaming generation has matured, it has advanced this idea with increasing vigor. Last year, Steven Johnson published Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, which included a brief for an idea that has been gaining currency among academics and game developers: All video games, even the ones that allow you to kill prostitutes, are a form of education, or at least edutainment. Games can do more than make you a better soldier, or improve your hand-eye coordination or your spatial orientation skills. They can make you more intelligent.

    On one level, this argument isn’t very surprising. Games of all kinds are a part of almost every human society, and they have long been used to inculcate the next generation with desirable virtues and skills. We enroll our kids in Little League not only so they will have a good time, but also to teach them about sportsmanship, teamwork, and the importance of practice and hard work. The Dutch historian Johan Huizenga argued in Homo Ludens, his 1938 ur-text of game studies, that the concept of “play” should be considered a “third function” for humanity, one that is “just as important as reasoning and making.”

    In the case of video games, even their critics acknowledge that they are instructing our children. The critics just don’t like the form and the sometimes violent and sexually explicit content of the instruction, which they believe teaches children aggressive behaviors. Yet if such games are nothing more than “murder simulators,” as one critic has called them, why is it—as gaming enthusiasts never tire of pointing out—that the murder rate has declined in recent years, when there are more video games, and more violent ones, than ever? Why do IQ scores continue their slight but perceptible rise if an entire generation of children, the oldest of whom are now in their thirties—a cohort to which I belong—stunted its development with electronic pap? The important thing to find out about video games isn’t whether they are teachers. “The question is,” as game designer Raph Koster writes in A Theory of Fun for Game Design (2004), “what do they teach?”

    The generally uncredited father of video games was William A. Higinbotham, who, while working as a government physicist, invented a game of electronic Ping-Pong and displayed it during a visitors’ day for the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island in October 1958. By the next year, the game had been dismantled because its computer and oscilloscope components were needed for other jobs. Higinbotham’s game might have been forgotten—except by readers of the Brookhaven Bulletin, which published a 1981 story speculating that he had invented the first video game—were it not for the fact that one of the lab’s visitors that day was high school student David Ahl, who would write the 1978 book Basic Computer Games and become the editor of Creative Computing. From the pages of this magazine for computer hobbyists, Ahl proclaimed Higinbotham the grandfather of the phenomenon in 1982.

    The more influential and more commonly acknowledged grandfather was Steve Russell. As a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student in 1961, Russell created a rocket-ship duel called Spacewar! that could be played on one of MIT’s handful of computers, the PDP-1. Then, in the same way that Microsoft packages its Windows operating system with solitaire and other games, Digital Equipment Corporation, the manufacturer of the PDP-1, began shipping it with the game preloaded in memory, influencing computer science students around the country.

    In 1972, Magnavox introduced Odyssey, which, like Higinbotham’s game, was an adaptation of Ping-Pong (for whatever reason, table tennis was the game of choice for early video-game creators) that was the first home console for video gaming. The next 30 years saw the introduction of Atari, Nintendo, Sony’s PlayStation, and Microsoft’s Xbox, not to mention the many games designed for the growing numbers of personal computers. Higinbotham’s black-and-white blips have, over the past half-century, morphed into sophisticated displays of computer animation that increasingly resemble films, with original scripts, music, and often-breathtaking visual beauty. The King Kong video game released last year to coincide with Peter Jackson’s film remake featured an arresting parade of apatosauruses marching through a valley on Kong’s home of Skull Island. The sequence was so gorgeous that I set down my controller and just marveled at it for a while.

    As was true of games before the digital age, there’s a remarkable array of video games. Chess and bowling aren’t very similar, but we intuitively understand that both are games, if different species of the genus. Likewise, video games encompass everything from simple online puzzles to simulated football games and professional wrestling matches to the “God game,” in which the player adopts an omniscient view to influence the development of entire societies. In The Sims, the best-selling PC game of all time, players control the lives of individual humans as they go about their mundane lives. (It may sound unappealing, but The Sims comes from a long tradition. It is, in effect, another way to play house.) New genres frequently emerge. A “music” genre has arisen in response to the popularity of Dance Dance Revolution, a game in which players must move their feet in time to music on different areas of a dance pad. It’s basically a fast-moving, musical, single-player version of Twister.

    Exactly what is new about video games, other than their electronic nature, can be difficult to pin down. In the 21st century, almost all children’s toys have an electronic component, but that doesn’t make them all video games. In The Ultimate History of Video Games (2001), game journalist Steven Kent cites pinball as a mechanical ancestor of today’s digital games. Pinball created a panic in some quarters—no pun intended—as a new and dangerous influence on society. Foreshadowing the antics of today’s antigaming politicians was New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who smashed pinball machines with a sledgehammer and banned them from his city in the 1930s, a prohibition that was not lifted until the 1970s. (To be fair to La Guardia, governments have long perceived societal threats from new games. In the 1400s Scotland banned golf, now its proud national pastime, because too many young men were neglecting archery to practice their swings.)

    Continued in article


    March 3, 2009 message from Rodney G. Alsup [ralsup@COLES2.KENNESAW.EDU]

  • Another game that Kennesaw State University uses in the EMBA program is called Income/Outcome. More information can be found at http://www.income-outcome.com/ . One class day is devoted to playing the game during the opening residency. The game is well suited for getting a group of students to work together and to learn some accounting and finance.

    We are evaluating the simulation for use in the ASEBUSS EMBA program.

    Rodney G. Alsup, D.B.A., CPA Professor of Accounting
    Director of International Programs
    ASEBUSS The Romanian-American Postgraduate School of Business Foundation
    The Institute for Business Administration from Bucharest Calea Grivitei 8-10, Sector 1 010731
    Bucharest, Romania Phone: +40 (031) 224 90 42,
    Rodney@asebuss.ro www.asebuss.ro
    131 Edgewood Drive Durham, NC 27713 +1 (404) 406 6510

     


  • Education Technology:  Play-Doh™ Economics
    The Play Dough curriculum strives to provide financial and economic literacy for students and teachers, helping them develop the real life skills needed to be successful savers, investors, consumers, and workers in a global economy. “Play Dough Economics is the best single economic education curriculum I have used during my career,” states Dr. John Hall, an Associate Professor at Missouri State University. “It is comprehensive, teacher friendly, activity-oriented, highly motivating, and fun! The explanations of economic concepts are excellent and it is cost effective. Even though it was written for K-8 students, I have found Play Dough Economics to be very valuable beyond the 8th grade. I have used it in my college classes and worked with many high school teachers who use it with their students. Whenever and wherever I use Play dough Economics it is a hit.”
    "Play-Doh™ Economics," AccountingWeb, May 16, 2006 ---
    http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=101908


    Mixed reviews are given to video games used to supplement academic courses. 
    The consensus for potential is still there, but lack of development funds for education-intended games.  We really can't judge it these things at the college level until better quality stuff comes along for education rather than training.

    See "Joystick Nation," by David Epstein, Inside Higher Ed, October 25, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/10/26/games
    Some examples are give for games being developed for science education.


    Drama Simulations --- http://www.cob.tamucc.edu/ATABestPrac2K/drama-simulations.htm


    Sherry Mills and  Cathleen Burns won the American Accounting Associations Innovation in Accounting Education Award by using a Lego project to teach cost accounting --- http://aaahq.org/awards/awrd6win.htm 

    March 16, 2010 message from Cathleen Spalding Burns [Cathleen.Burns@Colorado.EDU]

  • Sherry and I have been teaching using Legos now for 15 years. We have done a number of presentations at teaching conferences over the years. Please see this article: "Bringing the Factory to the Classroom" by Cathleen S. Burns and Sherry K. Mills Journal of Accountancy, January 1997, pp. 56-60 ---

    The link to the Burns and Mills 1997 article is http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/1997/Jan/factory

     Cathleen S. Burns, PhD, CPA ----- Director, MS Accounting Program ----- Senior Instructor, Accounting Division Leeds School of Business, 419 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0419 Office: 441 Koelbel ----- 303-492-4076 ----- cathleen.burns@colorado.edu

     

  • Also see http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~smills/Update_11_04/Westhafer03.htm 


    December 12, 2004 message from Jagdish Gangolly [JGangolly@UAMAIL.ALBANY.EDU

    I was speaking with a colleague (and former student of Jay Forrester of Systems Dynamics and "magnetic core" fame at MIT). He showed me a fascinating game that is being used in hundreds of business schools (including the Sloan School at MIT) all over the world.

    It is affectionately called the "Beer Game". In the OR/MS Today magazine in 1992 there was even an article on the game.

    Those interested might like to visit www.systemdynamics.org 

    I was wondering if any one is using the game (specially in managerial accounting), and if an accounting adaptation of the game has been worked out by any one.

    Jagdish

    December 12, 2004 message from Fisher, Paul [PFisher@ROGUECC.EDU

    If it is an in-class course, I have the students form groups and construct a roller coaster out of paper, glue, etc. I use different colored and weighted paper on which I have copied the squares of graph paper. The students are responsible to track "R & D" time, construction labor time, and both direct and indirect material costs. The roller coaster must work work by sliding a coin down the track. The student is responsible for developing the sales price based on a predetermined mark-up rate.

    Later in the course I use the same activity to have the students develop how many riders and at what entrance price to make the project viable.

    It is about a six hour activity, but the students seem to like it and have a very good time doing it. If it would be useful I will send my directions sheet.

    Paul Fisher 
    Rogue Community College

    December 12, 2004 message from JOHN STANCIL [mailto:jstancil@VERIZON.NET]

    I use the "Management Accounting Simulation" ( http://www.microbuspub.com ). I have used it for several years. The students take over management of a troubled company that manufactures a single product and must make financial, production, and marketing decisions.

    John Stancil 
    Florida Southern College


    October 4, 2005 Message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    PAPERS ON THE UNIVERSITY AND THE INTERNET

    EDUCAUSE is making available online, at no cost, THE INTERNET AND THE UNIVERSITY: FORUM 2004. The book is a collection of papers from the Forum's 2004 Aspen Symposium. The papers cover three areas: technology and globalization, technology and scholarship, and technology and the brain. The book is available in PDF format at http://www.educause.edu/apps/forum/iuf04.asp .

    The Forum on the Internet and the University "seeks to understand how the Internet and new learning media can improve the quality and condition of learning, as well as the opportunities and risks created by rapid technological innovation and economic change."

    EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The current membership comprises more than 1,900 colleges, universities, and educational organizations, including 200 corporations, with 15,000 active members. EDUCAUSE has offices in Boulder, CO, and Washington, DC. Learn more about EDUCAUSE at http://www.educause.edu/.

    ......................................................................

    ACADEMIC COMMONS

    In August the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College launched the Academic Commons -- a website offering "a forum for investigating and defining the role that technology can play in liberal arts education." In addition to publishing essays and reviews and showcasing innovative projects, the site also offers the Developer's Kit, an area for sharing project descriptions and pieces of code, and LoLa Exchange, which shares high-quality learning objects. The Academic Commons is available at http://www.academiccommons.org/ .

    The mission of the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College is "to explore, test, and promote liberal arts education . . . [and] to ensure that the nature and value of liberal arts education is widely understood and to reestablish the central place of the liberal arts in higher education."

    For more information about the Center: email: liberalarts@wabash.edu ; Web: http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/ .

    ......................................................................

    MORE ON GAMES AS LEARNING TOOLS

    The July 2005 issue of CIT Infobits presented a roundup of articles on computer games as learning tools ("Games Children Play," http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/bitjul05.html#4 ). For more on this topic, see the special issue of INNOVATE (vol. 1, issue 6, August/September 2005) which is devoted to the "role of video game technology in current and future educational settings." Papers include:

    "What Would a State of the Art Instructional Video Game Look Like?" by J. P. Gee, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison

    "Changing the Game: What Happens When Video Games Enter the Classroom?" by Kurt Squire, Assistant Professor of Educational Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

    "Game-Informed Learning: Applying Computer Game Processes to Higher Education" by Michael Begg, David Dewhurst, and Hamish Macleod, University of Edinburgh

    The entire issue is available online at http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=issue&id=9 . You may need to register on the Innovate website to access papers; there is no charge for registration and access.

    Innovate [ISSN 1552-3233] is a bimonthly, peer-reviewed online periodical published by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University. The journal focuses on the creative use of information technology (IT) to enhance educational processes in academic, commercial, and government settings. Readers can comment on articles, share material with colleagues and friends, and participate in open forums. For more information, contact James L. Morrison, Editor-in-Chief, Innovate;
    email: innovate@nova.edu ; Web: http://www.innovateonline.info/ .


    Bad Flashing versus Good Flashing (Webpage Design, Authoring) --- http://www.flash99good.com/ 


    The Education Arcade 
    It’s early afternoon on a Sunday at Boston’s Museum of Science. About a dozen young students are huddled in teams, peering at Pocket PCs, their parents listening nearby. There’s a palpable sense of urgency among the team members; everyone’s shouting at once. One self-assured fifth grader steps in and takes charge of her group. She has figured out what to do with the technology and begins organizing her troop into attack formation. These boisterous students are playing Hi-Tech Who Done It!, part of an MIT research project called the Education Arcade that aims to make computer and video games a valuable component of teaching. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/atwood0604.asp?trk=nl 


    Just a couple of years ago, every major game company was developing a massively multiplayer online game, based on the attractive business premise. But after many disappointments in recent months, the industry is realizing these games can become tar pits.

    "Online Games a Massive Pain," by Daniel Terdiman, Wired News, July 16, 2004 --- http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,64153,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html 

    Electronic Arts' decision to shut down development of Ultima X: Odyssey -- the sequel to its long-running online game Ultima Online -- may force the game industry to re-examine what it takes to be a successful developer of massively multiplayer online games.

    Electronic Arts joins a growing list of companies -- Cyan Worlds, Games Workshop, There Inc. -- that invested millions of dollars in online games, only to see disappointing sales or unfinished projects. But what's surprising about EA's setback is that it is the world's biggest video-game software company, with plenty of cash, talent, marketing muscle and patience to develop a franchise. Despite that, it pulled the plug on UXO.

    What's more, over the past few years EA has pulled the plug, or announced plans to pull the plug, on a string of MMO games: Ultima Online II, Motor City Online, an online Harry Potter adventure game and Earth & Beyond. Most surprising of all, The Sims Online -- an online version of the biggest video-game franchise in history -- has been a disappointment for the company, by most accounts.

    MMO games are notoriously hard to develop, much harder than traditional shrink-wrapped, single-player video games. Most MMOs create huge online worlds where thousands of players, each sitting in their homes, interact with each other -- exploring, trading and pillaging. The business premise to game companies is enticing: Players have to buy a copy of the game for about $50 at a retailer, then pay an additional monthly charge of $10 to $15 to gain entrance to the virtual world. But the companies have to pay a lot of attention to keep the online environments compelling and the players interested. And things that single-player games don't need as much -- like customer support and service -- are key to keeping subscriptions active.

    "Maybe what we're learning is that (a traditional game company) is not going to be set up perfectly to run big online games," said Ed Castronova, an associate professor at Indiana University, and a moderator of Terra Nova, a blog that discusses virtual worlds.

    In contrast to EA, Sony set up an independent division, Sony Online Entertainment, to focus exclusively on virtual worlds, Castronova pointed out. The result: Sony Online has had huge success with its EverQuest franchise, with at least half a million subscribers, and its Star Wars Galaxies world has had more than 300,000 players.

    Of course, EA is not the only company that has had problems keeping MMOs afloat. For example, Games Workshop recently announced plans to close down Warhammer Online, as did Cyan Worlds with Uru Live. And There Inc. is on the verge of abandoning its metaverse in favor of becoming a platform builder, some speculate.

    For its part, EA disputes the notion that it has had problems developing MMOs. Instead, it said the UXO move was a strategic realignment of resources.

    Continued in the article

    Bob Jensen's threads on the downside of technology for education are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm 


    An elaborate game created last year by the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin teaches students about handling the delicate balance of business and ethics, and the sometimes high moral price of too much cost cutting.

    "A Delicate Balance," by Scott McCartney, The Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2004, Page R7 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108379356955403126,00.html?mod=gadgets%5Fprimary%5Fhs%5Flt 

    For one business-school class, a simulation game provided
    a painful lesson in the price of obsessive cost cutting

    For the young executives at computer-maker InfoMaster Ltd., the company budget was on the line. Terrorism threats were swirling in Jakarta, Indonesia, and the company had to either shut down production there for one quarter and harden security or keep churning out hot-selling products.

    The executives opted for production over protection. Soon after, a bomb exploded at the plant.

    "I just killed 350 people," said a dazed David Marye, InfoMaster's 25-year-old chief ethics officer. "I made a bad call, and people died. It's going to be hard to sleep tonight."

    Luckily for Mr. Marye, both InfoMaster and the terrorist attack were fictitious, part of an elaborate game created last year by the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business. Three made-up student-run companies competed in the cutthroat computer-hardware industry, all trying to maximize revenue, keep costs down and beat back competitors. But the prizes -- $11,000 and the chance to perform in front of a high-level, real-world executive panel -- were real.

    While the Sim City for the business world appeared to be about the bottom line, the real intent was to teach students about handling the delicate balance of business and ethics, and the sometimes high moral price of too much cost cutting. The results were eye opening -- and painful. Idealistic students, who started the game preaching virtue, succumbed to the everyday challenges of making their numbers and whipping the competition. Buying cheaper components or hiring cheaper workers would allow more production. Not spending resources on training or quality control would let them get new products to markets faster, but there might be a price to pay down the road. The game proved so realistic that some students were stunned that, under pressure, they readily chose corner-cutting paths they had vowed never to take.

    The Texas program was created after the WorldCom scandal broke, as officials looked for ways to teach better behavior to M.B.A. students. The academics knew that while students talk like angels in ethics classes, they behave avariciously in finance classes. "Ethical issues aren't being addressed in financing, marketing and accounting classes," says Steve Salbu, the associate dean for graduate programs and founder of the school's business-ethics program. "We needed to try to do something we think might be effective."

    Applying Pressure

    Steven Tomlinson, a finance lecturer who has a background in theater, pushed to put students under pressure and throw choices at them. He hired Allen Varney, an Austin-based designer of video and board games, and consulted with a soap-opera scriptwriter and corporate executives. Scripts were written, rules devised and software created to track decisions.

    The result was the Executive Challenge, a three-day game played late last year, where teams of about two dozen students were divided into three companies, with each given a limited amount of production capacity and a set of workers with varying skills. A company could borrow money, and it could spend cash to increase capacity or add products or workers. But it also had to take care of existing projects and decide whether to spend precious resources on corporate-culture projects such as diversity training and quality programs.

    A three-month financial quarter typically lasted 30 minutes, forcing companies to communicate and make decisions in rapid-fire fashion. The game offered both individual and corporate shortcuts and lures. Early on, players might get away with ignoring problems and postponing expenses, but then the problems grew like weeds. A team could opt for lower quality for a quarter or two, only to discover later that its computer batteries exploded -- a scenario taken from Dell Inc.'s history.

    "The game is all about temptation," Mr. Varney says. "Business-school students, as a breed, are overconfident, and the game really plays to that."

    Going in, students suspected that the game would likely test their ethics since they had just come off a week of traditional ethics training. On the first day, all three made-up companies -- InfoMaster, General Data Machines Inc. and Starr Computing Co. -- spent money on corporate-culture initiatives at the expense of new products, surprising Mr. Varney, the game designer. "All those goody-goodies are doing the corporate-culture initiatives," he said, "which makes no sense in dollars and cents."

    Textbook Traits

    Indeed, the teams created their companies around textbook traits like collaborative decision making and promises to share prize money equally. Fearful of repercussions, executives decided to pay themselves little if any salary. "They were remarkably socialistic," Dr. Tomlinson says.

    InfoMaster even created an ethics team with leaders from different departments, headed by Mr. Marye, who worked as an analyst for Houston-based Enron Corp. before seeking a master's degree.

    Yet as the revenue race tightened, behavior changed. On the second day, each company learned that it had hired an employee who had stolen software from a competitor and that the stolen code was now used in the company's highest-margin products. General Data and Starr both opted to turn themselves in and try to negotiate licenses. InfoMaster, despite its ethics team, took the path of least resistance, hoping not to get caught.

    General Data proved consistent with its choices -- for the most part. Faced with a toxic-waste issue at a river near one of its plants, it opted to dredge the river and make the issue public, even though it didn't believe it was responsible for the pollution. But doing the right thing came at a price. The company was in last place in revenue after the first day.

    "Ben and Jerry would not do well at this game," Mr. Varney says, referring to the socially concerned ice-cream entrepreneurs.

    Much as the game's creators expected, student executives began routinely opting for less-expensive options by the end of the second day. General Data was hit with a sexual-harassment complaint against its vice president of sales, and it chose to postpone action while investigating the allegation. At the time, the company was short of cash and was trying to aggressively ramp up product development to catch competitors. Besides, a previous complaint had turned out to be unfounded.

    This time, though, the investigation discovered that the complaint was credible, and major. "We thought we did the right thing," said Jay Manickam, a former consultant for Andersen and Deloitte & Touche who was General Data's chief executive. "But this is apparently going to be a hit."

    Continued in the article


    Weird (But Highly Successful) Physics Education (Edutainment?) Site 

    Let Britney teach you physics --- http://www.smh.com.au/icon/0105/02/news1.html 

    Britney Spears can turn the most arcane science into a massive hit, an Essex university physicist has discovered.

    Since postgraduate Carl Hepburn introduced details of the teenage singer to his semiconductor physics website, it has received more than two million hits.

    The site, which includes a "lip glossary" of semiconductor physics, declares: "It is a little known fact that Ms Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics.

    "Not content with just singing, in the following pages she will guide you in the fundamentals of the vital laser components that have made it possible to hear her super music in a digital format."

    The mix of celebrity shots and hairy equations marks "a melding of physique and physics" says the journal Scientific American. "The site started as a way for me to understand what I thought was important about semiconductors," Mr Hepburn says in Physics World.

    He realised that if his website address included the words Britney Spears, it would produce many hits from fans trying to find out more about her.

    "I knew most people who were looking for information on Britney would not appreciate a site solely dedicated to semiconductor physics. So I added picture galleries. It was not difficult to imagine the two coming together in a Pythonesque manner."

    On the Web site Spears, who has published a book with her mother, covers the Basics of Semiconductors, Finite Barrier Quantum Well Radiative and Non-radiative Transitions, Edge-emitting Lasers, and Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers.

    "It is very funny and very cheeky. I can't think of a better way to attract people to physics," said a spokesman for her record label.

    The Daily Telegraph


    How to make your own videos for students --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 


    April 20, 2004 message from Richard Campbell on an Accounting Learning Game

    Here is a link to the above. Vanna White is not available to turn the letters though,

    http://www.virtualpublishing.net/hangman/index.html

    Richard J. Campbell

    mailto:campbell@rio.edu


    How About a Game of Bingo for Ethics Fun and Learning?

    Using Games to Enhance Student Understanding of Professional and Ethical Responsibilities,” by M. Elizabeth Haywood, Dorothy A. McMullen, and Donald E. Wygal, Issues in Accounting Education, February 2004, pp. 85-100 --- http://aaahq.org/ic/browse.htm

     ABSTRACT: Given recent corporate scandals, the credibility of the accounting profession has been called into question. In order to restore public trust, accounting educators need to devise ways to convey the importance of ethics in our profession to our students. An alternative approach to using a traditional lecture to teach ethics is to use games. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a game strategy to teach ethics and professionalism to students. Using games makes learning more fun and also helps to maintain student interest and involvement in the learning process. Student feedback has been positive and encouraging on the use of this format to teach ethics and professional responsibilities.


    When recruiting teens for college and/or particular careers such as accounting, here's one of the competitive tools that we have not successfully exploited.  This type of thing is also being successfully employed in recruiting and training, but does not seem to have widespread success in educational institutions.

    Question
    What has become the most successful and most controversial recruiting tool of the U.S. Army? 

    Answer

    I viewed the answer to the first question of television.
    I watched this while eating breakfast on March 31.
    CBS News on March 30, 2004 proclaimed that an Internet game has become a major recruitment tool.  The game that is especially successful is called America's Army.  The official version of this game is at http://www.americasarmy.com/ 

    "Army Recruits Video Gamers," CBS News, March 30, 2004 --- http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/30/eveningnews/main609489.shtml 

    The soldiers are real. But they're also actors, staging scenes for the Army's latest war game.

    It's a video game created by the U.S. Army to win over the hearts and minds of American teenagers.

    And, as CBS News Correspondent Jim Acosta reports, judging by these faces, mission accomplished.

    Game player Rob Calcagni believes the game is going to work on a lot of guys his age.

    "Definitely, because it's a fun game," says Calcagni.

    The game, "America's Army" has become such an overnight hit, the Army staged a tournament in New York. Recruiters were waiting at the door.

    "This is a fantastic recruiting opportunity," says Lt. Col. John Gillette. "We would like to sign up as many as possible. We are looking for five to ten."

    One of these teens enlisted after playing the game, the other two are thinking about it, which is exactly what the creator of "America's Army" had in mind.

    "We look at all the things that the Army is doing that is under the control of the Army that captures people's attention and the game is number one," says the game's creator Col. Casey Wardynksi.

    America's Army has surpassed even the Pentagon's expectations. It's now the number one online action game in the country. The Army hasn't seen a recruiting tool this effective since "Be all that you can be."

    But psychology professor Brad Bushman of the University of Michigan, a critic of violent video games, complains "America's Army" isn't real enough.

    "War is not a game," he says.

    "The video game does provide a sanitized view of violence," says Bushman. "For example, when you shoot someone or when you are shot you see a puff of blood; you don't see anyone suffering or writhing in pain."

    "Kids aren't stupid," says Wardynski. "They know if they come into the army there is a reason that we have rifles and tanks and all that stuff."

    The players insist they understand the meaning of "game over."

    "If you are going to join the Army, you know the risk," says one gamer, Bart Koscinski. "In this game you might die like eight times in like 15 minutes. In real life people know what they are getting themselves into."

    New editions of "America's Army" are now being developed for home video game systems -- a move that will deploy even more young cyber-soldiers to the military's virtual battlefield.

    CombatSim.com --- http://www.combatsim.com/ 

    Welcome to the web's largest resource of professionally-written articles and news about military combat simulations and strategy games. Our archives of news and articles span the golden age of this category of games from January of 1996 to February of 2003.

    DEFENSE COMBAT SIM OLYMPICS –METHODOLOGIES INCORPORATING THE “CYBER GAMING CULTURE” bu Flack Maguire, Michael van Lent, Marc Prensky, and Ron W. Tarr --- http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/IITSEC%20Paper%202002%20(536%20V2-Final).pdf 

    There have been many changes in the past twenty years in the implementation of simulation and computer games, including game development, usage in fixed locations, and event-based experiences both in the civilian and commercial spaces. This paper examines each of these three areas individually in order to predict their likely future developments. It then evaluates the dynamic potential for the military that lies at the crossroads where these trends are merging, and relates their interaction to the growing popularity of the online computer gaming experience.

    Although far from a complete study, this paper aims to add to the discussion of these industry trends.

    The paper proposes that there is a strong benefit to the military for recruiting, pre-training, and training of active duty members through the combination of :

    · Choosing, building, or modifying effective combat simulation games for military use.

    · Operating computer game competitions with significant military presence – similar to the air shows of

    today – for event-based and location-based computer gaming competitions

    · Using the combined venues of (a) online gaming competitions, (b) location-based game centers, and (c)

    large scale gaming competitions

    · Operating under the sports model of Leagues (by appropriate military warfare specialty for each League)

    and further dividing the Leagues into competing Divisions.

    By reaching out in this way to a wider spectrum of possibilities for including the cyber entertainment culture, the military will, we predict, experience benefits in recruiting, pre-training, and training, making further use of the compelling attraction of computer games that has been demonstrated by games’ recent rise to a predominant role for military age people in our society.

    "Computer Games Liven Up Military Recruiting, Training," by Harold Kennedy, National Defense Magazine, November 2002 --- http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/article.cfm?Id=967 

    Computer games—which entertain millions of U.S. teenagers—are beginning to breathe fresh life into military recruiting and training.

    Earlier this year, for example, the U.S. Army launched a new computer game—called “America’s Army”—over the Internet.

    Aimed at encouraging teens to join up, it enables players to experience both basic and advanced training, join a combat unit and fight in a variety of environments, including arctic Alaska, upstate New York and a third-world city.

    Players can fire on a rifle range, run an obstacle course, attend sniper school, train in urban combat and parachute from a C-17 transport.

    The game accurately depicts military equipment, training and the real-life movements of soldiers, said Lt. Col. George Juntiff, Army liaison officer to the Modeling, Virtual Environment and Simulation (MOVES) Institute, at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., which developed the game.

    “America’s Army” features sound effects by moviemaker George Lucas’ company, SkyWalker, and Dolby Digital Sound. In addition, sound effects from the movie “Terminator II” were provided at no charge.

    The game is getting considerable attention. During its first two weeks, more than a million Americans downloaded the game for free, Juntiff said.

    “That’s an enormous number,” he said. “It’s the largest release in computer game history.”

    Even more people are likely to acquire the game starting in October, Juntiff said, when the Army was scheduled to begin distributing it as a free CD set to a target audience over the age of 13. The developers plan to upgrade the game every month to attract new players, he said.

    Actually, “America’s Army” consists of two separate games—”Soldiers,” a role-player based on Army values, and “Operations,” a shooter game that takes players on combat missions. It was developed and distributed at a cost of $7.5 million by MOVES and the U.S. Military Academy’s Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, N.Y.

    The computer game is a “very cost-effective” way to reach potential recruits, especially compared to television advertising, said Maj. Chris Chambers, OEMA deputy director. “It is also a more detailed means of showing the American people what we do.”

    The game also puts the Army in a positive light, said Juntiff. “It lets people know the Army is high-tech. It’s not what they see in the movies.”

    The game, in addition, raises ethical issues, Juntiff said. “The game sets rules of engagement, and if you violate those rules, you pay the price.”

    Once they enlist, recruits, these days, can expect to encounter computer games throughout their military training, said Michael R. Macedonia, senior scientist for the U.S. Army Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM), headquartered in Orlando, Fla. Even well-known commercial games have been adapted for military use, he told National Defense.

    That process began, he said, in the 1980s, when the Army modified the Atari tank battle game, “Battlezone,” to let it have gunner controls similar to those of a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The idea, he explained, was to enhance the eye-hand coordination of armor crews.

    Then, in the mid-1990s, the Marines edited the commercial version of the three-dimensional game “Doom” to create “Marine Doom,” to help train four-man fire teams in urban combat.

    More recently, the Army’s Soldier Systems Center, in Natick, Mass., has commissioned the games developer, Novalogic, of Calabasas, Calif., to modify the popular Delta Force 2 game to help familiarize soldiers with the service’s experimental Land Warrior system.

    The Land Warrior system includes a self-

    contained computer and radio unit, a global-positioning receiver, a helmet-mounted liquid-

    character display and a modular weapons array that adds thermal and video sights and laser ranging to the standard M-4 carbine and M-16A2 rifle.

    A customized version of another computer game, Microsoft Flight Simulator, is issued to all Navy student pilots and undergraduates enrolled in Naval Reserve Officer Training Courses at 65 colleges around the nation. The office of the Chief of Naval Education and Training has installed the software at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas, and plans to install it at two other bases in Florida.

    LB&B Associates, of Columbia, Md., has modified the game engine from author Tom Clancy’s best-selling computer game, “Rainbow Six Rogue Spear,” to train U.S. combat troops in urban warfare. The game—marketed by Ubi Soft Entertainment, of San Francisco—is based one of Clancy’s military novels.

    The new version—which is still being developed—will not be used to improve marksmanship, but to sharpen decision-making skills at the small-unit level, said Michael S. Bradshaw, LB&B’s Systems Division manager. LB&B has completed a proof-of-concept version, which “worked brilliantly,” Bradshaw said. The project, he explained, has been turned over to the Institute for Creative Technology for final development.

    Continued in the article


    "Practical Strategies for Teaching Computer-Mediated Classes" by Brent Muirhead focuses on "strategies and principles that will help online teachers to be creative and effective teachers." The paper is available at http://www.usdla.org/ED_magazine/illuminactive/MAY01_Issue/article02.html 


    Click here for threads on technology for students with disabilities (and other handicapped persons) are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped 


    Test Drive Running a University

    Test Drive Running a University
    Virtual Learning Games/Simulations for Understanding the Complexities of Managing a University
    This is a very serious virtual learning project funded, in large measure, by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

    "Virtual University (a free download) --- http://www.virtual-u.org/

    With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation on April 15-16 the Education Arcade, The Comparative Media Studies Program at M.I.T., The Virtual U Project, and The Serious Games Initiative will host a two-day workshop at M.I.T titled “Game Simulations for Educational Leadership & Visualization: Virtual U and Beyond”. This event is designed to look at the past, present, and future of games about education and educational life.

    Virtual U is designed to foster better understanding of management practices in American colleges and universities.

    It provides students, teachers, and parents the unique opportunity to step into the decision-making shoes of a university president. Players are responsible for establishing and monitoring all the major components of an institution, including everything from faculty salaries to campus parking.

    As players move around the Virtual U campus, they gather information needed to make decisions such as decreasing faculty teaching time or increasing athletic scholarships. However, as in a real college or university, the complexity and potential effects of each decision must be carefully considered. And the Virtual U Board of Trustees is monitoring every move.

    Virtual U models the attitudes and behaviors of the academic community in five major areas of higher education management:
     
    • Spending and income decisions such as operating budget, new hires, incoming donations, and management of the endowment;
    • Faculty, course, and student scheduling issues;
    • Admissions standards, university prestige, and student enrollment;
    • Student housing, classrooms, and all other facilities; and
    • Performance indicators.
    Virtual U players select an institution type and strive for continuous improvement by setting, monitoring, and modifying a variety of institutional parameters and policies. Players are challenged to manage and improve their institution of higher education through techniques such as resource allocation, minority enrollment policies, and policies for promoting faculty, among others. Players watch the results of their decisions unfold in real- time. A letter of review from Virtual U's board is sent every "year," informing players of their progress.

    Jensen Comment
    Click on "Team" to be impressed with credentials of the development team, including William F. Massey, the long-time President of Stanford University.

    Virtual University may be downloaded free and/or ordered in a box set of disks.

    One potential application is in not-for-profit accountancy classes where students can learn how to prepare and analyze financial reports for decision making.

    There are all sorts of applications for advanced managerial accountancy classes as well.

    Bob Jensen's threads on virtual learning and simulations ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

    Higher Education Controversies ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


    Virtual Reality

    Update on Virtual Reality

    "Virtual Reality That's Real," by  Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek Newsletter, November 9, 2005

    Mention virtual reality, and people often think of video games. But the folks at Second Life are giving a new spin to the three-dimensional worlds of make believe.

    Part fantasy and part civics experiment, Second Life sells "islands" in their online creation, where local governments and even the Department of Homeland Security have bought real estate to test ideas and introduce projects. People can also join in by opening up free accounts to gain access to a very different experience.

    On today's InternetWeek, freelancer Christopher Heun describes how people are using Second Life to build virtual malls and casinos, as well as to help teenagers and people with physical disorders.

    This group is certainly on the cutting edge, and some analysts are skeptical that a business model can evolve from what some see as a sophisticated 3-D chat room. They may be right, but I believe the concept could greatly advance the Web as a tool for collaboration.

    Drop me an email to let me know what you think.

    Also on InternetWeek, nervous consumers using anti-spyware to avoid having their Web surfing tracked by marketers are reducing the accuracy of customer data gathered by online retailers.

    TeaLeaf Technology shows businesses why shoppers don't complete online sales.

    In a wide-ranging interview, Slashdot co-founder discusses the site's impact on online publishing, plans for the future, and the benefits of "slashdotting."
     

     


    Humor in Online Teaching

    Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
    T.S. Eliot --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TS_Elliot

    "Using humor in online classes," by Gail E. Krovitz, Educator's Voice from eCollege, June 2007 --- http://www.ecollege.com/news/EdVoice.learn

    In our work with you, through these articles, professional development courses and in-person trainings, we spend a lot of time talking about instructor presence and immediacy. These are the things we do as instructors to personalize ourselves to our students, help us connect with our students, and create a welcoming learning community for our students.

    In a traditional classroom, one way that faculty presence is achieved is through the use of humor. Based on student surveys, humor use is consistently ranked as one of the top five characteristics of effective teachers. Humor use in the classroom contributes to a supportive learning environment, and enhances student attention, recall of information, pleasure in learning, and interest in the subject matter (James). Finally, humor use on exams can help alleviate student tension and can function as a stress-reducing tool (Berk).

    However, while there is a wide body of research identifying the benefits of using humor in the traditional classroom, the use of humor in online classes is largely ignored as a pedagogical tool. Many online instructors do not go out of their way to find and use humorous material in their courses. Why is that? A primary reason is that it takes extra planning and effort to make humor happen in online classes (James). Instructors who are pressed for time (and who isn’t?) find that it takes more time to be humorous than it takes to just get the job done. Additionally, online classes do not easily lend themselves to the auditory or spontaneous aspects of humor that are available in a traditional classroom setting. For these reasons, humor use in online classes is a largely untapped resource for building a positive learning community.

    A recently published study examined the intentional use of humor in two otherwise identical sections of an online psychology class (LoSchaivo and Shatz). Material was presented traditionally in one section (without consciously adding humor), while the other section presented the same material with the following humorous additions: two or three content-relevant jokes to each lecture, cartoons to each quiz, and witty remarks to all electronic announcements. Statistical comparisons at the end of the semester showed no difference in final grades between sections, but did show that students in the “humor-enhanced” section earned more participation points by more frequent participation in online discussions. Students in the “humor-enhanced” section used the interactive class features more (including email and discussions), and were more likely to reply to other student’s questions in the discussions.

    Resources for finding and using humor

    So, do you want to use humor to increase your instructor presence in your class and help create a positive learning environment? If so, help is on the way. There are several good resources for crafting humor for online classes. Shatz and LoSchaivo provide detailed information on locating or creating humor for online classes, as well as guidelines for incorporating humor into online lectures and exams. The authors suggest that visual humor (such as cartoons, illustrations and photographs) and funny quotes, jokes, examples, word-play, forms of exaggeration, top-10 lists, and so on, can easily be incorporated into online courses. Shatz and LoSchaivo also recommend doing an internet search for your topic and “humor” to find humorous material specific to your discipline. Berk gives guidelines for print and non-print humor forms that can be incorporated into online classes, and also gives numerous examples and web resources. His suggested print forms include humorous course components, course disclaimers, announcements, warnings or cautions, lists, word derivations, foreign word expressions, acronyms and emoticons. Non-print forms include visual and sound effects.

    If you want to get students involved in your search for new humorous material, Shatz and LoSchaivo suggest an activity called “The Contributing Editor” where students locate course-related humor and then write a report (extra-credit or for-credit) detailing the source of the material and how the topic relates to the course. Alternately, this material could be shared in a discussion area, such as the Class Lounge. Shatz and LoSchaivo stress the importance of giving guidelines for the student so they know what humor is appropriate for the assignment.

    Cautions for online humor use

    To go along with these suggested ways that humorous material can be located or developed, Shatz and LoSchaivo also provide some guidelines and cautions regarding the use of humor in online classes (see also Shatz, and LoSchaivo and Shatz). When selecting humorous material to include in your online classes, you will want to keep the following in mind:

    Humor must have an educational or instructional objective. The effectiveness of classroom humor should be gauged by how well it promotes learning and by how it contributes to the learning community.

    Less is more. It is not necessary to use over-the-top humor since students have low humor expectations in the classroom (versus, say, at a comedy club). Humor enhances, but is not a substitute for, the educational material. Going for big laughs in a classroom setting can distract the students and result in them remembering the humor and not the material.

    Instructors need to know their audience, and stay away from potentially offensive types of humor. Students are not acceptable targets for humor, while the instructor is a potential target since self-depreciating humor humanizes the teacher and allows their personality to come through. Instructors should be especially cautious about incorporating “risky” humor in online classes, as the humor cannot be softened by aspects of delivery (voice, timing, gestures), instructors have no immediate feedback from students, and (gulp!) the humor cannot be easily retracted or forgotten because it lingers in the course shell. I hope that this information has convinced you to think of some ways to incorporate humorous material into your online classes. The resources discussed above provide a good place to start with your search for relevant pedagogical humor, and it is worth some time with your favorite search engine to find what’s out there for your subject matter. My own search for humorous material for my discipline had me laughing out loud, and I hope this material provides me with new ways to connect with students in my own classes.

    Good luck and good teaching!

    – Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D.

    June 30, 2007  reply from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

    I like to intersperse funny pics of my grandchildren in my online courses. For a pic to illustrate how messy partnership rules are I use a pic of my four-year-old grandson with peanut butter all over himself, one sticky finger in his mouth and the other holding the peanut butter jar, trying to hide under the kitchen table.

    In the last module, when the students are all tired and just want the course to be over, I put music clips on random self test buttons, like "I feel good," and "you know it ain't easy."

    I use a "water cooler" board for jokes and cartoons. One thing that works well on the water cooler board is to post something about what you to do to relieve stress, and ask students what they do. I get all kinds of posts. It's great to see another side of students. Another benefit of this board is that students who aren't into reading a lot of posts know they can safely skip anything posted on the water cooler board.

    On the main board, I post a "summary of the week," and I include funny exchanges (with names removed) that students have in their chat sessions that I ask them to post on their group boards. I also like to pick up a few quotes from the instant messenger away messages. Those are always fun!

    Bottom line, I think humor is important, but I think the real point is to show some of the human interaction the students would experience in the classroom.

    Bob Jensen's threads on accounting humor are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#Humor


    Example From a Texas A&M Professor 
    Providing Distance Education in Mexico

    At the first annual meeting of the new Academy of Business Education last week, I listened to a number of outstanding presentations. One in particular that I would like to mention to you was presented by the Head of the Department of Marketing & Management at Texas A&M University. His name is John Parnell. For two semesters, John has been delivering an online business strategy course for students at Monterrey Tech (ITESM). This may evolve into an entire Texas A&M degree program at both Monterrey and across Mexico in general.

    One link of possible interest is http://business.tamu.edu/cibs/index.html 

    If any of you want a copy of Professor Parnell's paper, his email address is john_parnell@tamu-commerce.edu 
    An excerpt is quoted below:

    The course considered in the present study was structured to utilize three weekend professorial visits (i.e., Friday evening and Saturday) to campus in one term and four in another (see exhibits one and two). Weekend visits were typically spaced two or three weeks apart. In total, approximately fifteen hours was utilized in each term for delivery of strategic management concepts; the remainder of the time was devoted to preparation and ultimate presentation of group case projects. Students were enrolled in the graduate program at the Ciudad de Mexico campus of Instituto Tecnologico Y De Estudios Superiores De Monterrey (ITESM). Facilities at the institution, including internet access, were excellent.

    Students were allowed to form their own groups of three to four students. Each group selected a company from a list of instructor-approved publicly traded American companies to strategically analyze as its group project. The case analysis was the major assignment in the course, accounting for 35 percent of the overall grade. Because of the wealth of information available on the internet and the potential research difficulties for ITESM students, links to an extensive array of on-line sources (e.g., Hoover's for financial data, Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition (WSJIE), Lexis-Nexis, etc.) were provided so that students could complete all of the case research via the internet.

    Students were also required to participate in on-line class discussions with graduate students taking a strategic management course at an American institution. In these discussions, students were free to post views on a variety of topics and current issues related to strategy formulation, implementation, and the international environment. Specifically, students were encouraged to comment on articles from the WSJIE and other sources, and to participate in discussions begun by others students or the professor.

    RESULTS

    The two classes considered in the present study had fifteen and twelve students respectively. Each student chose to pursue the course under the weekend format in English instead of taking it with a local professor on a one-night-per-week basis. There is no indication that students in the course differed from those in other sections, except that marginal English speakers would not have chosen to take the course in English.

    At the end of each course, students completed a brief, anonymous survey containing three questions: · If you had the opportunity to take the course again, would you choose the same section? (yes/no/maybe) · How would you evaluate the internet component of the course? (strong/moderate/weak) · How would you evaluate the weekend structure of the course? (strong/moderate/weak) In addition, students were allowed to provide specific written comments.

    None of the students stated that they would not take the same section. Twenty-three students (85 percent) stated that they would, while the remaining four (15 percent) chose the "maybe" response.

    The internet component of the course was evaluated as "strong" by 25 of the 27 students (93 percent), while the other two (7 percent) evaluated it as "moderate." Twenty of the students (74 percent) evaluated the weekend structure as "strong," whereas the remaining seven (26 percent) evaluated it as "moderate." Written comments by those in the latter group suggested that some would have selected different combinations of dates for the visits to campus.

    Student participation on the bulletin board was commendable, in many cases providing a rich, international perspective to the topics and issues presented by their American counterparts. One of the unintended and positive outcomes of the experience was that the Mexican graduate students were able to learn from those at the American institution-which included Americans as well as students from several other countries-and vice versa. These two groups would never have connected outside of the bulletin board experience.

    Project quality was excellent in most cases. Students were able to secure from the internet more than enough objective and subjective information to complete their projects. From a research perspective, the quality of the internet research was vastly superior to traditional forms of case research, and would be appropriate to traditional classes as well.

    FUTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

    Internet delivery in the international arena appears to be growing exponentially, but remains in its nascent stage of development. The use of the internet to address the tremendous international market opportunity is both logical and promising for universities and faculty equipped to do so. Several fundamental questions must be addressed, however.

    First, does the host institution and faculty member possess the technical expertise-including appropriate support-to utilize the internet for delivery of instruction? Faculty members must understand the basics of web page creation and/or possess the university support necessary to post materials, change them as needed, and address any technical support issues raised by the learners. Delivery of courses via the web also necessitates that faculty members "buy in" to a nontraditional model of education, whereby the faculty member becomes the facilitator instead of the teacher.

    Second, to what extent, if any, should the internet delivery be accompanied by face-to-face interaction? Is it desirable to require that learners travel to the host campus or the professor travel to the students? Face-to-face interaction provides a personal touch not easily secured in an on-line environment. Practitioners developing programs should consider that at least some personal contact may be warranted.

    Third, should internet based discussions be synchronous or asynchronous? In other words, should students be required to "meet" on the internet at certain times so that class may convene electronically, or should the course be structured so that students can work when they choose? Under the former case, the internet can be used to simulate the classroom environment, and students can exchange ideas or "chat" in real time. Under the latter case, exchange of ideas is limited to e-mails and the bulletin board. Evidence from the present study suggests that the bulletin board is an effective as real time chat, and on-line meetings may not be necessary.

    Fourth, how should students be evaluated? If there are no face-to-face meetings, verifiable "closed book" examinations may not be possible. Many internet classes have adopted a "portfolio" approach, where learners submit projects instead of exams. Others require that each student complete a proctored final exam.

    Finally, how can outcomes in the internet-based environment be compared to those in the traditional classroom environment? Critics and accrediting agencies will desire evidence the former approach is essentially equivalent to the latter. Proponents may charge that quality in the internet-based environment is superior. At any rate, educators need to be prepared to assess the outcomes and address quality comparisons.


    Tools for Learning in the Boondocks

    "Development Powered by Education:  Interactive tools could help to prepare students in developing countries for the collaborative workplace of the future," by Matthew Herren, MIT's Technology Review, September 8, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17421&ch=infotech

    African schools teach toward set exams, which determine who passes and who leaves school. It is a system that does not foster much creative thought but in its own way ensures certain standards. Or would, if access to educational materials were equal throughout all schools.

    But it is not. Educational materials are expensive to print and to supply to remote rural schools. Senegal is typical: school textbooks cost two to three times what poor families can afford, so only one in five students receives them.

    There is an alternative. Using digital satellite radio to connect to a content distribution network, students could download new material--as soon as it becomes available--to small handheld computers recharged with solar power or crank chargers. Then they could take it home to read at night, on a backlit screen, even in homes without electricity. That is the technology my company, EduVision, has been developing for the last two years.

    Not only would such a distribution system get more, and more current, material to more students, but it would also introduce students to an important new approach to learning and working. Students who compete throughout their school years for top ranking will not be prepared for workplaces where collaboration is becoming far more important. An electronic environment for group work--a textbook wiki of sorts, in which students around the world can compare notes and share information--could teach collaboration at the same time that it teaches academic material itself.

    In the future, students in schools throughout the developing world will communicate and interact to solve problems and complete assignments. They may be in the same class or school, or they may be in different countries. They may never meet in person, but they will form close connections and learn to work in teams. They will also have access to vast libraries of content where they can find solutions, answer questions, and explore the life of the mind.

    Matthew Herren is founder and chief technology officer of EduVision, an e-learning company based in Zürich, Switzerland. He is also one of our TR35 winners. Here's his TR35 profile.


    June 29, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    PAPERS ON MOBILE LEARNING

    Mobile learning is the theme of the current issue of the INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF RESEARCH IN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING. Papers include:

    "Mobile Distance Learning with PDAs: Development and Testing of Pedagogical and System Solutions Supporting Mobile Distance Learners" by Torstein Rekkedal and Aleksander Dye, Norwegian School of Information Technology

    "The Growth of m-Learning and the Growth of Mobile Computing: Parallel Developments" by Jason G. Caudill, Grand Canyon University

    "Mobile Learning and Student Retention" by Bharat Inder Fozdar and Lalita S. Kumar, India Gandhi National Open University

    "Instant Messaging for Creating Interactive and Collaborative m-Learning Environments" by James Kadirire, Anglia Ruskin University

    "m-Learning: Positioning Educators for a Mobile, Connected Future" by Kristine Peters, Flinders University

    The issue is available at http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/issue/view/29 . Papers are available not only in HTML and PDF formats, but you can also download and listen to them in MP3 audio versions.

    International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) [ISSN 1492-3831] is a free, refereed ejournal published by Athabasca University - Canada's Open University. For more information, contact Paula Smith, IRRODL Managing Editor; tel: 780-675-6810; fax: 780-675-672;
    email: irrodl@athabascau.ca ;
    Web: http://www.irrodl.org/ .

    See also:

    "Are You Ready for Mobile Learning?" By Joseph Rene Corbeil and Maria Elena Valdes-Corbeil, University of Texas at Brownsville EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, vol. 30, no. 2, 2007 http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm07/eqm0726.asp 

    "Frequent use of mobile devices does not mean that students or instructors are ready for mobile learning and teaching."


    Some years back Professor Sharon Lightner (UC at San Diego) put together a really interesting online course for students, practitioners, and accounting standard setters in six different countries where the classes met synchronously.
    "An Innovative Online International Accounting Course on Six Campuses Around the World" --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255light.htm


    Forensic Accounting Course Materials

    November 3, 2009 message from Eileen Taylor [eileen_taylor@NCSU.EDU]

    Need advice on choosing a textbook for an MBA class on fraud (to be taken mostly by Master of Accounting students).

    I am deciding between Albrecht's Fraud Examination and Hopwood's Forensic Accounting. I also plan to have students read Cynthia Cooper's book, Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower.

    I will be teaching a three-week version of the course this summer as a study abroad, but also will be converting it into a 16 week semester-long 3 hour course.

    Any suggestions would be helpful -

    Thank you,
    Eileen

    November 3, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Eileen,

    I'm really not able to give you an opinion on either choice for a textbook. But before making a decision I always compared the end-of-chapter material and the solutions manual to accompany that material. If the publisher did not pay for good end-of-chapter material I always view the textbook to be a cheap shot. The end-of-chapter material is much harder to write than the chapter material itself.

    I also look for real world cases and illustrations.

    Don't forget the wealth of material, some free, at the site of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners --- http://www.acfe.com/
    I would most certainly consider using some of this material on homework and examinations.

    Instead of a textbook you might use the ACFE online self-study materials ($79)  ---
    Click Here

    There is a wonderful range of topics covered ---
    http://snipurl.com/acleselfstudy      [eweb_acfe_com]

    Accounting and Auditing

    Computers and Technology

    Criminology and Ethics

    Fraud Investigation

    Fraud Schemes

    Interviewing and Reporting

    Legal Elements of Fraud

    Spanish Titles

    Bob Jensen

    "A Model Curriculum for Education in Fraud and Forensic Accounting," by Mary-Jo Kranacher, Bonnie W. Morris, Timothy A. Pearson, and Richard A. Riley, Jr., Issues in Accounting Education, November 2008. pp. 505-518  (Not Free) --- Click Here

    There are other articles on fraud and forensic accounting in this November edition of IAE:

    Incorporating Forensic Accounting and Litigation Advisory Services Into the Classroom Lester E. Heitger and Dan L. Heitger, Issues in Accounting Education 23(4), 561 (2008) (12 pages)]

    West Virginia University: Forensic Accounting and Fraud Investigation (FAFI) A. Scott Fleming, Timothy A. Pearson, and Richard A. Riley, Jr., Issues in Accounting Education 23(4), 573 (2008) (8 pages)

    The Model Curriculum in Fraud and Forensic Accounting and Economic Crime Programs at Utica College George E. Curtis, Issues in Accounting Education 23(4), 581 (2008) (12 pages)

    Forensic Accounting and FAU: An Executive Graduate Program George R. Young, Issues in Accounting Education 23(4), 593 (2008) (7 pages)

    The Saint Xavier University Graduate Program in Financial Fraud Examination and Management William J. Kresse, Issues in Accounting Education 23(4), 601 (2008) (8 pages)

    Also see
    "Strain, Differential Association, and Coercion: Insights from the Criminology Literature on Causes of Accountant's Misconduct," by James J. Donegan and Michele W. Ganon, Accounting and the Public Interest 8(1), 1 (2008) (20 pages)

    Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
    Bob Jensen's threads on fraud --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm

    FBI Corporate Fraud Chart in August 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/aug2008/ataglance.htm#Chart1.htm

    A great blog on securities and accounting fraud --- http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/securities/

    November 3, 2009 reply from Jagdish Gangolly [gangolly@GMAIL.COM]

    Eileen,

    I have used the following book as text in a graduate course. It was excellent.

    A Guide to Forensic Accounting Investigation, Thomas Golden, Steven L. Skalak, and Mona M. Clayton. (Wiley, 2006)

    Jagdish S. Gangolly Department of Informatics College of Computing & Information State University of New York at Albany Harriman Campus, Building 7A, Suite 220 Albany, NY 12222
    Phone: 518-956-8251, Fax: 518-956-8247

    Bob Jensen's threads on fraud and forensic accounting ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm

     


    Epsilen Environment from Purdue University appears to have brought together the latest technology in a course authoring, course management, and e-learning package  --- http://www.epsilen.com/Epsilen/Public/Home.aspx

    The Epsilen Environment is the result of six years of research and development within the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI. Epsilen Products and Services are commercially available through BehNeem LLC, the holding company created in Indiana to commercialize, market and further develop the Epsilen Environment. The New York Times is an equity and strategic partner in the company.

    I maintain a site on the history of course authoring and course management technology at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

    A 2008 addition to the above history site came to my attention in a loose-card advertisement for Epsilen Enviroment that came in the November 3, 2008 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

    Free ePortfolios 
     
    Basic ePortfolio accounts are free for all registered students and faculty of U.S. colleges and universities.  An Epsilen ePortfolio can be created in minutes and be used throughout one’s academic career, during professional life, and even into retirement.  The free Epsilen ePortfolio account offers tools and resources enabling members to:

    If your campus is, or becomes, a licensed Epsilen institution (see below), your free ePortfolio will integrate dynamically with more sophisticated tools and services listed below that accompany the paid license. Visit www.epsilen.com to create your personal ePortfolio and begin exploring the Environment. 

      
    Exploratory Institutional Memberships
     
    The Exploratory Membership is an easy and cost-effective option for colleges and universities, schools, districts and state systems to explore and experience the features of Epsilen, the next generation of learning and networking software.  Upon payment of an annual membership fee, the following features are available to Exploratory Members: 

    Annual Exploratory Memberships begin at $5,000 for campuses with up to 2,000 students.  Click here for more pricing information and order application. 
     
     

    New York Times Knowledge Network

    New York Times Knowledge (NYTKnowledge Network) offers New York Times content to complement faculty-designed courses served dynamically in customizable templates through Epsilen’s Global Learning System.  New York Times content is aggregated by subject and easily selected and incorporated into lessons by faculty and the interactive learning environment. NYTKnowledge Network provides access to a repository of Times archives back to 1851 Times articles, special issues sections, multimedia features, and synchronous and asynchronous contact with correspondents, resulting in an extraordinary integrated learning environment that supports hybrid or online offerings.
     

    The New York Times Knowledge Network also offers the opportunity to participate in Webcasts with the Times correspondents and other subject matter experts. These can be included in traditional courses, or offered by your institution as stand-alone life-long learning experiences with comprehensive continuing education programs designed by the New York Times. 


    NYT Knowledge Network Provides:

    • A rich repository of archived content back to 1851
    • Access to other major content providers
    • Multimedia news content
    • Interactive maps and graphs
    • Webcasts, chats with correspondents
    • A comprehensive range of content aggregated by subject and easily integrated to support your teaching objectives.
    • NYTimes Knowledge Network marketing of your continuing education courses.  

    Visit http://www.nytimes.com/knowledge for further information and pricing (will be released in mid August 2007).
     

    Student Learning Matrix 
     
    Programs, departments, and schools within a campus may create unlimited student learning matrices to be used by students through an automated learning outcome assessment tool for both summative and formative learning assessment.  Features include:

    • Creation of unlimited student learning matrices for program- or campus-level learning outcome assessment (Each axis includes attributes defined by the program/campus.)
    • Ability for students to upload their learning outcomes according to predefined rubrics
    • Access by faculty and academic advisors to each student learning matrix for assessment, advisement, and certification
    • Program- and campus-level assessment reports for internal and external accreditation reviews
    • A hosted Web-based solution that requires no institutional IT support

    The annual Student Learning Matrix membership fee is based on the number of students in the program or institution.  Click here for more information and online membership application.
     
     

    Global Learning System (GLS)
     
     

    Epsilen offers the Global Learning System (GLS), a new Web-based learning framework developed as the next generation of eLearning and networking. In contrast to current legacy learning management systems, the GLS offers true global learning collaboration by connecting students and instructors on campuses in the U.S. and around the world in an interactive and intuitive Web 2.0 learning environment.  The GLS complements existing licensed or open source CMS products.  The GLS features include:

    • Global learning management system that enables students and instructors to easily register or be invited to courses and learning collaboration
    • Cross listing of class rosters of two or more courses within various campuses, or across institutions
    • Innovative tools using professional and social networking to enhance learning, encourage collaboration, and utilize peer review technology
    • The ability to easily archive courses and working groups for continued engagement
    • A hosted Web-based solution that requires little, or no institutional IT support

    The annual GLS membership fee is based on the number of students and courses within the institution. Click here for more information and online membership application.
     
     

    Charter Membership
     

    Experience the full suite of the Epsilen “Environment” and resources with unparalleled access to NYTKnowledge Network content. Charter members receive special pricing for unlimited use of ePortfolios, the Student Learning Matrix, courses through the Global Learning System, and interactive Webcasts with correspondents.  With charter membership, two university administrators will be invited to participate in the Epsilen - New York Times charter council, with meetings and events scheduled at The New York Times.  Benefits include:

    • Single sign-on environment featuring a toolbox of services for ePortfolio, social networking, Learning Matrix, GLS, object repository, and NYTKnowledge Network
    • Totally hosted turnkey solution with no need for local servers or local technical staff
    • Cost effectiveness for both small and large campuses
    • Collaboration on designing the next generation of eLearning through networking with other members of the Epsilen - New York Times charter council

    The Epsilen Charter membership fee is based on the total number of students within the institution.  Click here for more information and online membership application. 
     
     

    Technical Support and System Integration
     

    Epsilen offers consulting and technical support through both internal and third-party sources for the integration of Epsilen with local campus databases and existing licensed technology.  This provides a seamless, single sign-on, portal approach to all resources and services supporting the learning and teaching initiatives of a campus.  Click Here for more information and online membership application.

    I maintain a site on the history of course authoring and course management technology at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

     


    Google Plus = Google+ = Google Failure --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B


    "Inside the failure of Google+, a very expensive attempt to unseat Facebook," by Seth Fiegerman, Mashable, August 2, 2015 ---
     ---
    http://mashable.com/2015/08/02/google-plus-history/

    . . .

    The rise and fall of Google+

    Google's effort to build a social network to rival Facebook began with a bold, company-wide yell. Now Google appears to be winding down Google+ with barely a whimper.

    This week, four years and one month after launching Google+ with the stated mission to "fix" online sharing, Google announced it would eliminate a much-criticized requirement to use a Google+ account when signing on to other Google services like YouTube. The move is the clearest indication yet that Google is ditching its playbook of trying to push everyone in the world use its social network.

    Google earlier this year began to spin out the service's most popular features, like Photos and Hangouts. What's left is being re-worked (or pivoted, as Google+ chief Bradley Horowitz said in his latest blog post) to find a salvageable kernel of a social experience that might still be built up to appeal to a large audience. Google+ launched with big aspirations but no well-defined purpose for users; now, very belatedly, Google is trying find some purpose for the social network as those aspirations shrink.

    Google+ has become a favorite punchline in the technology industry, but the objective was deadly serious. Interviews with more than a dozen Google insiders and analysts in recent months, many speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, paint the Google of 2010-2011 as increasingly fearful of Facebook snatching away users, employees and advertisers. Google tried to mobilize itself quickly, but approached the task with all the clumsiness of a giant trying to dance with a younger, nimble startup.

    Google launched Plus without a clear plan to differentiate the service from Facebook. It bet on a charismatic leader with a flawed vision, ignored troubling indications about the social network's traction (or lack thereof) with users and continued throwing features at the wall long after many had written Google+ off for dead.

    The slow demise of Google+ sheds light on how a large technology company tries and often fails to innovate when it feels threatened. The Google+ project did lead to inventive new services and created a more cohesive user identity that continues to benefit Google, but the social network itself never truly beat back existing rivals. Facebook is now larger than ever, with 1.4 billion users and a market capitalization more than half of Google's. It continues to poach Google employees. Facebook and Twitter are also slowly chipping away at Google's dominance in display ad revenue.

    Continued in article


    "New Google+ Features Target Businesses," by Fruzsina Eördögh, ReadWriteWeb, August 31st, 2012  ---
    http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/08/new-google-features-target-businesses.php

    In an effort to boost adoption of its Google+ social network, Google this week announced a slew of new features aimed at enticing business customers to use the service and "go Google."

    Citing the success other Web-based Google Apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Drive have found amongst employers and their workers, Google Apps Product Management Director Clay Bavor detailed a slew of new Google+ features for businesses in an official Google Enterprise blog post.

    "Like Google Apps, we think Google+ can help colleagues collaborate more easily and get things done – and get to know each other along the way," wrote Bavor.

    Continued in article

    Google Plus --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Plus

    "Google+ Comes Up Short," by Joshua Ganz, Harvard Business Review Blog, July 7, 2011 --- Click Here
    http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/google_comes_up_short.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

    What problem does Google+ solve for consumers? The answer appears to be: nothing. And, therefore, it solves nothing for Google either.

    As with many of these social launches — an exception being the ill-fated Google Buzz — the launch of Google+ was limited. Like Gmail and Google Wave, Google relied on invites to scale initial users and work out issues before a wider launch. I, somehow, managed to score access to Google+ from Day One of its recent launch, and I'm here to report on it. (I should note that opinions vary.)

    What I found upon signing up was a routine to search my Google contacts and allocate people to Circles. The idea is that should any of them sign up to Google+ I could neatly organize my friends according to whatever category I thought best fit them. I could also find anyone currently on Google+ and choose to follow them. Ironically, I chose to follow Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Facebook, but I also followed Google's founders. The latter seem to participate regularly and lots of people comment on their activities. The former, unsurprisingly, not so much (although Zuckerberg seems to be the most followed person on the network).

    I then spent a little time filling in my profile (you can view it here). You can even follow my Google Buzz feed from there, a legacy of automatic reposting of my tweets and shared Google Reader links.

    Having done lots of set-up, I waited to see what happened. The answer to that was: not much. For Google+ to work, it has to be populated. Specifically, it has to be populated with people the user is interested in. As it is early days, that crucial feature isn't there.

    This (lack of) network effect could do Google+ in if it can't get a virtuous cycle going. So the question is whether Google+ has the potential to attract a large enough network.

    The reasoning why Google itself might desperately want this to work out is clear. Facebook and Twitter are grabbing attention and Google is in the business of getting attention and on-selling it to advertisers. Add to that the fact that the type of attention that comes from users providing content and demonstrating their interest by commenting and subscribing to things, and Google+ (were it to work) could yield important information that helps advertisers target consumers better.

    Continued in article

     

    "3 Steps Google Plus Must Take to Win Against Facebook," by Zubin Wadia, ReadWriteWeb, June 29, 2011 ---
    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/3_steps_google_must_take_to_win_against_facebook.php

    Congratulations to the Google Plus team for shipping a superb beta under conditions which could be considered equal parts turmoil and FUD.

    I absolutely love it. If it had 750 million users on it right now it would be a superior experience to Facebook.

    For starters, it looks more cohesive. This isn't surprising because it is a blank slate product that did not have to deal with the technical debt Facebook has accumulated since 2004. Beyond the interface however, Google Plus will be more engaging emotionally for people because it allows them to be more authentic with one another.

    Why? Because Google Plus establishes intuitive clarity for my social graph.


    "What Google+ (Google Plus) Should Have Been: Bing's Linked Pages," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, February 28, 2012 ---
    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_google_should_have_been_bings_linked_pages.php

    Here's one we missed. Bing launched Bing+ last week, it just skipped all the unnecessary stuff. (It's not really called Bing+.) There's a new feature called Linked Pages that allows Bing users (U.S. only, for now) to connect their various websites and profiles to their Bing identities, using Facebook for authentication. You can also link your Facebook friends to their pages.

    Thanks to its relationship with Facebook, Microsoft has the advantage of not needing to build its own identity provider or social network. Everyone's already on Facebook. To build good results for people, Bing will use the same technique Facebook Groups use: get friends to draw their own graph. Just like with Facebook Groups, if a friend connects you to something you don't want, you can remove it permanently. We all thought that feature would suck for Groups, but it worked just fine. Facebook Groups build themselves, and Bing can build identities the same way.

    Social Network Overkill

    The interesting thing is, this is exactly what Google+ is for, but the product isn't being pitched that way. Google's social layer is all about establishing the Google-presence for people and brands, so they can appear across Google-land, especially in Search, plus Your World. But Google+ is spun as a place for "sharing." It has all these pieces of a social network, but people aren't using them.

    It's a shame, because some of these features are absolutely wonderful. What could be more social than Hangouts? Google+ is full of great ideas, but it is struggling to bring them together. The user experience isn't there. And that's all because Google felt the need to build a full-blown social network itself in order to act as an identity service.

    Couldn't Hangouts have just been a Gmail feature?

    Social Search Is All We Needed

    There's no need for a new social network, but there is a reason to put personal identities in search. Searching for people has always been a terrible experience. It's nearly impossible to find the person you're looking for, unless they're famous. Search engines need an identity layer.

    Bing is just being honest about that. If you want to control the way you appear in search, you can connect the sites and pages that matter to you via Facebook. Your friends can do it, too. When you use Bing to search for people, now you'll be able to find the content that's related to them. That's what Search, plus Your World does for Google, but Bing does it without requiring this new, extra place to waste time online.

    Google could have done that. The Google+ profile works exactly the way Bing's Linked Pages does, allowing users to link their outside sites and pages to themselves. It could have just made a Facebook app, and boom, there are your social search results. But that's not how the business works. Google and Facebook can't cooperate. They have to compete for eyeballs around social content, and Facebook is winning.

    Jensen Comment
    I've previously written about why I think Bing Maps is superior to Google Maps. Sometimes (horrors) Microsoft really does do a better job when it comes late onto the scene ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Travel

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

     

     

     

     


    Ideas for Teaching and Testing

    Bob Jensen's threads for education technology in general are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    From T.H.E. Journal's Resources
    Network Readiness Guide for Schools (including a flipped classroom guide) --- Click Here
    http://thejournal.com/whitepapers/2015/06/cisco-network-readiness-guide-062515.aspx?&pc=E5130E01&utm_source=webmktg&utm_medium=E-Mail&utm_campaign=E5130E01

    Making Better Use Of The First And Last Five Minutes Of Class ---
    http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/04/making-better-use-of-the-first-five-and-last-five-minutes-of-class.html

    Teaching History with Historic Clothing Artifacts --- https://hti.osu.edu/fashion2fiber

    The Most Effective Memory Methods are Difficult—and That's Why They Work ---
    https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2018/12/13/quartz-69gtthe-most-effective-memory-methods-are-difficultand-thats-why-they-work

    How to Create a Syllabus --- www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-syllabus

    How to Save an Excel Sheet as a PDF ---
    https://www.howtogeek.com/659219/how-to-save-an-excel-sheet-as-a-pdf/

    The Fight Against Cheating in Distance Education ---
    https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/05/11/online-proctoring-surging-during-covid-19?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=eebf0d01a5-DNU_2019_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-eebf0d01a5-197565045&mc_cid=eebf0d01a5&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

    AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY ---
    https://ajet.org.au/index.php/AJET


    Texas A&M University Commerce: Teaching & Learning ---
    http://www.tamuc.edu/dev/facultyStaffServices/centerForFacultyExcellenceAndInnovation/facultyDevelopment/teachingLearningStrategies.aspx


    Flipped Classroom --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom

    Effects of the Flipped Classroom: Evidence from a Randomized Trial ---
    http://seii.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2019.07-Setren.pdf

    In a flipped classroom, an increasingly popular pedagogical model, students view a video lecture at home and work on exercises with the instructor during class time. Advocates of the flipped classroom claim the practice not only improves student achievement, but also ameliorates the achievement gap. We conduct a randomized controlled trial at West Point and find that the flipped classroom produced short term gains in Math and no effect in Economics, but that the flipped model broadened the achievement gap: effects are driven by white, male, and higher achieving students. We find no long term average effects on student learning, but the widened achievement gap persists. Our findings demonstrate feasibility for the flipped classroom to induce short term gains in student learning; however, the exacerbation of the achievement gap, the effect fade-out, and the null effects in Economics suggest that educators should exercise caution when considering the model. *

    Jensen Comment
    In the last ten years of my 40-year faculty career at four universities I preferred a flipped classroom pedagogy, especially for technical details of complicated tasks (think valuation and accounting entries for an interest rate swap) ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133swapvalue.htm
    I made hundreds of Camtasia videos that students studied from any way they liked before class (alone or in groups). Then in an electronic classroom I had each student demonstrate in front of the class what had been learned.

    One marked effect for me was that students spent much less time coming to my office for help. The could repeat parts of the videos over and over while learning at their own paces. I no longer had to explain things over and over and over.

    Having said this it would not have surprised me if the above randomized trial found even less difference between lecture classrooms versus flipped classrooms, especially among top students. When comparing different pedagogies (thing lectures versus Socratic method versus complete case method where teachers never reveal best answers) it has been shown countless times that the top students tend to get A grades under any pedagogy.  Top students are driven to do whatever is expected to ace a course ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#AssessmentIssues
    With weak students differences my arise not so much with respect to pedagogy as it does to the time and attention given to what is inhibiting the learning progress of each and every weak student. One of our sons did poorly in a San Antonio middle school with very large classes. Then we put him in a military school called Wentworth Academy (near Kansas City) where class sizes averaged about six students. He did much better largely because of the individualized attention (military discipline did not hurt).

    It also is not surprising that the long-term differences washed out over time in the above study. Unless any learning is reinforced by subsequent challenges over the long haul. For example as an undergraduate I had two years of Russian language. After subsequent years of non-use I would've forgotten my Russian no matter what pedagogy had been used in my earlier studies.

    There is one pedagogy that tends to work best for long-term success ipso facto. That pedagogy entails making students learn virtually everything on their own. It's a hard work, stressful way to learn for them, and they will probably zero-out teaching evaluations for teachers who never explain things but challenge them greatly in tests of learning. Learning on your own is effective for a  longer term (not necessarily decades) if not efficiently for what I think are metacognitive reasons ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

    My first point is that flipped classrooms may be more efficient for student learning but are not necessarily more effective among good students who will perform well under any pedagogy.
    My second  point is that making students learn everything on their own is probably going to be more effective (for a longer time) but is probably the least efficient way to learn and is usually hated by teachers and students ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#AssessmentIssues

    If you've teaching top students and the course details that are quite technical (like computer programming, applying complicated accounting and taxation rules, mathematics exercises, engineering details, etc.) you should experiment with a flipped classroom using pretty darn good Camtasia videos that you make yourself. Then put students on the spot in the classroom to show you and the class what they learned from those videos.

     


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    More Sponsored Resources

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


    Google's Course Builder System

    University of Capetown's Centre for Education Technology --- http://www.cet.uct.ac

    Online Instructional Resources: Faculty Development Programs at Michigan State University --- http://fod.msu.edu/OIR/index.asp

    4Teachers: Teach with Technology --- http://www.4teachers.org/

    Technology Student Association --- http://www.tsaweb.org/

    New Learning Institute --- http://newlearninginstitute.org/

    Bob Jensen's threads on Education Technology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    eLearn Magazine --- http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=57-1#

    Skylight: eTLC Resource Project [Teaching Improvement] ---  http://www.skylight.science.ubc.ca/aboutetlc

    First Monday --- http://firstmonday.org/

    Educause --- http://www.educause.edu/

    The University of Iowa: Center for Teaching --- http://centeach.uiowa.edu/

    Math and Metaphor: Using Poetry to Teach College Mathematics --- http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol20/bahls.pdf

    Educational Comics Collection --- http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/edcomics

    Search Tricks --- http://prezi.com/mohshuoe-qcf/google-search-tricks/

    Converge Magazine: Technology in Education --- http://www.convergemag.com/

    Bowling Green State University: Resources from the Center for Teaching and Learning ---
    http://www.bgsu.edu/ctl/page10679.html

    Boston University Libraries: Research Guide --- http://www.bu.edu/library/guides/index.html

    Ethics Education Library (and tutorials) --- http://ethics.iit.edu/eelibrary/

    CGMA Videos --- http://www.cgma.org/Resources/Videos/Pages/videos-list.aspx

    TED Video
    Harvard Thinks Big 2012: 8 All-Star Professors. 8 Big Ideas --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/02/harvard_thinks_big_2012.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    "10 Faculty Perspectives on What Works in Lecture Capture," Chronicle of Higher Education, November 4, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/10-Faculty-Perspectives-on/129268/


    Flipping the Classroom --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom

    "Flipping the Managerial Accounting Principles Course: Effects on Student Performance, Evaluation, and Attendance," by Tom Downen and Becky Hyde, SSRN, July 29, 2015 ---
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2637609 

    Abstract:
    Considerable research and attention has been focused lately on the concept of “flipping the classroom.” Much of the focus has been on secondary education. However, opportunities to flip the classroom also exist in university education, and certain business disciplines (such as accounting) are particularly appealing targets given the practical/applied nature of many of the topics covered. This study examines a simplified flipping approach (without videos), using a within-participants experimental design, in a managerial accounting principles course. The results of the study show significant improvement in student performance under a flipped approach (as compared to a traditional approach), controlling for individual student differences. Quantile regression suggests that those performance improvements were most substantial for lower-performing students. No effect on student evaluations of the course/instructor is found. Student attendance, at least on the initial class days when the instructional format was manipulated, was better for the flipped approach. These results suggest a need to consider further the increased use of a flipped classroom in business and accounting education; in application-oriented courses like managerial accounting principles, and in particular for more remedial course sections, the flipped classroom could be especially effective.

    Bob Jensen's threads on flipped classrooms ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Ideas

    Bob Jensen's threads on managerial accounting ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#ManagementAccounting


    "Designing for Emergence: The Role of the Instructor in Student-Centered Learning," by Mary Stewart, Hybrid Pedagogy, August 21, 2014 ---
    http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/designing-emergence-role-instructor-student-centered-learning/
    Bob Jensen's threads on metacognitive learning ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm


    A Must Read
    Educause:  Emerging Trends in Education Technology
    --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/09/qt#250713

    Educause and the New Media Consortium have released the 2011 Horizon Report, an annual study of emerging issues in technology in higher education. The issues that are seen as likely to have great impact:

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    The Digital Revolution and Higher Education --- http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/College-presidents.aspx

    Video:  Learn the new (RSS) way to view the news you are most interested in from your favorite news sites ---  www.commoncraft.com  has a “RSS in Plain English” video
    This great link was forwarded by Mary Jo Sanz [MSANZ@BENTLEY.EDU]
    Also see Nanoscale --- http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/NR/

    The 25 Best Pinterest Boards in EdTech --- http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/09/the-25-best-pinterest-boards-edtech/
    Thank you Richard Campbell for the heads up.

    September 25, 2012 reply from Scott Bonacker

    Found this through Pinterest –--
    http://www.visualnews.com/category/visualization-2/

    Hadn’t really looked at it before –--

    http://www.visualnews.com/2012/06/19/how-much-data-created-every-minute/

    http://www.visualnews.com/2012/08/13/deceitful-aisles/..

    Thanks Richard.

    Scott Bonacker CPA - McCullough and Associates LLC - Springfield, MO

     

    Bob Jensen's threads on listservs, blogs, Twitter, and social networks are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

    Video Helpers ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

    Bob Jensen's links to electronic literature ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/electronicliterature.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing of knowledge ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


    Flipped Classroom (Flipped Teaching) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_Classroom

    "Study Measures Benefits of a ‘Flipped’ Pharmacy Course'," Chronicle of Higher Education, December 5, 2013 --- Click Here
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/study-measures-benefits-of-a-flipped-pharmacy-course/48749?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    A study comparing traditional and “flipped” versions of a pharmacy-school course at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that students much preferred the flipped course and got better grades on the final examination. The flipped course replaced in-class lectures with videos that the students watched before they came to class to take part in a series of activities—assessments, presentations, discussions, quizzes, and “microlectures.”

    The study is to be published in February in Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, but it is available online now (it can be downloaded using the “Article as PDF” tool). It reports on the 2011 and 2012 versions of a first-year course for graduate students, “Basic Pharmaceutics II.”

    In 2011 the course relied on 75-minute lectures two days a week—a total of 29 hours’ worth—plus occasional quizzes. In 2012 instructors “offloaded all in-class lectures to self-paced online videos”—averaging around 35 minutes each and totaling under 15 hours—that students could pause and review as necessary. Class sessions were “devoted to student-centered learning exercises designed to assess their knowledge, promote critical thinking, and stimulate discussion.”

    Following the 2012 course, only about 15 percent of the 162 students said they would have preferred a traditional lecture-style classroom experience. Others wrote comments such as “It was different, but I enjoyed coming to class more and I also feel that I will retain the information for longer. It helped make learning ‘fun’ again and not just endless hours of lectures and PowerPoints.”

    The study’s authors said that, on the final exam, scores for the flipped class were five points higher on a 200-point scale than scores for the traditional version had been the year before.


    Asynchronous Learning and the Flipped Classroom
    "The inverted calculus course and self-regulated learning," by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 3, 2014 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2014/03/03/the-inverted-calculus-course-and-self-regulated-learning/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

    A few weeks ago I began a series to review the Calculus course that Marcia Frobish and I taught using the inverted/flipped class design, back in the Fall. I want to pick up the thread here about the unifying principle behind the course, which is the concept of self-regulated learning.

    Self-regulated learning is what it sounds like: Learning that is initiated, managed, and assessed by the learners themselves. An instructor can play a role in this process, so it’s not the same thing as teaching yourself a subject (although all successful autodidacts are self-regulating learners), but it refers to how the individual learner approaches learning tasks.

    For example, take someone learning about optimization problems in calculus. Four things describe how a self-regulating learner approaches this topic.

    1. The learner works actively on optimization problems as the primary form of learning. Note that I said “primary”; some passive listening might take place, but the primary mode of learning optimization problems for this learner is doing optimization problems.
    2. As the learner works actively, she is monitoring many different things. What’s the process for solving an optimization problem in general? Have I set up my objective function correctly? How is this problem like the other ones I have seen or done? Does a computer-generated graph agree with the answer I got by hand? Am I too tired to work on this right now? How can I prevent myself from checking Facebook every two minutes instead of working on the problem? She’s not just thinking about these but monitoring them, like an airplane pilot would be monitoring the many dials and gauges on his dashboard during a flight, tweaking this and adjusting that as needed.
    3. As the learner monitors all this, she operates with two very important questions in mind: What is the criteria in this case for knowing whether I’ve truly learned the topic?, and Am I there yet? She has a clearly-defined goal state and the means of checking her progress toward that goal state. For example, the self-regulating learner will take the initiative to check her answer on the optimization problem using a graph, or using Wolfram|Alpha to make sure the derivative computation is correct.
    4. Finally, the self-regulating learner doesn’t let external circumstances prevent learning. She selects learning activities that serve as a buffer zone between her progress toward the goal and the items in her life around her. If she’s got to be at work in an hour, she’ll select some activities or a subset of the tasks in a problem at hand that she can do in 45 minutes. If she doesn’t have access to a computer at home, she will select learning activities that she can do at home and save the others for when she can study at a friend’s house or at school with more technology around; or work over the phone with a friend who does have the technology; or something, anything other than I couldn’t work because I didn’t have a computer.

    Even before I started working with the inverted/flipped classroom, what I just described is a picture of what I envisioned for my students. It’s a picture of a confident, inquisitive, independent problem-solver who takes a can-do attitude towards her work, and who is set up well to learn new things for the rest of her life. Because in real life, all learning basically looks like this.

    The theoretical framework for self-regulated learning was developed by Paul Pintrich throughout the 1990’s and culminated in a paper in Educational Psychology Review in 2004. In that paper, Pintrich describes four features of self-regulated learning that correspond to the four items I described above. But of course the idea of self-regulated learning is as old as humanity itself. And it’s worth pointing out that there’s a close relationship between self-regulated learning and the popular admissions-office concept of lifelong learning. When we talk about students becoming “lifelong learners”, what we really mean is “self-regulating learners”.

    Back to the story about calculus. I’ve taught calculus dozens of times since 1994, and what I’ve been seeing more and more, and tolerating less and less, is an environment where students tend toward the opposite of self-regulated learning. This is a state where students do not learn, and come to believe that they cannot learn, without the strong intervention of a third party. There’s no activity, no monitoring, no self-assessment, no persistence – only the repeated cries to tell them how to start, how to proceed, and what the right answer is. A professor can make a career out of catering to these cries and simply giving students what they ask for. But I don’t think that’s in the students’ best interests, or anybody else’s, and by the time July 2013 rolled around I decided I was done with enabling a generation of smart young men and women to enter into a perpetual state of learned helplessness when it came to their learning.

    Continued in article

    "Getting student buy-in for the inverted calculus class,"  by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 3, 2014 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2014/03/06/getting-student-buy-in-for-the-inverted-calculus-class/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    So far, regarding the inverted/flipped calculus course, we’ve discussed why I flipped the calculus class in the first place, the role of self-regulated learning as a framework and organizing principle for the class, how to design pre-class activities that support self-regulated  learning, and how to make learning objectives that get pre-class activities started on a good note. This is all “design thinking”. Now it’s time to focus on the hard part: Students, and getting them to buy into this notion of a flipped classroom.

    I certainly do not have a perfect track record with getting students on board with an inverted/flipped classroom structure. In fact the first time I did it, it was a miserable flop among my students (even though they learned a lot). It took that failure to make me start thinking that getting student buy-in has to be as organized, systematic, and well-planned as the course itself.

    Here are three big “don’ts” and “dos” that I’ve learned about getting students to buy in to the flipped classroom, mostly through cringe-worthy teaching performances of my own in the past, along with some examples of how we built these into the calculus course.

    DON’T: Make a production out of your use of the flipped classroom to your students.
    DO: Explain the workflow of the class to students in a clear way on Day 1 and remind students of that workflow on Days 2, 3, 4, …

    You go into the first day of class and enthusiastically explain to students that they will be participating in a new, exciting, and innovative class method called the “flipped classroom”, that they may have heard about on 60 Minutes or elsewhere in the news. There won’t be any boring lectures in this class! Instead they’ll be watching lectures on video at home, and then working on challenging activities in the class, under your supervision. It’s exciting, it’s the latest thing, and it’s going to be awesome.

    None of this is false. But it turns out that when many students hear “innovative” and “new”, their brains translate it as “experimental” and “unproven”. And it turns out that students don’t like being part of an experiment, especially when their grade is the outcome of the experiment.

    In the flipped calculus class, I included a brief but substantial overview of the flipped course design structure in the class syllabus. To summarize, it tells students that:

    • You learn better when you are working actively as opposed to listening passively.
    • In order to make as much time and space as possible for active work in class, we’ve pre-recorded many of the lectures and put them on YouTube.
    • You’ll be expected to prepare for class by watching the videos, doing the reading, and working through the Guided Practice exercises. This should take you roughly 3 hours a week (about one hour per class meeting).
    • By the way, this is sometimes called the “flipped classroom” design.

    So we communicate in the syllabus what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what students are expected to do on a day-to-day basis. As the class got ramped up through the first and second weeks of the term, every day I would take a few minutes in class to explain what students needed to do for the next class and how long they should expect it to take. What I did not drill in every day was how awesome the flipped classroom is. Students don’t want to hear this, and they don’t need to. They want, and need, to know what it is they are supposed to do, and it’s helpful to know why. But leave it at that.

    (Exception: If you have a lot of pre-service teachers in the class, it might be interesting to talk with them about the flipped class, since they may be practitioners of it themselves before long.)

    DON’T: Assume that the benefits of the flipped classroom will be obvious, or even easily grasped, by students.
    DO: Take every opportunity to point to specific examples of student performance in the flipped class that illustrate those benefits.

    The benefits of the flipped class are numerous. The research is showing that students in a flipped class learn at least as much content as their counterparts in a traditional classroom, if not more, plus flipped class students are getting explicit instruction on self-regulated learning behaviors that are useful everywhere. But don’t expect this to be obvious, and don’t expect it to sink in if you put it in the syllabus or make a big deal out of it on the first day. Instead, expect a lot of cognitive dissonance among students as they try to reconcile this new way of “doing school” with what they are used to.

    The best way to have that reconciliation is to point to and celebrate specific student successes. When a class gets all correct answers on an entrance quiz, make much out of it: “Isn’t it great how you can learn this stuff without me?” or, “See? You guys are smart and don’t need some professor telling you what to do.” When a student improves their grade on an assessment from a previous assessment, say, “Look at how your hard work is paying off” and “You know what I think is really great? The fact that you learned most of this without a lot of help.” There wasn’t any formal system for doing this in the flipped calculus class – just a habit of mind that I adopted and deployed on a daily basis to be generous with praise whenever it was merited.

    DON’T: Hide from student opinions on the flipped design of the course.
    DO: Solicit student feedback early and often.

    I’ve blogged before about the value of frequent course evaluations and not waiting until the end of the semester to get student feedback. This is especially so when you are doing something out of your and the students’ comfort zones like a flipped classroom. I recommend having at least one mid-term course evaluation done in addition to the usual end-of-term evaluations and being prepared to make halftime adjustments to meet student concerns.

    Continued in article

    "Study: Little Difference in Learning in Online and In-Class Science Courses," Inside Higher Ed, October 22, 2012 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/10/22/study-little-difference-learning-online-and-class-science-courses

    A study in Colorado has found little difference in the learning of students in online or in-person introductory science courses. The study tracked community college students who took science courses online and in traditional classes, and who then went on to four-year universities in the state. Upon transferring, the students in the two groups performed equally well. Some science faculty members have expressed skepticism about the ability of online students in science, due to the lack of group laboratory opportunities, but the programs in Colorado work with companies to provide home kits so that online students can have a lab experience.
     

     

    Jensen Comment
    Firstly, note that online courses are not necessarily mass education (MOOC) styled courses. The student-student and student-faculty interactions can be greater online than onsite. For example, my daughter's introductory chemistry class at the University of Texas had over 600 students. On the date of the final examination he'd never met her and had zero control over her final grade. On the other hand, her microbiology instructor in a graduate course at the University of Maine became her husband over 20 years ago.

    Another factor is networking. For example, Harvard Business School students meeting face-to-face in courses bond in life-long networks that may be stronger than for students who've never established networks via classes, dining halls, volley ball games, softball games, rowing on the Charles River, etc. There's more to lerning than is typically tested in competency examinations.

    My point is that there are many externalities to both onsite and online learning. And concluding that there's "little difference in learning" depends upon what you mean by learning. The SCALE experiments at the University of Illinois found that students having the same instructor tended to do slightly better than onsite students. This is partly because there are fewer logistical time wasters in online learning. The effect becomes larger for off-campus students where commuting time (as in Mexico City) can take hours going to and from campus.
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on assessment are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm

    Bob Jensen's long-time threads on asynchronous learning are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm
    This pedagogy depends a great deal on the quality of learning materials provided or not provided to students.

    What's more important to long-term memory and metacognition is probably how much the students have to struggle to find answers on their own ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
    This pedagogy, however, is risky in terms of teacher evaluations and burnout


    I had a genuinely wonderful teaching experience this past semester. As I discussed in a blog posting on January 1, 2013, I helped set up a class in Victorian Literature for 10 second semester senior accounting majors. We read and discussed Great Expectations, North & South, and The Mill on the Floss.
    "A Good Suggestion," by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Blog, June 1, 2013 ---
    http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-good-suggestion.html

    Jensen Comment
    This makes me wonder what role a Victorian Literature professor might play in setting up an accounting course for 10 second semester senior English majors. If she listened to what her students want most it might be more of a skills course in financial literacy, personal finance, and business law and ethics pertaining to accounting.

    What do you think it should contain for graduating English majors?

    It would be a lot of work, but it might be interesting to have students do a project on detecting accountants in literature or accounting frauds in literature.


    "HTML5 Moodle Mobile App Comes to Android, iOS," by David Nagel, T.H.E. Journal, May 9, 2013 ---
    http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/05/09/html5-moodle-mobile-apps-comes-to-android-ios.aspx


    "Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: Data and Learning Analytics," by Audrey Watters, Inside Higher Ed, December 20, 2012 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/hack-higher-education/top-ed-tech-trends-2012-data-and-learning-analytics 

    Bob Jensen's threads on education and learning technology ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    "EDUCAUSE WEEK," by Tracy Mitrano, Inside Higher Ed, November 10, 2012 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/law-policy-and-it/educause-week-0

    In addition to short summaries of leading presenters, you may want to just note what speakers were given the great honor of speaking at plenary sessions. You can then do Google and other searches on these speakers.

    For example, look up Clay Shirky --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky


    Rebooting the Academy (not a free book)
    Chronicle of Higher Education
    2012
    https://www.chronicle-store.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ID=79485&WG=350&cid=rebootWC

    Rebooting the Academy: 12 Tech Innovators Who Are Transforming Campuses, tells the stories of a dozen key figures who are changing research, teaching, and the management of colleges in this time of technological change. The e-book features essays by each of the 12 innovators, explaining their visions in their own words and providing more details on their projects, plus The Chronicle’s profiles of them.

    Among the highlights: Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, riffs on how video lectures can improve teaching; Dan Cohen, of George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media, asks whether Google is good for the study of history; and Jim Groom, an instructional-technology specialist at the University of Mary Washington, argues against the very premise of the collection, noting that the best innovations come from groups, not individual leaders.

    You will receive a confirmation email immediately after your Digital Edition order is placed allowing you to download the e-book to any of your preferred reading devices (includes formats for the Kindle, Nook, and iPad).

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    Digital Teaching Resources Laboratory http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/facilities/ditrl/

    Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching:  Statway (statistics tutorials) --- http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/statway

    CAUSEweb Resources (statistics education) --- http://www.causeweb.org/resources/


    Bob Jensen's helpers for educators ---
     http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#000000Education%20in%20General

    Bob Jensen's threads on free courses, tutorials, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


    Question
    How do you come up with a lesson plan for 20 or more students for an entire week when all your students are learning at a different pace?

    "The evolving classroom: Lessons go virtual," by Rick Bastien, CNN, June 27, 2012 ---
    http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/27/the-evolving-classroom-lessons-go-virtual/

    On any given Sunday night, your child’s teacher might face this problem: How do you come up with a lesson plan for 20 or more students for an entire week when all your students are learning at a different pace?

    Mike is great at reading but needs help in math. Katie excels in science but struggles with writing. They both need to pass the same state tests. And with states picking up new high standards for education, there isn’t always a precedent of how to teach. Even with textbooks and years of experience, the best teachers can struggle to find new ways of teaching complex subjects, especially when each student learns differently.

    This is a problem that Eric Westendorf and Alix Guerrier are determined to solve. The two former teachers co-founded LearnZillion.com, a social venture that provides free lessons for students, all in organized YouTube-style videos.

    The formula is simple: Videos have to be about five minutes long, illustrated by hand and voiced by a real teacher. The product simulates a real-classroom effect —it’s like your favorite teacher drawing the math lesson on the chalkboard, except that you can play it over and over if you don’t quite understand it. At the end, you take a brief quiz. But as it turns out, this resource is mostly utilized by teachers looking for new ways to teach the topics with which their students are struggling .

    In other words, teachers need help from other teachers. Jonathan Krasnov, Learnzillion’s publicist notes, “Even great teachers don’t teach everything great.”

    Westendorf was the principal of E.L. Haynes, a charter school in Washington, D.C., when he came up with the idea.

    He told CNN, “We started using it because we came across the Khan Academy site.  We liked this idea of instruction being captured and delivered to students. Then we said, ‘What if it could be based on the Common Core Standards,  [which most U.S.states have now adopted] , so that it is aligned with what students need? … It was out of these ‘what ifs’ that I came up with a prototype.”

    Westendorf plans for LearnZillion to eventually make profit by selling services to school districts, such as lessons tailored to the needs of the school. But he says that the lessons posted online will always be free.
     

    CNN attended LearnZillion’s first TeachFest , recently held in Atlanta. Westendorf and Guerrier recruited more than 100 “Dream Team” teachers to help build up their database of lessons. The teachers get paid $100 for each lesson created. But the chance to reach more students is the biggest reward for many teachers to whom CNN talked.

    Mike Lewis, a fifth-grade teacher from Cohasset, Massachusetts, says his interest in the “ability to replicate yourself and your lessons using video” is what led him to LearnZillion. The slogan for TeachFest was “scale your impact.”

    The idea is not new. KhanAcademy.org has thousands of lessons, and unlike LearnZillion, Khan Academy is a nonprofit. Both receive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation donated $300,000 just for TeachFest.

    Even Bill Gates acknowledges that the idea of the virtual classroom hasn’t quite gone viral yet. During last month’s Innovation in Education summit, the Microsoft CEO noted the example of Edx, a  partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University that provides free online courses.

     

    Jensen Comment
    This is why I created Camtasia modules for nearly every technical phase of both my AIS and Accounting Theory courses and then served them up on either my LAN drive or my Web server. When the video module contained copyrighted material I used the LAN drive. For example, if I showed students how to solve an end-of-chapter problem I used the LAN drive.

    The Camtasia videos had several great learning advantages:

    1. Students could repeat, repeat, and repeat again until they finally mastered some complicated task such as writing a database query or booking fair value adjustments of an interest rate swap.
       
    2. Students could skip over parts of the module that they fully understood and then focus on the parts of a task that they had not yet mastered.
       
    3. Usually I encouraged students to work in partnerships such that they appreciated how teamwork aids learning. But they were on their own when I gave a quiz in every class to test whether they truly understood the technical process they were supposed to learn before coming to class.
       
    4. This allowed me to focus on such things as theory and concepts in class rather than having to solve problems that some students understood fully and other students had their heads in the clouds.

    There is a risk that this works so efficiently that it's tempting to add more and more technical material to the course. My students generally let me know when my courses were demanding too much of their time relative to the other courses they were taking in the same semester.

    This video module approach may be less successful for students who are not well above average. Students at the lower end of the spectrum may need more direct supervision and face-to-butt kicking.

    At BYU, where basic accounting students are probably above the national norm for these two courses in terms of aptitude and motivation, each basic course is taught via variable speed video in courses that rarely meet face-to-face ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

    There is no magic bullet for students who are overly exhausted from off-campus work, parenting, or partying. Learning requires lots and lots of sweat. And if the sweat arises from things other than course content, not a whole lot of learning of course content will take place under any pedagogy. Students in these poor learning circumstances generally discover that accounting, mathematics, engineering, and science courses should be avoided whenever possible.


    From the AICPA on June 28, 2012

    Three ethics resources for CPA, CGMAs
    With the importance of ethics and non-financial reporting rising on the global agenda, CGMAs are in a unique position to make an important contribution to creating a sustainable ethical operating environment. The AICPA and CIMA have developed a number of resources to assist CPA, CGMAs in guiding their organizations to long-term sustainability and success. The Ethical reflection checklist is designed to provide organizations and individuals with an overview of how well ethical practices are embedded in the business. The CGMA case study: Navigating ethical issues highlights issues related to non-disclosure at the corporate level that come to the attention of non-executive financial managers and controllers. Responding to ethical dilemmas: CGMA ethics resources provides links to resources to help CGMAs navigate ethical dilemmas and respond in a manner that upholds their professional

    Bob Jensen's threads on professionalism in auditing ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001c.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

     


    Advanced Technological Education
    ATE Projects Impact --- http://www.ateprojectimpact.org/index.html

    The Advanced Technological Education (ATE) projects featured here exemplify the National Science Foundation-supported initiatives for technicians in high-technology fields of strategic importance to the nation. Two-year college educators have leadership roles in the projects, which test ways of improving technician education or of improving the professional development for the faculty who teach technicians. The projects collaborative work with industry partners and educators from other undergraduate institutions and secondary schools perpetuate innovations that deliver highly-skilled technicians to workplaces. While each ATE project has its own goals, all the projects are part of a national effort to ensure that the technical workforce in the United States has the capacity to compete globally.

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    "3 Colleges' Different Approaches Shape Learning in Econ 101," by Dan Berrett, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 18, 2012 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Econ-101-From-College-to/132299/?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en

    "A Descriptive Study of Institutional Characteristics of the Introductory Accounting Course," by Jonathan E. Duchac and Anthony J. Amoruso, Issues in Accounting Education, February 2012 ---
    http://aaajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.2308/iace-50089 

    ABSTRACT:
    Introductory accounting has historically been a foundational course in most undergraduate business curriculums. In many cases, the course serves as a prerequisite for all upper-level business and accounting courses. However, no current public data exist on the structure and characteristics of introductory accounting across a large sample of institutions. This study begins to fill this void by providing descriptive data on institutional characteristics of the introductory accounting course. Data are collected on seven different dimensions of the course suggested by the recommendations of the Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC) and recent trends in higher education: course size and staffing, pedagogical orientation/teaching approach, standardization of course elements across instructors, the textbook selection process, use of technology-based course management tools, off-site course delivery, and transfer credit acceptance. In some cases, the current data can be compared to previous research that examined similar characteristics. The resulting data can provide instructors, administrators, and researchers with a useful benchmark for developing teaching plans, curriculum, and future academic research.

    "Improving Student Satisfaction in a First-Year Undergraduate Accounting Course by Team Learning," by Evelien Opdecam and Patricia Everaert, Issues in Accounting Education, February 2012 ---
    http://aaajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.2308/iace-10217

    ABSTRACT:
    This paper discusses student satisfaction and course experiences of firstyear undergraduate students in an introductory financial accounting course where team learning was implemented during tutorials. Course experiences and satisfaction, as perceived by students in the team learning condition, were compared to those in a traditional lecture-based control condition. A post-experimental questionnaire, with open and closed-ended questions, was administered. Students reported significantly higher levels of satisfaction in the team learning condition and a more positive course experience compared to students in the lecture-based condition. The increased time spent on accounting in the team learning condition resulted in increased learning, as evidenced by higher grades on the final exam in the team learning condition. An analysis of open-ended questions revealed that both learning conditions fit for particular students. High pre-class preparation was considered a strength of the team learning condition, while the comprehensive explanation by the teacher was the most frequently mentioned advantage of the lecture-based condition. This paper further contributes to the practice of accounting education by illustrating a way to implement team learning in a large undergraduate accounting course.

    "A Half Century of Close Encounters with the First Course in Accounting," by Doyle Z. Williams, Issues in Accounting Education, November 2011 ---
    http://aaajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.2308/iace-50070 :

    ABSTRACT:
    This paper describes the author’s encounters with the first course in accounting in his half century of study, teaching, and service on five campuses, as a student, doctoral teaching assistant, lecturer, professor, accounting department administrator, business dean, and senior scholar. Also described are his encounters with issues surrounding the first course in accounting in a variety of leadership roles with the American Accounting Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Accounting Education Change Commission, Association for Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business, the Accounting Programs Leadership Group, and the Federation of Schools of Accountancy. Changes in the nature, content, and teaching of the first course in accounting are discussed. Observations for the future of the first course in accounting are offered.

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


    LMS = Learning Management System --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system
    CMS = Course Management System = LMS
    History of LMS/CMS --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

    MOOC = Massively Open Online Course --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooc
    MOOCs from Prestigious Universities --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
     

    "An LMS for Elite MOOCs?" by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, March 7, 2012 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/07/more-stanford-professors-stage-their-free-online-courses-profit 

    Google artificial-intelligence guru Sebastian Thrun made a splash last month when he left Stanford University to start a company based on an A.I. course he made freely available last fall to tens of thousands of students on the Web. Now, two of Thrun's former Stanford colleagues who conducted similar experiments have spun off their own free online courses into a for-profit venture.

    The engineering professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, who also ran free online versions of their Stanford courses last fall, have started Coursera, a company that says it wants to make "the best education in the world freely available to any person who seeks it."

    The company currently serves as a platform for eight courses, centering on computer science with some math, economics and linguistics. Five are taught by Stanford professors, two by professors at the University of California at Berkeley and one by a University of Michigan professor. All of the courses are currently listed as free of charge. None will count as credit toward a degree at any of the professors' home universities.

    Koller and Ng were not immediately available to elaborate on Coursera's business model, but the
    terms of use on the company's website suggest that it plans to trade in information. The terms stipulate that Coursera may use "non-personal" information it collects from users "for business purposes." They also indicate that Coursera may share personal information with its "business partners" so that registered students might "receive communications from such parties that [students] have opted in to."

    Stanford appears to be collaborating closely with the professors who are teaching courses through Coursera. To help brainstorm improvements to the quality of these massively open online courses (known as MOOCs), the university is assembling a "multidisciplinary faculty committee on educational technology that will include deans of three schools, the university provost's office and faculty or senior administrators from across campus," according to the
    Stanford News Service.

    Stanford is not the only elite university to focus faculty and administrative brainpower on the question of how to create inexpensive versions of its courses available to massive online audiences without sacrificing quality. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently opened MITx, a subsidiary nonprofit aimed at providing top-flight interactive courses online at a "modest" price. The MITx project is actively drawing on the creativity and expertise of the M.I.T. computer science faculty, with involvement from the university's provost.

    The founders of Coursera may be counting on this trend to continue. A January job posting for part-time work developing, designing and programming for the company (referred to in the posting as Dkandu, apparently a working title at the time) suggests that it has ambitions of being the preferred partner for elite universities that want to take their courses online in a big way.

    "We see a future where world-leading educators are at the center of the education conversation, and their reach is limitless, bounded only by the curiosity of those who seek their knowledge; where universities such as Stanford, Harvard, and Yale serve millions instead of thousands," the author of the posting. "In this future, ours will be the platform where the online conversation between educators and students will take place, and where students go to for most of their academic needs."

    More than 335,000 people have registered for the five Stanford-provided courses in the Coursera catalog, which comprise courses in natural language processing, game theory, probabilistic graphic models, cryptography and design and analysis of algorithms. The three non-Stanford courses are in model thinking (Michigan), software as a service and computer vision (Berkeley).

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology and distance learning ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    "Flipping out? What you need to know about the Flipped Classroom," by Andrea Zellner, Inside Higher Ed, February 21, 2012 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/gradhacker/flipping-out-what-you-need-know-about-flipped-classroom


    US News Rankings --- http://www.usnews.com/rankings

    US News Top Online Education Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education
    Do not confuse this with the US News project to evaluate for-profit universities --- a project hampered by refusal of many for-profit universiteis to provide data

    Methodology: Online Bachelor's Degree Rankings ---
    http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2012/01/09/methodology-online-bachelors-degree-rankings

    . . .

    Data collection commenced on July 14, 2011, using a password-protected online system. Drawing from its Best Colleges universe of regionally accredited bachelor's granting institutions, U.S.News & World Report E-mailed surveys to the 1,765 regionally accredited institutions it determined had offered bachelor's degree programs in 2010.

    Continued in article

    "'U.S. News' Sizes Up Online-Degree Programs, Without Specifying Which Is No. 1," by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2012 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/US-News-Sizes-Up/130274/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    U.S. News & World Report has published its first-ever guide to online degree programs—but distance-education leaders looking to trumpet their high rankings may find it more difficult to brag about how they placed than do their colleagues at residential institutions.

    Unlike the magazine's annual rankings of residential colleges, which cause consternation among many administrators for reducing the value of each program into a single headline-friendly number, the new guide does not provide lists based on overall program quality; no university can claim it hosts the top online bachelor's or online master's program. Instead, U.S. News produced "honor rolls" highlighting colleges that consistently performed well across the ranking criteria.

    Eric Brooks, a U.S. News data research analyst, said the breakdown of the rankings into several categories was intentional; his team chose its categories based on areas with enough responses to make fair comparisons.

    "We're only ranking things that we felt the response rates justified ranking this year," he said.

    The rankings, which will be published today, represent a new chapter in the 28-year history of the U.S. News guide. The expansion was brought on by the rapid growth of online learning. More than six million students are now taking at least one course online, according to a recent survey of more than 2,500 academic leaders by the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board.

    U.S. News ranked colleges with bachelor's programs according to their performance in three categories: student services, student engagement, and faculty credentials. For programs at the master's level, U.S. News added a fourth category, admissions selectivity, to produce rankings of five different disciplines: business, nursing, education, engineering, and computer information technology.

    To ensure that the inaugural rankings were reliable, Mr. Brooks said, U.S. News developed its ranking methodology after the survey data was collected. Doing so, he said, allowed researchers to be fair to institutions that interpreted questions differently.

    Some distance-learning experts criticized that technique, however, arguing that the methodology should have been established before surveys were distributed.

    Russell Poulin, deputy director of research and analysis for the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, which promotes online education as part of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, said that approach allowed U.S. News to ask the wrong questions, resulting in an incomplete picture of distance-learning programs.

    "It sort of makes me feel like I don't know who won the baseball game, but I'll give you the batting average and the number of steals and I'll tell you who won," he said. Mr. Poulin and other critics said any useful rankings of online programs should include information on outcomes like retention rates, employment prospects, and debt load—statistics, Mr. Brooks said, that few universities provided for this first edition of the U.S. News rankings. He noted that the surveys will evolve in future years as U.S. News learns to better tailor its questions to the unique characteristics of online programs.

    W. Andrew McCollough, associate provost for information technology, e-learning, and distance education at the University of Florida, said he was "delighted" to discover that his institution's bachelor's program was among the four chosen for honor-roll inclusion. He noted that U.S. News would have to customize its questions in the future, since he found some of them didn't apply to online programs. He attributed that mismatch to the wide age distribution and other diverse demographic characteristics of the online student body.

    The homogeneity that exists in many residential programs "just doesn't exist in the distance-learning environment," he said. Despite the survey's flaws, Mr. McCollough said, the effort to add to the body of information about online programs is helpful for prospective students.

    Turnout for the surveys varied, from a 50 percent response rate among nursing programs to a 75 percent response rate among engineering programs. At for-profit institutions—which sometimes have a reputation for guarding their data closely—cooperation was mixed, said Mr. Brooks. Some, like the American Public University System, chose to participate. But Kaplan University, one of the largest providers of online education, decided to wait until the first rankings were published before deciding whether to join in, a spokesperson for the institution said.

    Though this year's rankings do not make definitive statements about program quality, Mr. Brooks said the research team was cautious for a reason and hopes the new guide can help students make informed decisions about the quality of online degrees.

    "We'd rather not produce something in its first year that's headline-grabbing for the wrong reasons," he said.


    'Honor Roll' From 'U.S. News' of Online Graduate Programs in Business

    Institution Teaching Practices and Student Engagement Student Services and Technology Faculty Credentials and Training Admissions Selectivity
    Arizona State U., W.P. Carey School of Business 24 32 37 11
    Arkansas State U. 9 21 1 36
    Brandman U. (Part of the Chapman U. system) 40 24 29 n/a
    Central Michigan U. 11 3 56 9
    Clarkson U. 4 24 2 23
    Florida Institute of Technology 43 16 23 n/a
    Gardner-Webb U. 27 1 15 n/a
    George Washington U. 20 9 7 n/a
    Indiana U. at Bloomington, Kelley School of Business 29 19 40 3
    Marist College 67 23 6 5
    Quinnipiac U. 6 4 13 16
    Temple U., Fox School of Business 39 8 17 34
    U. of Houston-Clear Lake 8 21 18 n/a
    U. of Mississippi 37 44 20 n/a

    Source: U.S. News & World Report

    Jensen Comment
    I don't know why the largest for-profit universities that generally provide more online degrees than the above universities combined are not included in the final outcomes. For example, the University of Phoenix alone as has over 600,000 students, most of whom are taking some or all online courses.

    My guess is that most for-profit universities are not forthcoming with the data requested by US News analysts. Note that the US News condition that the set of online programs to be considered be regionally accredited does not exclude many for-profit universities. For example, enter in such for-profit names as "University of Phoenix" or "Capella University" in the "College Search" box at
    http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/university-of-phoenix-20988
    These universities are included in the set of eligible regionally accredited online degree programs to be evaluated. They just did not do well in the above "Honor Roll" of outcomes for online degree programs.

    For-profit universities may have shot themselves in the foot by not providing the evaluation data to US News for online degree program evaluation. But there may b e reasons for this. For example, one of the big failings of most for-profit online degree programs is in undergraduate "Admissions Selectivity."

    Bob Jensen's threads on distance education training and education alternatives are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on ranking controversies are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings


    "At Yale, Online Lectures Become Lively Books," by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 26, 2012 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/at-yale-online-lectures-become-lively-books/36162?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and other institutions are old hands now at taking course material from the classroom and lab and putting it online for learners anywhere to use. Yale University may be the first to reverse the process, using its Open Yale Courses as the basis for an old-fashioned book series.

    This month, Yale University Press released the first batch of paperbacks based on lecture courses featured in the online-learning program. Priced at $18 and available in e-format too, the books are meant to expand the audience for the course material even further, according to Diana E.E. Kleiner. A professor of art history and classics at Yale, Ms. Kleiner is the founding project director of Open Yale Courses.

    “It may seem counterintuitive for a digital project to move into books and e-books, because these are a much more conventional way of publishing,” she says. But the Open Yale Courses are about “reaching out in every way that we could.” That includes posting audio and video versions online (via Yale’s Web site, YouTube, and iTunes), and providing transcripts and now book versions of the lectures.

    Having transcripts of their lectures to work with gives faculty authors a jump-start. “It was incomparably the easiest book I have ever written,” says Shelly Kagan, a Yale professor of philosophy whose lecture course on death has become one of the Open Yale program’s most popular offerings. “I just started with the transcripts and treated that as a first draft.” The book that resulted, also called Death, has already been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal.

    Other books have taken him 10 years, Mr. Kagan says. This one took only a few months. Talk to him in detail about the process, though, and it’s clear he put a lot of fresh labor into the project, in addition to the years of work that went into creating the lectures in the first place.

    Even very good lectures contain grammatical mistakes, jokes or asides, or physical cues that don’t work on the page, and other unfelicities that might distract or annoy a reader. Mr. Kagan polished those away and restructured some of the discussion so that it followed a more logical order. He changed some descriptive details.

    He preserved the freewheeling, more personal style he uses in the lecture hall. “Although I changed the setting, and some of the examples, cleaned up the grammar, moved points around, and so forth and so on, I tried very hard to keep the conversational tone from the lectures,” he says. ” The subject matter is heavy—I am talking about death, after all—but I don’t think we have to discuss it in a ponderous, inaccessible, ‘academic’ fashion.”

    He doubts he would have turned his lectures on death into a book at all without the transcripts and the feedback from people outside Yale “suggesting there’s a hunger for this stuff.” Since his lectures went online, he’s heard from people all over the world. He’s even become a kind of philosopher-guru in China, where volunteers created Mandarin subtitles for his videotaped lectures.

    “I’ve just had the most amazing experiences with it,” he says of his participation in Open Yale. “I get e-mails from people in all walks of life, from literally all corners of the globe.” Some want to engage him in philosophical debate; others share stories about their own grappling with life-and-death issues. In many cases, “people were striking a deeply personal note,” he says. “The whole range of it has been humbling and gratifying.”

    Laura Davulis, associate editor for history and large digital projects at the Yale press, edits the series. Because the authors are so steeped in their material, and because the idea is to preserve the original spirit of the lectures, “I definitely have a lighter hand” in editing, she says. “My role is really more guidance in terms of how to take material that’s spoken and turn it into something that’s appropriate for a reading audience but still has that friendliness and accessibility of sitting in a course and listening to the lecture.”

    The books in the series aren’t peer-reviewed as outside manuscripts would normally be, according to Ms. Davulis, but they’re approved by the press’s acquisitions panel and its faculty committee. Although the series is aimed at readers beyond Yale, it makes for a nice on-campus partnership between Yale’s press and the online-education project. “One of the things we wanted to play up was the Yale connection,” she says.

    Bob Jensen's threads on free courses, lectures, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

     


    Question
    What if students teach the class and set the assignments?

    "Peer-Driven Learning: Success!" by Lee Bessette, Inside Higher Ed, December 8, 2011 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/college-ready-writing/peer-driven-learning-success 

    Jensen Comment
    This type of course requires great flexibility in the curriculum plan since it is not always clear ahead of time where students will steer the learning. I don't think I would recommend a peer-driven pedagogy for most accounting courses where learning objectives are usually more specific. For example, if there's only one governmental accounting course in the curriculum, most colleges would not like to have students ace the course and still be unable to solve those big governmental accounting problems that often appear on CPA examinations.

    There may be some opportunity in an accounting curriculum such as when there are separate courses for accounting ethics. These days, however, ethics modules are often spread among other accounting courses.

    Where I might like to see peer-driven learning gain traction is in accounting doctoral programs in courses where there are enough students to make it interesting.

    Lee Bessette maintains a blog on Inside Higher Ed ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/college-ready-writing

    I see some analogy here with what happens on our AECM. A scholar posts an article that is sometimes accompanied by a short commentary. This becomes analogous to a "peer assignment" to other scholars who then seek out references and quotations that get into the pros and cons of the initial posted article. Thus happens on the AECM, and this is what makes the AECM rich and rewarding to me!


    January 10, 2011 message from David Albrecht

    HETL is a professional organization dedicated to advancing teaching and learning in higher education.  It got its start on LinkedIn with discussion groups.  To participate in the discussion group, a collegiate teacher (and now doctoral students) would have to apply.  If the applicant had 2-5 years experience teaching in higher education (and met certain disclosure requirements on their profile), they were admitted.

    LinkedIn membership is now over 10,000 and rapidly climing.  I believe it is the largest LinkedIn discussion group.  Knowing me, you'd probably expect that I'd get involved in the discussions.  I have.  I answered a call for volunteers, and am now a reviewer for its publications.  There are two refereed venues.  One is for commentary pieces on higher education.  So far, contributors have been well-known academics such as Dee Fink.  The other is an on-line journal.

    Currently, HETL has a call out for volunteers to expand its editorial and review boards.  Information can be found at the HETL portal (
    http://hetl.org).  While there, you can see that an option is to join with a paid membership ($60 per year).

    I really like the give and take with profs from around the world.  There were over 450 comments on a thread about whether or not to be a Facebook friend with a student.

    You can find out more information about the group from the web site:
     http://hetl.org

    Dave Albrecht

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology and learning ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


    Open Sharing Tool Library and Networking for Multiple Nations
    "OpenScout supports the collaborative reuse and adaptation of Portuguese and Brazilian OER," by Alexander Mikroyannidis, The Financial Education Daily, November 16, 2011 ---
    http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

    The OpenScout Tool Library is a social network of individuals and collectives who are developing or using learning resources and want to share their stories and resources from different countries.

    The OpenScout Tool Library is currently hosting the activities of the COLEARN community of research in collaborative learning and educational technologies in the Portuguese language. This group is run by Alexandra Okada (The Open University UK) and consists of learners, educators and researchers from academic institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Their interests focus on collaborative participation through social media, colearning (collaborative open learning) using Open Educational Resources (OER), Social Media and Web 2.0 research. There are 26 research groups from Brazilian and Portugal universities - 115 people currently registered in the Tool Library.

    At the moment, this community is developing a book project called "Web 2.0: Open Educational Resources in Learning and Professional Development". From January to February 2012, three workshops will be run in the Tool Library for improving OER skills: image, presentation and audio/visual material. These collaborative activities and workshops aim at engaging people in developing their skills and discussing concepts as well as preparing themselves to be OER users who are able to produce, remix and share open resources and open ideas.

     


    Related Links:

    Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


    Problem-Based Learning at the University of Delaware --- http://www.udel.edu/inst/


    "The Chronicle's special report on Online Learning explores how calls for quality control and assessment are reshaping online learning," (Not Free), Chronicle of Higher Education, November 2011 ---
    https://www.chronicle-store.com/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?CO=CQ&ID=78602&cid=ol_nlb_wc

    The Chronicle's special report on Online Learning explores how calls for quality control and assessment are reshaping online learning. As online learning spreads throughout higher education, so have calls for quality control and assessment. Accrediting groups are scrambling to keep up, and Congress and government officials continue to scrutinize the high student-loan default rates and aggressive recruiting tactics of some for-profit, mostly online colleges. But the push for accountability isn't coming just from outside. More colleges are looking inward, conducting their own self-examinations into what works and what doesn't.

    Also in this year's report:
     
    • Strategies for teaching and doing research online
    • Members of the U.S. military are taking online courses while serving in Afghanistan
    • Community colleges are using online technology to keep an eye on at-risk students and help them understand their own learning style
    • The push to determine what students learn online, not just how much time they spend in class
    • Presidents' views on e-learning
    Bob Jensen's threads on assessment ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous learning ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on online course and degree programs ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm


    "Tutorial to Quickly Detect Changes in the Footnotes," by Jae Jun, Old School Value Blog, August 15, 2011 ---
    http://www.oldschoolvalue.com/blog/investment-tools/tutorial-to-quickly-detect-changes-in-the-footnotes/


    "Does all this new technology make a difference? This new report from The Chronicle looks at the realities behind the hype," Special Report from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 2011 (not free at under $10 depending on option chosen) ---
    https://www.chronicle-store.com/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?CO=CQ&ID=78055&PK=at2511

    Educause:  Emerging Trends in Education Technology --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/09/qt#250713

    Educause and the New Media Consortium have released the 2011 Horizon Report, an annual study of emerging issues in technology in higher education. The issues that are seen as likely to have great impact:

    • Over the next year: e-books and mobile devices.
    • From two to three years out: augmented reality and game-based learning.
    • From four to five years out: gesture-based computing and learning analytics.

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    Screencasting
    ScreenCast from TechSmith is a leading storage/server alternative for your Jing and Camtasia videos ---
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechSmith

    However, there are quite a few other screeencast video capturing alternatives and hosts ---
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software
    This is a pretty impressive Wikipedia comparison site!

    Bob Jensen's video helpers ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm


    Dropbox (Cloud Storage) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_%28service%29

    "Dropbox Will Simplify Your Life," by David Pogue, The New York Times, October 20, 2011 ---
    http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/dropbox-will-simplify-your-life/

    Every time I’m tempted to write about some tech product that’s been around awhile, I’m torn. On one hand, I’ll be blasted by the technogeeks for being late to the party. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem right to keep something great hidden under a barrel from the rest of the world.

    So here goes: I love Dropbox.

    Continued in article

    October 22, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar

    I use dropbox for my excel-based students projects.  I create a dropbox folder for each group, and then share the folder with the students.  Each student is expected to complete all three projects, but they can help each other.  Every student submits the first project but for the next two, each group selects one project for final grading.  When someone is stuck, I can quickly open the project and see what is going on.  To demonstrate how to use dropbox, I ask a student in class to save a file to the dropbox and then the class can see on the overhead the file showing up in my dropbox folder for that group.  I love it! 

    Heads up: If two people are working on a file at the same time the file saves as a conflicted file.  So students have to be careful to save files with unique names.

    Amy Dunbar

    UConn

     

    October 26, 2011 reply from Lim.K.Teoh

    SugarSync is also a good alternative that offers a greater storage for free. Its unique advantage is that we don't have to install any software to access the files.

    Lim

     

    October 22, 2011 reply from Rick Lillie

    I read David Pogue's post about Dropbox.  I agree it is easy to use and is a great tool for file sharing.

    There are many software programs and hosted collaboration services available (both free and for fee) that focus on file sharing as a way to collaborate.  But, file sharing is just one aspect of collaborating with others on a project.

    Dropbox is great for what it does.  There are alternatives that do much more than what Dropbox does. 

    For example, for the past few years, I have used Collanos Workplace as a way to collaborate with students on independent study and group projects.  Collanos is similar to Groove Networks (now part of enterprise edition of Microsoft Office).  Collanos emphasizes organizing the project and workflow and includes many options for communicating and incorporating other technology tools as needed to meet project needs.

    I've also used Collanos Workplace to collaborate with colleagues on research projects.  Recently, I've been using a great online hosted collaboration service called Glasscubes It's more intuitive than Collanos and shifts the process to "the Cloud."

    There are lots of tech tools to use for research and classroom activities.  The key is to find the tool that "best fits" the needs of the project and the technology skills of both students and instructor.

    Best wishes,

    Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
    Assistant Professor of Accounting
    Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
    CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
    5500 University Parkway, JB-547
    San Bernardino, CA.  92407-2397

    Bob Jensen's threads on archiving and long-term storage ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#archiving


    "North Carolina State U. Physics Prof Wins a McGraw Prize for Digital Teaching," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 21, 2011 --- Click Here
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/north-carolina-state-u-physics-prof-wins-a-mcgraw-prize-for-digital-teaching/33334?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    A North Carolina State University physics professor was honored today as one of three winners of the 2011 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education. The professor, Robert Beichner, “has changed how students learn in the science classroom” through the SCALE-UP project, described as “an approach that uses digital technology combined with innovative teaching approaches centered on hands-on activities and round-table discussions.” More than 100 colleges have adopted the strategy. The other two winners of the McGraw prize were cited for their work in pre-K, elementary, and secondary education: Mitchel Resnick, professor of learning research at the MIT Media Lab, and Julie Young, president of the Florida Virtual School.

    Bob Jensen's threads on Education Technology ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    Now that a landmark study conducted by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University has confirmed that students at two-year campuses perform worse in online courses than in the face-to-face version, perhaps we can move on the important question: What can we do about that?

    "Improving Online Success," by Rob Jenkins, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 16, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/onhiring/improving-online-success/29390?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Jensen Comment
    Most of the performance inhibitors apply to onsite and well as online education, but there are some things that can be done to improve online learning for many students. The first task, in my opinion, is to determine if there are unique learning disabilities that should be dealt with separately.


    You can search video and start the video when a particular word crops up
    YouTube's Interactive Transcripts --- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/youtubes-interactive-transcripts.html

    YouTube added a cool feature for videos with closed captions: you can now click on the "transcript" button to expand the entire listing. If you click on a line, YouTube will show the excerpt from the video corresponding to the text. If you use your browser's find feature, you can even search inside the video. Here's an an example of video that includes a transcript.

    Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

    More than 100 colleges have set up channels on YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/edu
    Many universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
    Search for words like “accounting”

    "YouTube Creates New Section to Highlight College Content," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 27, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3684&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    There are now nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of which are in very basic accounting.
    But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
    There are nearly 70 videos on XBRL

    YouTube Education Channels --- http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

    An Absolute Must Read for Educators
    One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert. Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you at
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

    This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

    My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of work that they are now sharing with us


    Teaching Tips, Ideas, and Inspiration 

     

    "Teaching Carnival 4.9," by Jill Morris, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-4-9/33127?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    "Teaching Carnival 4.10," by Billie Hara, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 1, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-4-10/33718?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    "Teaching Carnival 4.11," by Billie Hara, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 1, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-4-11/34455?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    "Teaching Carnival 5.1," by Tonya Howe, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-5-1/35698?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    [September’s Teaching Carnival--and the beginning of year five of the TC--is from Tonya Howe, Assistant Professor of English at Marymount University.  Tonya blogs at Cerosia and can be reached at thowe [at] Marymount [dot] edu or @howet on Twitter.  ProfHacker has become the permanent home of the Teaching Carnival, so each month you can return for a snapshot of the most recent thoughts on teaching in college and university classrooms. You can find previous carnivals on Teaching

    "Teaching Carnival 5.02," by Roger Whitson, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 3, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-5-2/36287

    "Teaching Carnival 5.03," by Delaney Kirk, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 1, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-5-04/37021?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    [October’s Teaching Carnival was compiled by Delaney Kirk, a management professor at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. You can reach her via email or on Twitter .  Delaney is both an educator and an edublogger--ask her a question or check out her tips on teaching effectiveness at Ask Dr. Kirk. This month she gathers tips on teaching, advice to share with our students, ways to utilize technology in the classroom, and suggestions for personal development, along with a challenge to write that academic book you’ve been putting off. –Billie Hara]

    Know of a blog post (perhaps your own) that should be included in the next Teaching Carnival…?

    1. Email the next host directly with the address to the permalink of your blog post, and/or
    2. Tag your post in Delicious (or Diigo or other bookmarking service) with teaching-carnival.

    Tips on Teaching

    Tips on Using Technology

    Tips for Our Students

    Tips on Personal Development

    ♦  ♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

    And if you’ve been putting off writing that academic book or dissertation, Charlotte Frost invites us all to participate in the first Academic Book Writing Month challenge (tweet about it using hash tag #AcBoWriMo). You can also join NaNoWriMo to start that novel you’ve been telling people you plan to write someday. Both challenges begin on November 1st.

    Continued in article

    "Teaching Carnival 5.04," by Mikhail Gershovich, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 1, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-5-04-2/37515?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Know of a blog post (perhaps your own) that should be included in the next Teaching Carnival…?

    1. Email the next host directly with the address to the permalink of your blog post, and/or
    2. Tag your post in Delicious (or Diigo or other bookmarking service) with teaching-carnival.

    ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

    Hurry, hurry, hurry. Step right up. See the most amazing, most provocative, most edumacational teaching links on the Interwebz. Don’t miss your chance to be wowed, amazed, professionally developed and procrastinated! Step right this way!

    This month at the Teaching Carnival:

    Edudemic showcases 100 best web 2.0 tools for teachers as chosen by teachers while Peter Dewitt offers an in-depth discussion of why educators should join Twitter. Mrs. Ripp suggests 14 steps to meaningful student blogging, George Siemens shares a few simple tools he’s like ed-tech startups to build. and Audrey Watters tells us about Code Now, a DC area program dedicated to teaching underserved high school students how to program.

    Tom Woodward offers us some things to consider regarding the instructional use of digital content, and Jane Hart argues that while we can manage the use of media that can facilitate informal learning, we can’t manage informal learning itself.

    Stephen Lazar, of Education Week, suggests how to teach high-school history by facilitating critical inquiry. Liz Losh discusses the use of digital role-playing games for a critical engagement with racial history. Mike Cosgrove explains how to Game Reality History. The Christian Cynic considers analysis of song lyrics as a means of encouraging critical thought. Andrew Miller argues for integrating visual art into curricula as a form of critical thinking.

    Ryan Cordell discusses “speed-dating” peer-review writing workshops, and Dean Shareski proclaims lectures good. At cac.ophony.org, Meechal Hoffman and Erica Kaufman offer a few thoughts on teaching with technology, and Sarah Ruth Jacobs traces the genealogy of communication across the the curriculum courses (part 1 and part 2.)

    At Blogging Pedagogy, we learn how the Voyeur data visualization tool and the automated text analysis it offers might be useful for revision and consider a rumination on the form of the blog post.

    Mark Sample and Shannon Mattern each present on the digital humanities in the classroom (videos). Roger Whitson calls on DH teachers and scholars to engage in digital activism to undercut a “cultural obsession with individualism” foster an environment where collaborative digital projects are valued.

    You’ve heard of the MOOC, now learn all about it: The 7 things you should know about MOOCs. Alan Levine considers the “course-iness” of MOOCs. David Kernohan discusses the mythical #economooc. Michael Feldstein offers some thoughts on scaling MOOCs.

    Ok, you get the MOOC but what is this rhizomatic learning? Dave Cormier explains. If that wasn’t clear, here’s how he explains it to his 5 year old.

    In the spirit of the Occupy Movement, Jose Vilson offers James Baldwin’s take on the purpose education: “The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.” Along those lines: Cheryl Smith on teaching and protest, Jay Cross on occupying education, and Cathy Davidson on why this is a “Gettysburg address moment in higher education.”

    Clayton R. Wright gives us a seemingly comprehensive list of education technology conferences, January-June 2012. (.doc, courtesy of Stephen Downes)

    Audrey Watters speculates on whether the Kindle Fire will be popular among educators and then later discusses why she sent hers back to Amazon.

    At the Chatty Professor, Ellen Bremen reflects on how college students manage changing relationships and discusses what students should know about faculty office hours. Quinn Warnick shares the list of articles he asks undergraduates to read before offering advice on grad school. Delaney Kirk suggests what students can expect from their profs and what profs should expect from their students.

    Alice Cassidy shares a wealth of resources on sustainability education and leadership.

    Trouble with your IT Department? Here’s how to work successfully with them.

    And, finally, Wired UK explains the science of why the sound of fingernails on a blackboard makes us cringe.

    Earlier Editions of Teaching Carnival in the Chronicle of Higher Education
    Type "Teaching Carnival" into the search box at
    http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5


    Search Over 400,000 Teacher-Reviewed Lesson Plans & Worksheets from LessonPlanet ---
    http://www.lessonplanet.com/


    "New Million-Syllabi Repository Could Reveal Trends in Teaching," by Ben Weidner, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 31, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-million-syllabi-repository-could-reveal-trends-in-teaching/30687?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Jensen Comment
    I attempted to search for syllabi in accounting, finance, and other business administration courses at
    http://chnm.gmu.edu/syllabus-finder/syllabi/

    At the above site on April 1, 2011 I received the following message which I don't think is an April Fools joke:

    Unfortunately, Google has deprecated the use of the Google SOAP Search API which this tool uses. We are hoping to update the code to use a different solution in the future. Thank you for your patience.
     

    Hi Barry,

    Before your virtual course in 1998, I recall that you were an early adopter of in-class hand-held clicker response technology (HyperGraphics in those days) ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads

    What is most remarkable is that you experimented with this virtual course for on-campus students in 1998 when course delivery software like Blackboard, Moodle, Camtasia, and YouTube had not yet been invented. Alternatives in the 1990s are discussed at
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

    I suspect you used ToolBook back in those days. ToolBook can still be used for such purposes, but TookBook is vastly different in 2011 relative to 1998 and rarely, if ever, used extensively by accounting faculty in 2011. You and I, however, were heavy ToolBook users in the roaring 1990s.

    Today virtual courses often use several types of pedagogy to choose from.
     

    1. Computer Delivery --- http://pacioli.loyola.edu/rice/virtual/fall98/virtualF98.html
      In 2011 it may well be via BlackBoard, Moodle, or related course management systems ---
      http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm 
      .
       
    2. Video Delivery --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo
      BYU teaches the first two principles of accounting courses via DVD variable-speed video in on-campus classes that rarely meet face-to-face.
      .
       
    3. Hybrid Delivery with instant messaging, video, and student interaction modules  ---
      Amy Dunbar commenced with mostly computer delivery but, having discovered the advantages of Camtasia, has added more and more video modules to her distance education tax courses ---
      http://users.business.uconn.edu/adunbar/videos/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html  
      .
       
    4. Hybrid Delivery with Social Interaction and Student Blogging ---
      "Teaching With Blogs, by Lanny Arvan, Inside Higher Ed, July 27, 2010 ---
      http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/07/27/arvan

      .
      “It is my impression that no one really likes the new. We are afraid of it. It is not only as Dostoevsky put it that 'taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most.' Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.”

      --Eric Hoffer, Between The Devil And The Dragon
       

      I tried the new in fall 2009, teaching with student blogs, (look in sidebar and scroll down) out in the open where anyone who wanted to could see what the students were producing. The blogging wasn’t new for me. I’d been doing that for almost five years. Having students blog was a different matter. I had no experience in getting them to overcome their anxieties, relaxing in writing online, learning to trust one another that way. Normally I believe what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If I could blog comfortably and get something from that, so could they. On reflection, however, I was very gentle with myself when I started to blog. As an experiment to prove to myself whether I could do it, for three full weeks I made at least one post a day, 500 to 600 words, a couple of times 1,100 to 1,200 words. I didn’t tell a soul I was doing this. There was no pressure on me to keep it up. It was out in the open, yet nobody seemed to be watching. After those three weeks I felt ready. In the teaching, however, at best I could ask the students to blog once a week. I gave the students weekly prompts on the readings or to follow up on class discussion. (See the class calendar for fall 2009. The prompts are in the Friday afternoon entries.) If I let them blog quietly to get comfortable as I had done, the entire semester would expire before they were ready to go public. There seemed no alternative but to have them plunge in.
       

      The uncertainty about how best to assist the students once they had taken the plunge created an important symmetry between the students and me; we both were to learn about how to do this well, often by first doing it less well. Though it was an inadvertent consequence, of all my teaching over the past 30 years I believe this course came closest to emulating the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education by Chickering and Gamson. I learned to comment on the student posts, not with some pre-thought-through response based on what I anticipated they’d write, but rather to react to where they appeared to be in their own thinking. (This post provides a typical example. The student introduced time management as a theme. My comment aimed to make her think more about time management.) As natural as that is to do in ordinary conversation, I had never done it before when evaluating student work. Indeed, I didn’t think of these comments as evaluation at all. I thought of them as response. In the normal course of my non-teaching work I respond to colleagues all the time and they respond to me. This form of online interaction in the class made it more like the rest of my interactions at work.
       

      Most of the students were quite awkward in their initial blogging. Good students all, the class was a seminar on "Designing for Effective Change" for the Honors Program, but lacking experience in this sort of approach to instruction, the students wrote to their conception of what I wanted to hear from them. I can’t imagine a more constipated mindset for producing interesting prose. For this class there was a need for them to unlearn much of their approach which had been finely tuned and was quite successful in their other classes. They needed to take more responsibility for their choices. While I gave them a prompt each week on which to write, I also gave them the freedom to choose their own topic so long as they could create a tie to the course themes. Upon reading much of the early writing, I admonished many of them to "please themselves" in the writing. I informed them that they could not possibly please other readers if they didn’t first please themselves. It was a message they were not used to hearing. So it took a while for them to believe it was true. In several instances they tried it out only after being frustrating with the results from their usual approach. This, as Ken Bain teaches us, is how students learn on a fundamental level.
       

      I'm crustier now than I was as a younger faculty member. Nonetheless, I find it difficult to deal with the emotion that underlies giving feedback to students when that feedback is less than entirely complimentary to them. Yet given their awkward early attempts at writing posts that’s exactly what honest response demanded. It’s here where having the postings and the comments out in the open so all can see is so important, before the class has become a community, before the students have made up their minds about what they think about this blogging stuff. Though both the writing and the response are highly subjective, of necessity, it is equally important for the process to be fair. How can a student who receives critical comments judge those comments to be fitting and appropriate, rather than an example of the insensitive instructor picking on the hapless student? Perhaps a very mature student can discern this even-handedly from the comments themselves and a self-critique of the original post. I believe most students benefit by reading the posts of their classmates, making their own judgments about those writings and then seeing the instructor’s comments, finally making a subsequent determination as to whether those comments seem appropriate and helpful for the student in reconsidering the writing.

      A positive feedback loop can be created by this process. The commenting, more than any other activity the instructor engages in, demonstrates the instructor’s commitment to the course and to the students. In turn the students, learning to appreciate the value of the comments, start to push themselves in the writing. Their learning is encouraged this way. Further, since the blogging is not a competition between the students and their classmates, those who like getting comments begin to comment on the posts of other students. The elements of the community that the class can become are found in this activity.

      Since on a daily basis I use blogs and blog readers in my regular work, one of the original reasons for me taking this approach rather than use the campus learning management system was simply that I thought it would be more convenient for me. Also, given my job as a learning technology administrator, I went into the course with some thought that I might showcase the work afterward. Openness is clearly better for that. However in retrospect neither of these is primary. The main reason to be open is to set a good tone for the class. We want ideas to emerge and not remain concealed.
       

      Yet there remains one troubling element: student privacy. Is open blogging this way consistent with FERPA? As best as I’ve been able to determine, it is as long as students “opt in.” (I did give students the alternatives of writing in the class LMS site or writing in the class wiki site. No student opted for those.) My experience suggests, however, that is not quite sufficient. If most students opt in, peer pressure may drive others to opt in as well. More importantly, however, students choose to opt in when they are largely ignorant of the consequences. Might they feel regret after they better understand what the blogging is all about?

      Continued in article

    Other Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


    In 2010 Google dropped its Wave software

    Could Google Wave Replace Course-Management Systems?

    Google Wave --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave

    Video:  Internet Real Time Communication and Collaboration (1 hour, 20 minutes)
    Google Wave --- http://code.google.com/apis/wave/
    Google Wave is a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. Google Wave is also a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services and to build extensions that work inside waves.
    Developer Preview --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ

    Course Management Systems (like Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle, ToolBook, etc.) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_Management_System

    A virtual learning environment (VLE) is a software system designed to support teaching and learning in an educational setting, as distinct from a Managed Learning Environment, (MLE) where the focus is on management. A VLE will normally work over the Internet and provide a collection of tools such as those for assessment (particularly of types that can be marked automatically, such as multiple choice), communication, uploading of content, return of students' work, peer assessment, administration of student groups, collecting and organizing student grades, questionnaires, tracking tools, etc. New features in these systems include wikis, blogs, RSS and 3D virtual learning spaces.

    While originally created for distance education, VLEs are now most often used to supplement traditional face to face classroom activities, commonly known as Blended Learning. These systems usually run on servers, to serve the course to students Multimedia and/or web pages.

    In 'Virtually There', a book and DVD pack distributed freely to schools by the Yorkshire and Humber Grid for Learning Foundation (YHGfL), Professor Stephen Heppell writes in the foreword: "Learning is breaking out of the narrow boxes that it was trapped in during the 20th century; teachers' professionalism, reflection and ingenuity are leading learning to places that genuinely excite this new generation of connected young school students - and their teachers too. VLEs are helping to make sure that their learning is not confined to a particular building, or restricted to any single location or moment."

    "Could Google (Wave Replace Course-Management Systems?" by Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 7, 2009 --- Click Here
    http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Could-Google-Wave-Replace/8354/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

    Google argues that its new Google Wave system could replace e-mail by blending instant messaging, wikis, and image and document sharing into one seamless communication interface. But some college professors and administrators are more excited about Wave's potential to be a course-management-system killer.

    "Just from the initial look I think it will have all the features (and then some) for an all-in-one software platform for the classroom and beyond," wrote Steve Bragaw, a professor of American politics at Sweet Briar College, on his blog last week.

    Mr. Bragaw admits he hasn't used Google Wave himself -- so far the company has only granted about 100,000 beta testers access to the system. Each of those users is allowed to invite about eight friends (who can each invite eight more), so the party is slowly growing louder while many are left outside waiting behind a virtual velvet rope. But Google has posted an hour-long video demonstration of the system that drew quite a buzz when it was unveiled in May. That has sparked speculation of how Wave might be used.

    Greg Smith, chief technology officer at George Fox University, did manage to snag an invitation to try Wave, and he too says it could become a kind of online classroom.

    That probably won't happen anytime soon, though. "Wave is truly a pilot right now, and it's probably a year away from being ready for prime time," he said, noting that Wave eats up bandwidth while it is running. Google will probably take its time letting everyone in, he said, so that it can work out the kinks.

    And even if some professors eventually use Wave to collaborate with students, colleges will likely continue to install course-management systems so they know they have core systems they can count on, said Mr. Smith.

    Then again, hundreds of colleges already rely on Google for campus e-mail and collaborative tools, through a free service the company offers called Google Apps Education Edition. Could a move to Google as course-management system provider be next?

    Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring and management systems ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    Freshman Research Initiative (at the University of Texas)  --- http://fri.cns.utexas.edu/

    Undergraduate Research Ethics Cases ---
    http://www.udel.edu/chem/white/HHMI3/EthicsCases.html

    Council on Undergraduate Research on the Web --- http://www.cur.org/quarterly/webedition.html

    JURF:  The Journal of Undergraduate Research in Finance ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2011/01/disneys_oscar-winning_adventures_in_music.html

    To my knowledge there is no equivalent journal for undergraduate accounting research. However, accountants can and do on occasion participate in the National Conferences of Undergraduate Research ---
    http://www.ncur.org/

    Nearly 20 years ago Trinity University hosted the annual NCUR conference. There were no accounting student submissions to be refereed that year and in most years. We were told that accounting students rarely contribute submissions. So I wrote a paper about this with the two Trinity University faculty members who coordinated the NCUR presentations on Trinity's campus that year.

    "Undergraduate Student Research Programs: Are They as Viable for Accounting as They are in Science, Humanities, and Other Business Disciplines?" by Robert E. Jensen, Peter A. French and Kim R. Robertson, Critical Perspectives on Accounting , Volume 3, 1992, 337-357.

    James Irving's Working Paper entitled "Integrating Academic Research into an Undergraduate Accounting Course"
    College of William and Mary, January 2010

    ABSTRACT:
    This paper describes my experience incorporating academic research into the curriculum of an undergraduate accounting course. This research-focused curriculum was developed in response to a series of reports published earlier in the decade which expressed significant concern over the expected future shortage of doctoral faculty in accounting. It was also motivated by prior research studies which find that students engaging in undergraduate research are more likely to pursue graduate study and to achieve graduate school success. The research-focused curriculum is divided into two complementary phases. First, throughout the semester, students read and critique excerpts from accounting journal articles related to the course topics. Second, students acquire and use specific research skills to complete a formal academic paper and present their results in a setting intended to simulate a research workshop. Results from a survey created to assess the research experience show that 96 percent of students responded that it substantially improved their level of knowledge, skill, and abilities related to conducting research. Individual cases of students who follow this initial research opportunity with a deeper research experience are also discussed. Finally, I supply instructional tools for faculty who might desire to implement a similar program.

    January 17, 2010 message (two messages combined)  from Irving, James [James.Irving@mason.wm.edu]

    Hi Bob,

    I recently completed the first draft of a paper which describes my experience integrating research into an undergraduate accounting course. Given your prolific and insightful contributions to accounting scholarship, education, etc. -- I am a loyal follower of your website and your commentary within the AAA Commons -- I am wondering if you might have an interest in reading it (I also cite a 1992 paper published in Critical Perspectives in Accounting for which you were a coauthor).

    The paper is attached with this note. Any thoughts you have about it would be greatly appreciated.

    I posted the paper to my SSRN page and it is available at the following link: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1537682 . I appreciate your willingness to read and think about the paper.

    Jim

    January 18, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Jim,

     

    I’ve given your paper a cursory overview and have a few comments that might be of interest.

     You’ve overcome much of the negativism about why accounting students tend not to participate in the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research (NCUR). Thank you for citing our old paper.
    French, P., R. Jensen, and K. Robertson. 1992. Undergraduate student research programs:re they as viable for accounting as they are in science and humanities?" Critical Perspectives on Accounting 3 (December): 337-357. --- Click Here

    Abstract
    This paper reviews a recent thrust in academia to stimulate more undergraduate research in the USA, including a rapidly growing annual conference. The paper also describes programs in which significant foundation grants have been received to fund undergraduate research projects in the sciences and humanities. In particular, selected humanities students working in teams in a new “Philosophy Lab” are allowed to embark on long-term research projects of their own choosing. Several completed projects are briefly reviewed in this paper.

    In April 1989, Trinity University hosted the Third National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) and purposely expanded the scope of the conference to include a broad range of disciplines. At this conference, 632 papers and posters were presented representing the research activities of 873 undergraduate students from 163 institutions. About 40% of the papers were outside the natural sciences and included research in music and literature. Only 13 of those papers were in the area of business administration; none were even submitted by accounting students. In 1990 at Union College, 791 papers were presented; none were submitted by accountants. In 1991 at Cal Tech, the first accounting paper appeared as one of 853 papers presented.

    This paper suggests a number of obstacles to stimulating and encouraging accounting undergraduates to embark on research endeavours. These impediments are somewhat unique to accounting, and it appears that accounting education programs are lagging in what is being done to break down obstacles in science, pre-med, engineering, humanities, etc. This paper proposes how to overcome these obstacles in accounting. One of the anticipated benefits of accounting student research, apart from the educational and creative value, is the attraction of more and better students seeking creativity opportunities in addition to rote learning of CPA exam requirements. This, in part, might help to counter industry complaints that top students are being turned away from accounting careers nationwide.

    In particular you seem to have picked up on our suggestions in the third paragraph above and seemed to be breaking new ground in undergraduate accounting education.

     I am truly amazed by you're having success when forcing undergraduate students to actually conduct research in new knowledge.

    Please keep up the good work and maintain your enthusiasm.

    1
    Firstly, I would suggest that you focus on the topic of replication as well when you have your students write commentaries on published academic accounting research ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

    I certainly would not expect intermediate accounting students to attempt a replication effort. But it should be very worthwhile to introduce them to the problem of lack of replication and authentication of accountancy analytic and empirical research.

    2
    Secondly, the two papers you focus on are very old and were never replicated.. Challenges to both papers are private and in some cases failed replication attempts, but those challenges were not published and came to me only by word of mouth.  It is very difficult to find replications of empirical research in accounting, but I suggest that you at least focus on some papers that have some controversy and are extended in some way.

    For example, consider the controversial paper:
    "Costs of Equity and Earnings Attributes," by Jennifer Francis, Ryan LaFond, Per M. Olsson and Katherine Schipper ,The Accounting Review, Vol. 79, No. 4 2004 pp. 967–1010.
    Also see http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/179269527.html
    Then consider
    "Is Accruals Quality a Priced Risk Factor?" by John E. Core, Wayne R. Guay, and Rodrigo S. Verdi, SSRN, December 2007 ---
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=911587
    This paper was also published in JAE in 2007 or 2008.
    Thanks to Steve Kachelmeier for pointing this controversy (on whether information quality (measured as the noise in accounting accruals) is priced in the cost of equity capital) out to me.

    It might be better for your students to see how accounting researchers should attempt replications as illustrated above than to merely accepted published accounting research papers as truth unchallenged.

    3.
    Have your students attempt critical thinking with regards to mathematical analytics in "Plato's Cave" ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm#Analytics
    This is a great exercise that attempts to make them focus on underlying assumptions.

    4.
    In Exhibit 1 I recommend adding a section on critical thinking about underlying assumptions in the study. In particular, have your students focus on internal versus external validity --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm#SocialScience .

    You might look into some of the research ideas for students listed at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#ResearchVersusProfession

    5.
    I suggest that you set up a hive at the AAA Commons for Undergraduate Research Projects and Commentaries. Then post your own items in this hive and repeatedly invite professors and students from around the world to add to this hive.

    keywords:
    Accounting Research, Analytics, Empirical Research, Undergraduate Research

    From Bryn Mawr College
    Serendip [Often makes use of Flash Player] --- http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/

    Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

     


    October 2, 2009 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    ONLINE TEACHING TIPS

    The September issue of ELEARN MAGAZINE has two articles from long-time online teaching practitioners that feature practical advice for new online instructors:

    "10 Things I've Learned About Teaching Online" By Michelle Everson, University of Minnesota
    http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=57-1

    "Discussion Management Tips For Online Educators" By Jo Macek, Anthem Education Group ---
    http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=59-1

     eLearn Magazine is published by ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.), a not-for-profit educational association serving those who work, teach, and learn in the various computing-related fields. For more information, contact: eLearn magazine, eLearn Magazine ACM, 2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701, New York, NY 10121-07016 USA;
    Web:
      http://www.elearnmag.com/

    See also:
    From the corporate side of eLearning, tips not to follow:
    "7 Ways to Turn eLearning Programs into Real Snoozers" By Josh Little
    TRAINING MAGAZINE, September 28, 2009
    http://www.trainingmag.com/msg/content_display/publications/e3i8a59b9acd0fa94f3bcac023669928cd9


    Why the Research Paper Isn't Working
    I’m in love with this idea. I have long agreed with
    Richard Larson who wrote way back in 1982 that the research paper as taught in college is an artificial genre, one that works at cross-purposes to actually developing respect for evidence-based reasoning, a measured appreciation for negotiating ideas that are in conflict, or original thought. I’m honestly a bit amazed that anyone was surprised by the results of the Citation Project study, also presented at the conference, that found students “skimming the surface.” This is a problem that existed long before the Internet, but has only grown more obvious as students are asked to do more documented expository writing than ever before. (This finding was published in a national study published in the CCCC's journal in 2008; subscription required.)
    Barbara Fister, "Why the Research Paper Isn't Working," Inside Higher Ed, April 12, 2011 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library_babel_fish


    Teaching online is no different in many respects with respect to fundamental differences in pedagogy and student aptitudes and abilities. Examples include the following:

     

    Teaching online involves such a wide range of alternatives, that there is no one set of resources that satisfies each pedagogy and style of teaching/learning. Differences include such things as the following:

    One important thing to do is to study how some existing online courses are taught successfully. Some great places to search for those illustrations include the following:

    San Antonio on August 13, 2002 
    CPE/CEP Workshop Number 1 --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm 

    Free audio and presentation files of the following speakers:
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm 

    • Dennis Beresford, University of Georgia
    • Amy Dunbar, University of Connecticut
    • Nancy Keeshan, the Global MBA and Cross-Continent MBA Programs of Duke University
    • Susan Spencer, San Antonio College
    • Bob Jensen, Trinity University
       

    Atlanta on August 11, 2001
    CPE/CEP Workshop Number 1 --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001cpe/01start.htm

    Free audio and presentation files of the following speakers:
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001cpe/01start.htm

    • Don Carter, Chartered Accountancy (CA) School of Business
      (Perhaps the only complete performance-based pedagogy program in the world)
    • Michael T. Kirschenheiter, while he was at Columbia University
    • Robert Walsh, Prentice-Hall and Marist College
    • A team of faculty from UNext
    • Bob Jensen, Trinity University
       

    Philadelphia on August 12, 2000
     CPE/CEP Workshop Number 1 --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

    Free audio and presentation files of the following speakers:
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

    • Charles Hickman, AACSB and Quisic (formerly University Access)
    • Michael T. Kirschenheiter, Columbia University
    • Anthony H. Catanach, Villanova University
    • Dan N. Stone, University of Illinois
    • Bob Jensen, Trinity University
       

    International Teacher Training and Lesson Sharing --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm#Training

    Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
    Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
    Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
    Open Sharing Courses --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Keep in mind that students often prefer online learning whereas teachers often burn out or become frustrated with the tremendous amount of work involved in the best online courses --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Workloads

    Also note the Dark Side of Education Technology and Online Learning --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

    Bob Jensen's personal advice would be to see how much of this course you can teach on video using Camtasia. Even if you don't use the Camtasia videos in each online class, those videos can be invaluable for students to study asynchronously --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Video


    "What Can We (live teachers) Add?" by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Financial Accounting Blog, July 22, 2010 ---
    http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-do-we-add.html

    Over the last few years, my wife and I have become big fans of the video classes produced by The Teaching Company. Two or three times per week, we will watch a 30 or 45-minute video lecture on art or literature or history or religion prepared by a college teacher. I am amazed by how much I now know about topics that once were totally foreign to me.

    In watching these videos, I am occasionally reminded of a question that comes up in colleges now and then: Do we need live instructors? Why don’t we find the very best college teachers and film their classes? Then, put those videos up on the Internet and everyone (or, at least, our students) can learn the material without the need of a classroom or a teacher.

    Well, the easy answer to that query is that a college education has to be more than the conveyance of information to a passive student taking notes. So, doesn’t that automatically raise the next question that we need to address as teachers: What are we adding in our classes that goes beyond the conveyance of information to a passive student? If the answer is nothing, then maybe we should all be replaced by videos.

    As you get ready for the fall semester, ponder how you are going to add value to your students. --“I’m going to tell them some interesting stories.” -- A video can tell them hundreds of interesting stories. --“I’m going to tell them about the history of my discipline.” -- A video can tell them about the history of your discipline. --“I’m going to walk them step-by-step through the essential core of the disciple.” - A video can walk students through the essential core of the discipline.

    Those are all important to a class but they could just as easily be done by a person on video. What are you going to do this coming semester in your classes that a video could not do?

    We live in a time when too many people believed that they could not be replaced until they were replaced. My assumption is that if you add real value to a process, you become essential. Otherwise, someone will eventually catch on that you can be replaced.

    There are many, many ways that teachers add value to the students in their classes. How will you do that in the coming fall? What will you do that couldn’t be replaced by a video?

    Jensen Comment
    Believe it or not, I think the most important thing we can add is to be live role models day-to-day for our students. We can be role models regarding what it means to be professionally competent (without necessarily awing them in every class). We can be role models for such other things in life as empathy, caring, ethics, human frailty, and yes even fashion.

    Fashion?
    Professors who show up in class wearing T-shirts, jeans, and open toe sandals really turn me off. Perhaps that's because I'm an old farm boy who, at one time, was awed by male professionals who wore white shirts and neckties to work. Our most scruffy professors will spiff up when applying for a job or make a speech at a local Rotary Club luncheon. What makes our students less important day-to-day?

    But the most important thing we add is to awe our students with both our professional competence combined with professional honesty in admitting things we cannot answer. Watching a talking head on television can be really educational, but having a live teacher fumble about out loud while trying to reason out a brilliant answer can be even more educational (even if it is more time consuming). Teachers demonstrate how real-world thinking takes us down blind alleys and stumbling blocks of dumb ideas. Students leave our courses with a better understanding of what a non-perfect world of reasoning is really like (as long as our stumbling really gets eventually us to the best answers).

    The latest exchange of AECM messaging regarding the question raised by Tom Selling about sales discounts provides a perfect example of great teachers stumbling about trying to find the best answer. If Carla had been the first to respond it would've been disappointing to the AECM learning process.

    What is sad in teaching, as illustrated  by many lurkers on the AECM, is the hesitancy of some teachers to be fearful of subjecting their incomplete or flawed reasoning to students and peers. The classic case is the teacher who delivers only canned lectures and cases in which he or she only delivers perfect reasoning that are much like prepared answers being read from a teleprompter. This can make students fearful that they can never be as smart as their teachers who always seem to know the best answers.

    I love teachers who have the confidence to even provide answers they know are wrong and then testing how students discover the errors and are willing to point them out. This, by the way, is part of the BAM pedagogy ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
    Probably the best teaching lies in asking the best questions without telling or even knowing the best answers.


    Question
    Why do colleges have to identify each of their online students without the same requirement imposed on onsite students?
    My daughter took chemistry in a class of 600 students. They never carded her for exams at the University of Texas?
    How can you tell if an onsite or online student has not outsourced taking an entire course with a fake ID? (see Comment 1 below)
    I know of an outsourcing case like this from years ago when I was an undergraduate student, because I got the initial offer to take the course for $500.
    Fake IDs are easy to fabricate today on a computer. Just change the name and student number on your own ID or change the picture and put the fake ID in laminated plastic.

    Online there's a simple way to authenticate honesty online. One way is to have a respected person sign an attestation form. In 19th Century England the Village Vicar signed off on submissions of correspondence course takers. There are also a lot of Sylvan Centers throughout the U.S. that will administer examinations.

    Is That Online Student Who He Says He Is?" by Sara Lipka, Chronicle of Higher Education,
    http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3455&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    To comply with the newly reauthorized Higher Education Act, colleges have to verify the identity of each of their online students. Several tools can help them do that, including the Securexam Remote Proctor, which scans fingerprints and captures a 360-degree view around students, and Kryterion’s Webassessor, which lets human proctors watch students on Web cameras and listen to their keystrokes.

    Now colleges have a new option to show the government that they’ll catch cheating in distance education. Acxiom Corporation and Moodlerooms announced this month that they have integrated the former’s identity-verification system, called FactCheck-X, into the latter’s free, open-source course-management system, known as Moodle.

    “The need to know that the student taking a test online is in fact the actual one enrolled in the class continues to be a concern for all distance-education programs,” Martin Knott, chief executive of Moodlerooms, said in a written statement.

    FactCheck-X, which authenticates many online-banking transactions, requires test takers to answer detailed, personal “challenge” questions. The information comes from a variety of databases, and the company uses it to ask for old addresses, for example, or previous employers.

    The new tool requires no hardware and operates within the Moodle environment. Colleges themselves control how frequently students are asked to verify their identities, Acxiom says, and because institutions don’t have to release information about students, the system fully complies with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

    Comments

    1. Where’s the concern about whether that student in the large course on campus is who he says he is? How many schools really card students before exams are given in those courses?

      — Steve Foerster    Nov 11, 05:52 PM   

    2. My sentiments exactly, Steve! I am surprised at the shift in thinking that somehow online students are more likely to cheat than those who appear for exams onsite!

      — Born to teach    Nov 11, 06:03 PM   

    3. I’ve been teaching online for five years, and I have found cheating to be much more prevalent in the online environment. Most institutions use proctors for high stakes testing, and student identification is presented. For purely online initiatives, however, it simply doesn’t make sense to ask these students to come to campus for assessments. No LMS currently addresses this legislation to my knowledge, so it is interesting to consider the options for compliance.

     

    Linebacker's Wife Says She Wrote His Papers (and took two online courses for him)
    The wife of a star University of South Florida linebacker says she wrote his academic papers and took two online classes for him. The accusations against Ben Moffitt, who had been promoted by the university to the news media as a family man, were made in e-mail messages to The Tampa Tribune, and followed Mr. Moffitt’s filing for divorce. Mr. Moffitt called the accusations “hearsay,” and a university spokesman said the matter was a “domestic issue.” If it is found that Mr. Moffitt committed academic fraud, the newspaper reported, the university could be subject to an NCAA investigation.
    "Linebacker's Wife Says She Wrote His Papers," Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog, January 5, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/news/article/3707/linebackers-wife-says-she-wrote-his-papers?at
    Jensen Comment
    If Florida investigates this and discovers it was true, I wonder if Moffitt's diploma will be revoked. Somehow I doubt it.

     

    Ideas for online testing and other types of assessment are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus
    Also see the helpers for assessment in general at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

    Special considerations for detection and prevention of online cheating ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnsiteVersusOnline
    Also see helpers for detection and prevention of cheating in general at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm
     


    Question
    What's the value of watching somebody send you an email message?

    Answer
    There may be some security and subtle communication advantages, but there's a huge cost-benefit consideration. Is it worth valuable bandwidth costs to transmit all that video of talking heads and hands? I certainly hope that most of us do not jump into this technology "head" (get it?) first.

    One huge possible benefits might be in distance education. If a student in sending back test answers via email, it could add a lot to the integrity of the testing process to watch the student over this new video and audio channel from Google.

    "Google juices up Gmail with video channel," MIT's Technology Review, November 11, 2008 ---
    http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/21665/?nlid=1507&a=f

    Google Inc. is introducing new tools that will convert its free e-mail service into a video and audio channel for people who want to see and hear each other while they communicate.

    Activating the features, introduced Tuesday, will require a free piece of software as well as a Webcam, which are becoming more commonplace as computer manufacturers embed video equipment into laptops.

    Once the additional software is installed, Gmail users will be given the option to see and hear each other without leaving the e-mail application.

    The video feature will work only if all the participants have Gmail accounts. It's supposed to be compatible with computers running the Windows operating system or Apple Inc.'s Mac computers.

    Google, the Internet's search leader, has been adding more bells and whistles to Gmail as part of its effort to gain ground on the longtime leaders in free e-mail, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

    Video chatting has long been available through the instant messaging services offered by Yahoo and Microsoft, but the feature isn't available in their free e-mail applications.

    Although Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has been making strides since it began welcoming all comers to Gmail early last year, it remains a distant third with nearly 113 million worldwide users through September -- a 34 percent increase from the previous year, according to comScore Inc.

    Microsoft's e-mail services boasted 283 million worldwide users, up 13 percent from the previous year, while Yahoo was a close second at 274 million, an 8 percent gain, comScore said.

    Ideas for online testing and other types of assessment are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus
    Also see the helpers for assessment in general at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

    Special considerations for detection and prevention of online cheating ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnsiteVersusOnline
    Also see helpers for detection and prevention of cheating in general at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm


    Where to look for online training and education --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

    October 10, 2008 message from Bruce Lubich [BLubich@UMUC.EDU]

    Hi Dexter,

    I'd like to suggest another alternative. Here at UMUC, we hire adjunct faculty to teach our online classes. Every new hire is required to pass a 5 week online training class which focuses on the pedagogy of online teaching. There is no charge for the class, and afterward you are okay to teach for us online. In your case, you would have gotten the education you are seeking, as well as being able to teach for us.

    If you want more information, go to http://umuc.edu/facultyrecruit/index.shtml 

    Bruce Lubich, PhD, CPA
    Program Director,
    Accounting Graduate School of Management and Technology
    University of Maryland University College

     

     

     

    Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
    Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
    Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
    Open Sharing Courses --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

     

     

    Distance Education.org or DistanceEducation.Org is a Great Helper Site
    Ben Pheiffer in San Antonio forwarded this link to a terrific listing (with pricing estimates) of online training and education degree programs and courses from respectable universities --- http://www.distance-education.org/Courses/
    Both graduate and undergraduate degree programs are listed as well as training courses (some free).

     

     

    Free online tutorials in various disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm/#Tutorials


    Bob Jensen's writing helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries

     

    Bob Jensen's links to free online mathematics and statistics tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics 

     

    Bob Jensen's links to online science tutorials are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Science%20and%20Medicine

     

     

    Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing courses and videos (free) --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

     

    Onsite and Online College Directory by State in the U.S. --- http://www.college-scholarships.com/index.html#collegestate
    Always investigate the credibility of any college you're interested in before assuming all college degrees are accepted for employment and further study.

    Also see http://www.onlinelearning101.com  

    Scholarship sources --- http://www.college-scholarships.com/free_scholarship_searches.htm
    Always look for gimmicks such as a scholarship to a questionable online college or university.

    Bob Jensen's threads on diploma mill frauds and the gray zones --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill

     


    A Serious New Commercial Advance for Online Training and Education

    "Opening Up Online Learning," by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, October 9, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/09/cartridge

    This has not exactly been a season of peace, love and harmony on the higher education technology landscape. A patent fight has broken out among major developers of course management systems. Academic publishers and university officials are warring over open access to federally sponsored research. And textbook makers are taking a pounding for — among other things — the ways in which digital enhancements are running up the prices of their products.

    In that context, many may be heartened by the announcement later today at the Educause meeting in Dallas that three dozen academic publishers, providers of learning management software, and others have agreed on a common, open standard that will make it possible to move digital content into and out of widely divergent online education systems without expensive and time consuming reengineering. The agreement by the diverse group of publishers and software companies, who compete intensely with one another, is being heralded as an important breakthrough that could expand the array of digital content available to professors and students and make it easier for colleges to switch among makers of learning systems.

    Of course, that’s only if the new standard, known as the “Common Cartridge,” becomes widely adopted, which is always the question with developments deemed to be potential technological advances.

    Many observers believe this one has promise, especially because so many of the key players have been involved in it. Working through the IMS Global Learning Consortium, leading publishers like Pearson Education and McGraw-Hill Education and course-management system makers such as Blackboard, ANGEL Learning and open-source Sakai have worked to develop the technical specifications for the common cartridge, and all of them have vowed to begin incorporating the new standard into their products by next spring — except Blackboard, which says it will do so eventually, but has not set a timeline for when.

    What exactly is the Common Cartridge? In lay terms, it is a set of specifications and standards, commonly agreed to by an IMS working group, that would allow digitally produced content — supplements to textbooks such as assessments or secondary readings, say, or faculty-produced course add-ons like discussion groups — to “play,” or appear, the same in any course management system, from proprietary ones like Blackboard/WebCT and Desire2Learn to open source systems like Moodle and Sakai.

    “It is essentially a common ‘container,’ so you can import it and load it and have it look similar when you get it inside” your local course system, says Ray Henderson, chief products officer at ANGEL, who helped conceive of the idea when he was president of the digital publishing unit at Pearson.

    The Common Cartridge approach is designed to deal with two major issues: (1) the significant cost and time that publishers now must spend (or others, if the costs are passed along) to produce the material they produce for multiple, differing learning management systems, and (2) the inability to move courses produced in one course platform to another, which makes it difficult for professors to move their courses from one college to another and for campuses to consider switching course management providers.

    The clearest and surest upside of the new standard, most observers agree, is that it could help lower publishers’ production costs and, in turn, allow them to focus their energies on producing more and better content. David O’Connor, senior vice president for product development at Pearson Education’s core technology group, says his company and other major publishers spend “many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year effectively moving content around” so that ancillary material for textbooks can work in multiple course management systems.

    Because Blackboard and Web CT together own in the neighborhood of 75 percent of the course management market, Pearson and other publishers produce virtually all of their materials to work in those proprietary systems. Materials are typically produced on demand for smaller players like ANGEL, Desire2Learn and Sakai, and it is even harder to find usable materials for colleges’ homemade systems. While big publishers such as Pearson and McGraw-Hill have sizable media groups that can, when they choose to, spend what’s necessary to modify digital content for selected textbooks, “small publishers often have to say no,” O’Connor says. As a result, “there are just fewer options for people who aren’t using Blackboard and WebCT, and more hurdles to getting it.”

    Supporters hope that adoption of the common cartridge will allow publishers to spend less time and money adapting one textbook’s digital content for multiple course platforms and more time producing more and better content. “This should have the result of broadening choice in content to institutions,” says Catherine Burdt, an analyst at Eduventures, an education research firm. “Colleges would no longer be limited to the content that’s supported by their LMS platform, but could now go out and choose the best content that aligns with what’s happening in their curriculum.”

    Less clear is how successful the effort will be at improving the portability of course materials from one learning management system to another. If all the major providers introduce “export capability,” there is significant promise, says Michael Feldstein, who writes the blog e-Literate and is assistant director of the State University of New York Learning Network. “This has the potential to be one of the most important standards to come out in a while, particularly for faculty,” says Feldstein, who notes that his comments here represent his own views, not SUNY’s. “It would become much easier for them to take rich course content and course designs and migrate them from one system to another with far less pain.”

    But while easier transferability would obviously benefit the smaller players in the course management market — and ANGEL and Sakai plan to announce today that their systems will soon allow professors to create Common Cartridges for export out of their systems — such a system would only take off if the dominant player in the market, the combined Blackboard/WebCT, eventually does the same. “I’m not sure how excited Blackboard would be about making it easier for faculty to migrate out of their product and into one of their competitors,” says Feldstein.

    Chris Vento, senior vice president of technology and product development at Blackboard, was a leading proponent of the IMS Common Cartridge concept when he was a leading official at WebCT before last year’s merger. In an interview, he acknowledged the question lots of others are asking: “What’s in it for Blackboard? Why wouldn’t you just lock up the format and force everybody to use it?” His answer, he says, is that by helping the entire industry, he says, the project cannot help but benefit its biggest player, too.

    “This will enable publishers to really do the best job of producing their content, making it richer and better for students and faculty, and more lucrative for publishers from the business perspective,” says Vento. “Anything we can do to enable that content to be built, and more of it and better quality, the more lucrative it is eventually for us.”

    Blackboard is fully behind the project, Vento says. Having endorsed the Common Cartridge charter, Blackboard has also committed to incorporating the new standard into its products, and that Blackboard intends to make export of course materials possible out of its platform. “Exactly how that maps to our product roadmap has not been finalized,” he said, “but in the end, we’re all going to have to do this. It’s just a question of when.” There will, he says, “be a lot of pressures to do this.”

    That pressure is likely to be intensified because of the public relations pounding Blackboard has taken among many in the academic technology world because of its attempt to patent technology that many people believe is fundamental to e-learning systems. O’Connor of Pearson says he believes Blackboard could benefit from its involvement in the Common Cartridge movement by being seen “as the dominant player, to be someone supporting openness in the community.” He adds: “There is an opportunity for them to mend some of the damage from the patent issue.”

    Like virtually all technological advances — or would-be ones — Common Cartridge’s success will ultimately rise and fall, says Burdt of Eduventures, on whether Blackboard and others embrace it. “Everything comes down to adoption,” she says. “The challenge with every standard is the adoption model. Some are out the door too early. Some evolve too early and are eclipsed by substitutes. For others, suppliers decide not to support it for various reasons.”

    Those behind the Common Cartridge believe it’s off to a good start with the large number of disparate parties not only involved in creating it, but already committing to incorporate it into their offerings.

    Yet even as they launch this standard, some of them are already looking ahead to the next challenge. While the Common Cartridge, if widely adopted, will allow for easier movement of digital course materials into and out of course management systems, it does not ensure that users will be able to do the same thing with third-party e-learning tools (like subject-specific tutoring modules) that are not part of course management systems, or with the next generation of tools that may emerge down the road. For that, the same parties would have to reach a similar agreement on a standard for “tool interoperability,” which is next on the IMS agenda.

    “This is only one step,” Pearson’s O’Connor says of the Common Cartridge. But it is, he says, an important one.

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology and distance education are linked at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    April 30, 2004 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu

    "How do instructors learn to teach online? What are their perceptions as they enter this new learning environment for the first time?" To find out, Dianne Conrad, assistant professor of adult education at the University of New Brunswick, interviewed five instructors in a Canadian university who were teaching online courses for the first time. Her interviews showed that the instructors drew upon their fact-to-face teaching experience, but that they "revealed very little awareness of issues of collaborative learning, of learners' social presence, or of the role of community in online learning environments." The details of Conrad's qualitative study are available in "University Instructors' Reflections on Their First Online Teaching Experiences" (JOURNAL OF ASYNCHRONOUS LEARNING NETWORKS, vol. 8, issue 2, April 2004) at http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v8n2/v8n2_conrad.asp.

    The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN) [ISSN 1092-8235] is an electronic publication of The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C). Current and back issues are available at http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/.

    For an account of online teaching from a veteran instructor, see "Less is More: Designing an Online Course" (DEOSNEWS, vol. 13, issue 4, April 2004; http://www.ed.psu.edu/acsde/deos/deosnews/deosnews.asp) by R. Thomas Berner, professor emeritus of journalism and American studies at the Pennsylvania State University.

    YourLearning.com --- http://www.yourlearning.com/churchillreport.html 

    The report may be beneficial for individuals who are involved in online learning developments in healthcare education in the USA and other countries. The institutions visited during the fellowship may find it useful to read own and others case studies, to compare and reflect on the developments and implications on teaching and learning in healthcare. The report may be useful for other institutions in the USA, to add to the picture of diversity in online learning developments within USA. .

    Bob Jensen's threads on resources for instructors are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources 

    Bob Jensen's main education technology page is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 


    June 23, 2005 message from Richard Campbell

    I thought the following multimedia presentation may be of interest to many on the list - The presentation itself was created using Articulate's Presenter.

    http://www.presenternet.com/robingood/player.html?slide=1 

    Richard J. Campbell mailto:campbell@rio.edu 


    April 1, 2005 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

    COMPUTERS IN THE CLASSROOM AND OPEN BOOK EXAMS

    In "PCs in the Classroom & Open Book Exams" (UBIQUITY, vol. 6, issue 9, March 15-22, 2005), Evan Golub asks and supplies some answers to questions regarding open-book/open-note exams. When classroom computer use is allowed and encouraged, how can instructors secure the open-book exam environment? How can cheating be minimized when students are allowed Internet access during open-book exams? Golub's suggested solutions are available online at
    http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v6i9_golub.html

    Ubiquity is a free, Web-based publication of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), "dedicated to fostering critical analysis and in-depth commentary on issues relating to the nature, constitution, structure, science, engineering, technology, practices, and paradigms of the IT profession." For more information, contact: Ubiquity, email: ubiquity@acm.org ; Web: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/ 

    For more information on the ACM, contact: ACM, One Astor Plaza, 1515 Broadway, New York, NY 10036, USA; tel: 800-342-6626 or 212-626-0500; Web: http://www.acm.org/


    NEW EDUCAUSE E-BOOK ON THE NET GENERATION

    EDUCATING THE NET GENERATION, a new EDUCAUSE e-book of essays edited by Diana G. Oblinger and James L. Oblinger, "explores the Net Gen and the implications for institutions in areas such as teaching, service, learning space design, faculty development, and curriculum." Essays include: "Technology and Learning Expectations of the Net Generation;" "Using Technology as a Learning Tool, Not Just the Cool New Thing;" "Curricula Designed to Meet 21st-Century Expectations;" "Faculty Development for the Net Generation;" and "Net Generation Students and Libraries." The entire book is available online at no cost at http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen/ .

    EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. For more information, contact: Educause, 4772 Walnut Street, Suite 206, Boulder, CO 80301-2538 USA; tel: 303-449-4430; fax: 303-440-0461; email: info@educause.edu;  Web: http://www.educause.edu/

    See also:

    GROWING UP DIGITAL: THE RISE OF THE NET GENERATION by Don Tapscott McGraw-Hill, 1999; ISBN: 0-07-063361-4 http://www.growingupdigital.com/


    EFFECTIVE E-LEARNING DESIGN

    "The unpredictability of the student context and the mediated relationship with the student require careful attention by the educational designer to details which might otherwise be managed by the teacher at the time of instruction." In "Elements of Effective e-Learning Design" (INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF RESEARCH IN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING, March 2005) Andrew R. Brown and Bradley D. Voltz cover six elements of effective design that can help create effective e-learning delivery. Drawing upon examples from The Le@rning Federation, an initiative of state and federal governments of Australia and New Zealand, they discuss lesson planning, instructional design, creative writing, and software specification. The paper is available online at http://www.irrodl.org/content/v6.1/brown_voltz.html 

    International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) [ISSN 1492-3831] is a free, refereed ejournal published by Athabasca University - Canada's Open University. For more information, contact Paula Smith, IRRODL Managing Editor; tel: 780-675-6810; fax: 780-675-672; email: irrodl@athabascau.ca ; Web: http://www.irrodl.org/

    The Le@rning Federation (TLF) is an "initiative designed to create online curriculum materials and the necessary infrastructure to ensure that teachers and students in Australia and New Zealand can use these materials to widen and enhance their learning experiences in the classroom." For more information, see http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/


    RECOMMENDED READING

    "Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to carolyn_kotlas@unc.ed u for possible inclusion in this column.

    Author Clark Aldrich recommends his new book:

    LEARNING BY DOING: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO SIMULATIONS, COMPUTER GAMES, AND PEDAGOGY IN E-LEARNING AND OTHER EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES Wiley, April 2005 ISBN: 0-7879-7735-7 hardcover $60.00 (US)

    Description from Wiley website:

    "Designed for learning professionals and drawing on both game creators and instructional designers, Learning by Doing explains how to select, research, build, sell, deploy, and measure the right type of educational simulation for the right situation. It covers simple approaches that use basic or no technology through projects on the scale of computer games and flight simulators. The book role models content as well, written accessibly with humor, precision, interactivity, and lots of pictures. Many will also find it a useful tool to improve communication between themselves and their customers, employees, sponsors, and colleagues."

    The table of contents and some excerpts are available at http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787977357.html

    Aldrich is also author of SIMULATIONS AND THE FUTURE OF LEARNING: AN INNOVATIVE (AND PERHAPS REVOLUTIONARY) APPROACH TO E-LEARNING. See http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787969621.html  for more information or to request an evaluation copy of this title.

    Bob Jensen's documents on education technology are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    Distance Education via Centra Symposium --- http://www.centra.com/products/symposium/index.asp 

    Centra provides the most widely used solution today for the delivery of online training across the enterprise. Centra 7 enables you to bring employees, partners, and customers from around the world together online in highly interactive virtual classes while greatly reducing the travel, time, and expense of on-site training programs.

    Solutions for the Entire Training Process
    More than just an online session, Centra 7 is a complete virtual class solution that addresses the entire process of creating and managing your entire training program - before, during, and after the "live" session. Centra 7 for Virtual Classes integrates seamlessly into the workday and supports or improves existing business processes. And Centra 7 provides seamless integration with virtually all of today's leading Learning Management Systems (LMS).


    October 7, 2003 Messages from Jim Borden and David Fordham

    Just wanted to give a second endorsement of Centra Symposium.

    I actually got to experience this interface from the student perspective a couple of years ago when I took an online course through Wharton, and was quite impressed with its set of features and its ease of use.

    Jim Borden
    Villanova University

    ----- Original Message -----

    From: "David R. Fordham" <fordhadr@JMU.EDU>
    Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 9:06 AM
    Subject: Web-Based Course Structure

    I teach an Information Security course in our MBA program. And if you read to the bottom of this treatise, you will find that I'm a believer in peer review of the courses, but not necessarily what most people consider peer review!

    We use a combination of on-line teaching techniques, based on the appropriateness of the material matching to individual learning technique.

    For instance, there is a lot of vocabulary, jargon, and other simplistic knowledge to be "delivered". For this, we use Tegrity WebLearner, to record a "talking head" lecture where most of the content is on PowerPoint slides, interspersed with screen captures, document camera shots, slides, tables, etc. Some of these we put on a CD which is distributed to the student at the beginning of the course. Others we put on a server to be downloaded and viewed asynchronously. Tegrity is so simple to use, I end up recording a half-dozen "lectures" on spur of the moment (current events) topics during the semester and delivering via the server. Tegrity automatically makes three copies of each recording: 1 for broadband delivery or CD copies, 1 for dialup, and one without the animated talking head to deliver high quality audio over dialup lines.

    For case work, we use Centra Symposium. This is a synchronous "online meeting room". We have a "classroom" for every week's class meeting, and we also have "breakout rooms" where student groups can meet at their own convenience. Centra offers amazing (astounding!) real-time audio conferencing, and provides for synchronized PowerPoint slides, white board for drawing, text chat box, simple signaling (hand raising, answers yes or no, laughing icons, applause icons, etc.) all synchronized with the live audio. The sessions (including the group breakout sessions) can be recorded (including both audio and visual components) for later playback by those students who for some reason miss the class meeting. The best thing about Centra is that it works (it really does!) over DIALUP lines!

    Additionally, we make use of Blackboard/WebCT, mainly for archiving and storage of PDF documents ("handouts", reference materials, etc.), digital drop boxes for submission of assignments, and on-line gradebooks for students to check their grades privately. Blackboard also greatly simplifies sending emails to individuals and groups within the class roster, and provides a one-stop access point for class announcements, assignments, web link libraries, etc.

    Regarding peer review, our on-line MBA program has two faculty meetings per semester where we go over what the professors are covering in their classes, each meeting is devoted to two or three professors presenting their class outline, and getting feedback from the others on how to better tie their courses together. We have professorial breakout sessions, where three or four of us will collaborate on developing a "Case", a vignette, which will carry through a three or four course sequence, giving the students some continuity across classes. We review each other's assignments and projects and offer commentary, and then use what we learn to make our own course material relevant to the others'. It is this "collaborative" improvement of individual courses which has greatly improved our program. We have experimented with collaborative teaching (two professors teaching their two courses together, as one supercourse), and while some synergies have been noted, the effect is not as dramatic as the effect from our knowing what the other courses are covering and how they are covering it.

    I personally recommend this approach. We get together for half a day, spending an hour for one professor to give a thumbnail of his/her course, including assignments, another hour for another professor, followed by an hour of discussion and comment, critique, and group collaboration/brainstorming. We discuss everything from learning objectives of individual classes to the mission of the program to the grading of individual student exercises. To me, this is peer review at its finest.

    David R. Fordham
    PBGH Faculty Fellow
    James Madison University


    October 14, 2003 message from Weterman [weterman@IHUG.CO.NZ

    There is also a facility called 'webex' http://www.webex.com/  which allows online demos to be linked to telephone. Probably also a bit expensive for the average educational institution.

    I reside in New Zealand and was involved on telephone conversations (I am blessed with two phone lines) while being offered powerpoint and software demos on the internet. The interesting element from my part is that the software linked the phone messages so that when I spoke a dot appeared by my name on the internet connection (sorry, but I never cease to be amazed by the technology), and it is always nice to be recognized as an individual in one of these things.

    Les Porter led the session (demonstrating Great Plains) and there were participants from throughout the US and me - no technical hitches as far as I can make out. Thankfully it worked out to be 10 in the morning here so it wasn't a problem.

    Weterman Family 
    54 Clydesdale Avenue 
    Howick Auckland 1705 09 537 3991


    "Practical Strategies for Teaching Computer-Mediated Classes" by Brent Muirhead focuses on "strategies and principles that will help online teachers to be creative and effective teachers." The paper is available at http://www.usdla.org/ED_magazine/illuminactive/MAY01_Issue/article02.html 


    147 PRACTICAL TIPS FOR TEACHING ONLINE GROUPS: ESSENTIALS OF WEB-BASED EDUCATION, by Donald E. Hanna, Michelle Glowacki-Dudka, and Simone Conceicao-Runlee [Overland Park, KS: Atwood Publishing, 2000, ISBN: 189185934X]

    Chapter 4: Beginning Instruction in the Online Course: Implementing the Course Design

    108. Create a space for learning
    109. Design strategies for assessing learners' characteristics and building learners' self-knowledge
    110. Design strategies to introduce learners to each other
    111. Use effective teaching strategies
    112. Gain agreement with the learners about rules, norms, and procedures for discussion -- and do so from the start
    113. Use a free flowing and interactive content and structure
    114. Develop team-building activities
    115. Share biographical information or stories
    116. Share course assignments
    117. Create a social space
    118. Involve learners in team projects
    119. Develop asynchronous group discussions
    120. Develop challenging problems
    121. Promote critical thinking
    122. Encourage students to evaluate information
    123. Encourage students to analyze information
    124. Encourage students to connect information
    125. Promote self-regulating learning
    126. Build collaborative skills
    127. Create a loose framework for exploring topics
    128. Create opportunities for learners to teach and to facilitate discussions
    129. Add games and fun activities into the learning mix
    130. Use existing software applications creatively
    131. Use case studies
    132. Use simulations as opportunities for learning by doing

    See http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/08/circuits/articles/10prof.html 

    133. Use external communities, people, and resources to build content knowledge
    134. Create opportunities for reflection on the course, technology, content, and process
    135. Help your learners manage information
    136. Encourage substantive feedback from learners -- including yourself
    137. Motivate your learners to participate
    138. Give learners roles during discussions
    139. Make students facilitators
    140. Make students process observers
    141. Make students information net workers/summarizers
    142. Consider online office hours
    143. Take advantage of opportunities for continuous learning
    144. Read all you can about online learning
    145. Understand that you're not the only one who feels overwhelmed once in a while
    146. Know that sometime, someday you'll struggle with the technology
    147. Enjoy yourself!

    Postscript: Some Final Words

     

    Ed Scribner reminded us about this article written about a decade ago.
    "Using Internet Know-How to Plan How Students Will Know,"  by Judi Harris, May 1993 in "Mining the Internet" column, The Computing Teacher, May 1993 --- http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/mining/May93-TCT.html 

    Recently, I've sorted through my many files of Internet-based activity ideas, and have found that they can be classified into 15 structural categories. I will present the categories here, with sample project descriptions for each. I do this hoping that reading about these activity types will help you to plan effective telecomputing explorations for your students that are fully integrated into their curricularly-based courses of study.

    Bob Jensen's threads on examination technologies and assessment are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Examinations


    I must be psychic, because I've been saying this all along --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm
    So has Amy Dunbar --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/Dunbar2002.htm

    "The Medium is Not the Message,"  by Jonathan Kaplan, Inside Higher Ed, August 11, 2009 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/08/11/kaplan 

    A few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education released a report that looked at 12 years' worth of education studies, and found that online learning has clear advantages over face-to-face instruction.

    The study, "An Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies," stated that “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”

    Except for one article,
    on this Web site, you probably didn’t hear about it -- and neither did anyone else.

    But imagine for a moment that the report came to the opposite conclusion. I’m sure that if the U.S. Department of Education had published a report showing that students in online learning environments performed worse, there would have been a major outcry in higher education with calls to shut down distance-learning programs and close virtual campuses.

    I believe the reason that the recent study elicited so little commentary is due to the fact that it flies in the face of the biases held by some across the higher education landscape. Yet this study confirms what those of us working in distance education have witnessed for years: Good teaching helps students achieve, and good teaching comes in many forms.

    We know that online learning requires devout attention on the part of both the professor and the student -- and a collaboration between the two -- in a different way from that of a face-to-face classroom. These critical aspects of online education are worth particular mention:

    At Walden University, where I am president, we have been holding ourselves accountable for years, as have many other online universities, regarding assessment. All universities must ensure that students are meeting program outcomes and learning what they need for their jobs. To that end, universities should be better able to demonstrate -- quantitatively and qualitatively -- the employability and success of their students and graduates.

    Recently, we examined the successes of Walden graduates who are teachers in the Tacoma, Wash., public school system, and found that students in Walden teachers’ classes tested with higher literacy rates than did students taught by teachers who earned their master’s from other universities. There could be many reasons for this, but, especially in light of the U.S. Department of Education study, it seems that online learning has contributed meaningfully to their becoming better teachers.

    In higher education, there is still too much debate about how we are delivering content: Is it online education, face-to-face teaching, or hybrid instruction? It’s time for us to stop categorizing higher education by the medium of delivery and start focusing on its impact and outcomes.

    Recently, President Obama remarked, “I think there’s a possibility that online education can provide, especially for people who are already in the workforce and want to retrain, the chance to upgrade their skills without having to quit their job.” As the U.S. Department of Education study concluded, online education can do that and much more.

    But Kaplan above ignores some of the dark side aspects of distance education and education technology in general --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
    The biggest hurdle, in my opinion, is that if distance education is done correctly with intensive online communications, instructors soon become burned out. In an effort to avoid burn out, much of the learning effectiveness is lost. Hence the distance education paradox.

    Kaplan also ignores some of the strong empirical support for online learning, especially the enlightening SCALE experiments at the University of Illinois --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois

    August 11, 2009 reply from Steve Markoff [smarkoff@KIMSTARR.ORG]

    Bob:

    I've always believed that the role of the teacher is one of FACILITATOR.  My role in the classroom is making it EASIER for information to move from one place to another - from point A to point B.  This could be from textbook to student, it could be from the outside world to the student, from another student to the student, from the student him or herself to that same student AND from teacher to student (me to them).  In defining the word 'teaching', I think many people overemphasize the last transition that I mentioned, thinking that the primary movement of information is from them(the teacher) to the students.  In fact, it constitutes a minority of total facilitated information flow in a college classroom.  I think this misunderstanding leads many to underestimate the value of other sources in the education process other than themselves.  Online content is just one of many alternative sources. 

    Unfortunately, online formats do allow certain professors to hide behind the electronic cloak and politely excuse themselves from the equation, which greatly hurts the student.  Also, online formats can be fertile ground for professors who lack not only the desire to 'teach' but the ability and thus become mere administrators versus teachers.

    steve

    Hi John and Pat and Others,

    I would not say that out loud to Amy Dunbar or Denny Beresford that they’re easy graders ---
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm

    I would not say that out loud to the graduates of two principles of accounting weed out courses year after year at Brigham Young University where classes meet on relatively rare occasion for inspiration about accountancy but not technical learning --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

    Try to tell the graduates of Stanford University’s ADEPT Masters of Electrical Engineering program that they had an easier time of it because the entire program was online.

    There’s an interesting article entitled how researchers misconstrue causality:

    Like elaborately plumed birds … we preen and strut and display our t-values.” That was Edward Leamer’s uncharitable description of his profession in 1983.

    “Cause and Effect:  Instrumental variable help to isolate causal relationships, but they can be taken too far,” The Economist, August 15-21, 20098 Page 68.

    It is often the case that distance education courses are taught by non-tenured instructors, and non-tenured instructors may be easier with respect to grading than tenured faculty because they are even more in need of strong teaching evaluations --- so as to not lose their jobs. The problem may have nothing whatsoever to do with online versus onsite education --- ergo misconstrued causality.

    I think it’s very rewarding to look at grading in formal studies using the same full-time faculty teaching sections of online versus onsite students. By formal study, I mean using the same instructors, the same materials, and essentially the same examinations. The major five-year, multimillion dollar study that first caught my eye was the SCALE experiments on the campus of the University of Illinois where 30 courses from various disciplines were examined over a five year experiment.

    Yes the SCALE experiments showed that some students got higher grades online, notably B students who became A students and C students who became A students. The online pedagogy tended to have no effect on D and F students --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois

    Listen to Dan Stone’s audio about the SCALE Experiments --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

    But keep in mind that in the SCALE experiments, the same instructor of a course was grading both the online and onsite sections of the same course. The reason was not likely to be that online sections were easier. The SCALE experiments collected a lot of data pointing to more intense communications with instructors and more efficient use of student’s time that is often wasted in going to classes.

    The students in the experiment were full time on campus students, such that the confounding problems of having adult part-time students was not a factor in the SCALE experiments of online, asynchronous learning.

     

    A Statement About Why the SCALE Experiments Were Funded
    ALN = Asynchronous Learning
    We are particularly interested in new outcomes that may be possible through ALN. Asynchronous computer networks have the potential to improve contact with faculty, perhaps making self-paced learning a realizable goal for some off- and on-campus students. For example, a motivated student could progress more rapidly toward a degree. Students who are motivated but find they cannot keep up the pace, may be able to slow down and take longer to complete a degree, and not just drop out in frustration. So we are interested in what impact ALN will have on outcomes such as time-to-degree and student retention. There are many opportunities where ALN may contribute to another outcome: lowering the cost of education, e.g., by naturally introducing new values for old measures such as student-faculty ratios. A different kind of outcome for learners who are juggling work and family responsibilities, would be to be able to earn a degree or certification at home. This latter is a special focus for us.

    Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Program in
    Learning Outside the Classroom at 
    http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/
     

    Another study that I love to point to was funded by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Read about when one of the Chronicle’s senior editors took a Governmental Accounting Course at the University of Phoenix during which the instructor of the course had not idea that Goldie Blumenstyk was assessing how difficult or how easy the course was for students in general. I think Goldie’s audio report of her experience is still available from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Goldie came away from the course exhausted.

    The Chronicle's Goldie Blumenstyk has covered distance education for more than a decade, and during that time she's written stories about the economics of for-profit education, the ways that online institutions market themselves, and the demise of the 50-percent rule. About the only thing she hadn't done, it seemed, was to take a course from an online university. But this spring she finally took the plunge, and now she has completed a class in government and nonprofit accounting through the University of Phoenix. She shares tales from the cy ber-classroom -- and her final grade -- in a podcast with Paul Fain, a Chronicle reporter.
    Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11, 2008 (Audio) --- http://chronicle.com/media/audio/v54/i40/cyber_classroom/

    ·         All course materials (including textbooks) online; No additional textbooks to purchase

    ·         $1,600 fee for the course and materials

    ·         Woman instructor with respectable academic credentials and experience in course content

    ·         Instructor had good communications with students and between students

    ·         Total of 14 quite dedicated online students in course, most of whom were mature with full-time day jobs

    ·         30% of grade from team projects

    ·         Many unassigned online helper tutorials that were not fully utilized by Goldie

    ·         Goldie earned a 92 (A-)

    ·         She gave a positive evaluation to the course and would gladly take other courses if she had the time

    ·         She considered the course to have a heavy workload

     

    "U. of Phoenix Reports on Its Students' Academic Achievement," by Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 5, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/06/3115n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

     

    The 2006 National Survey of Student Engagement, released November 13, 2006, for the first time offers a close look at distance education, offering provocative new data suggesting that e-learners report higher levels of engagement, satisfaction and academic challenge than their on-campus peers --- http://nsse.iub.edu/NSSE_2006_Annual_Report/index.cfm

    "The Engaged E-Learner," by Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, November 13, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/13/nsse

     


    Cognitive Processes and Artificial Intelligence

    Artificial Intelligence --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence

    Future of Artificial Intenlligence --- http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Future/Artificial_Intelligence

    Why Artificial Intelligence May be Near (slow loading) --- http://www.robotbooks.com/artificial-intelligence-future.htm

    Predicting AI's Future --- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2001/artificial_intelligence/1555742.stm

    "A.I. Gone Awry The Futile Quest for Artificial Intelligence," by Peter Kassan, Skeptic, June 2010 ---
    http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v12n02_AI_gone_awry.html 
    Thanks to Roger Collins for the Heads Up

    On March 24, 2005, an announcement was made in newspapers across the country, from the New York Times1 to the San Francisco Chronicle,2 that a company3 had been founded to apply neuroscience research to achieve human-level artificial intelligence. The reason the press release was so widely picked up is that the man behind it was Jeff Hawkins, the brilliant inventor of the PalmPilot, an invention that made him both wealthy and respected.4

    You’d think from the news reports that the idea of approaching the pursuit of artificial human-level intelligence by modeling the brain was a novel one. Actually, a Web search for “computational neuroscience” finds over a hundred thousand webpages and several major research centers.5 At least two journals are devoted to the subject.6 Over 6,000 papers are available online. Amazon lists more than 50 books about it. A Web search for “human brain project” finds more than eighteen thousand matches.7 Many researchers think of modeling the human brain or creating a “virtual” brain a feasible project, even if a “grand challenge.”8 In other words, the idea isn’t a new one.

    Hawkins’ approach sounds simple. Create a machine with artificial “senses” and then allow it to learn, build a model of its world, see analogies, make predictions, solve problems, and give us their solutions.9 This sounds eerily similar to what Alan Turing10 suggested in 1948. He, too, proposed to create an artificial “man” equipped with senses and an artificial brain that could “roam the countryside,” like Frankenstein’s monster, and learn whatever it needed to survive.11

    The fact is, we have no unifying theory of neuroscience. We don’t know what to build, much less how to build it.12 As one observer put it, neuroscience appears to be making “antiprogress” — the more information we acquire, the less we seem to know.13 Thirty years ago, the estimated number of neurons was between three and ten billion. Nowadays, the estimate is 100 billion. Thirty years ago it was assumed that the brain’s glial cells, which outnumber neurons by nine times, were purely structural and had no other function. In 2004, it was reported that this wasn’t true.14

    Even the most ardent artificial intelligence (A.I.) advocates admit that, so far at least, the quest for human-level intelligence has been a total failure.15 Despite its checkered history, however, Hawkins concludes A.I. will happen: “Yes, we can build intelligent machines.”16

    A Brief History of A.I.

    Duplicating or mimicking human-level intelligence is an old notion — perhaps as old as humanity itself. In the 19th century, as Charles Babbage conceived of ways to mechanize calculation, people started thinking it was possible — or arguing that it wasn’t. Toward the middle of the 20th century, as mathematical geniuses Claude Shannon,17 Norbert Wiener,18 John von Neumann,19 Alan Turing, and others laid the foundations of the theory of computing, the necessary tool seemed available.

    In 1955, a research project on artificial intelligence was proposed; a conference the following summer is considered the official inauguration of the field. The proposal20 is fascinating for its assertions, assumptions, hubris, and naďveté, all of which have characterized the field of A.I. ever since. The authors proposed that ten people could make significant progress in the field in two months. That ten-person, two-month project is still going strong — 50 years later. And it’s involved the efforts of more like tens of thousands of people.

    A.I. has splintered into three largely independent and mutually contradictory areas (connectionism, computationalism, and robotics), each of which has its own subdivisions and contradictions. Much of the activity in each of the areas has little to do with the original goals of mechanizing (or computerizing) human-level intelligence. However, in pursuit of that original goal, each of the three has its own set of problems, in addition to the many that they share.

    1. Connectionism

    Connectionism is the modern version of a philosophy of mind known as associationism.21 Connectionism has applications to psychology and cognitive science, as well as underlying the schools of A.I.22 that include both artificial neural networks23 (ubiquitously said to be “inspired by” the nervous system) and the attempt to model the brain.

    The latest estimates are that the human brain contains about 30 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex — the part of the brain associated with consciousness and intelligence. The 30 billion neurons of the cerebral cortex contain about a thousand trillion synapses (connections between neurons).24

    Without a detailed model of how synapses work on a neurochemical level, there’s no hope of modeling how the brain works.25 Unlike the idealized and simplified connections in so-called artificial neural networks, those synapses are extremely variable in nature — they can have different cycle times, they can use different neurotransmitters, and so on. How much data must be gathered about each synapse? Somewhere between kilobytes (tens of thousands of numbers) and megabytes (millions of numbers).26 And since the cycle time of synapses can be more than a thousand cycles per second, we may have to process those numbers a thousand times each second.

    Have we succeeded in modeling the brain of any animal, no matter how simple? The nervous system of a nematode (worm) known as C. (Caenorhabditis) elegans has been studied extensively for about 40 years. Several websites27 and probably thousands of scientists are devoted exclusively or primarily to it. Although C. elegans is a very simple organism, it may be the most complicated creature to have its nervous system fully mapped. C. elegans has just over three hundred neurons, and they’ve been studied exhaustively. But mapping is not the same as modeling. No one has created a computer model of this nervous system — and the number of neurons in the human cortex alone is 100 million times larger. C. elegans has about seven thousand synapses.28 The number of synapses in the human cortex alone is over 100 billion times larger.

    The proposals to achieve human-level artificial intelligence by modeling the human brain fail to acknowledge the lack of any realistic computer model of a synapse, the lack of any realistic model of a neuron, the lack of any model of how glial cells interact with neurons, and the literally astronomical scale of what is to be simulated.

    The typical artificial neural network consists of no more than 64 input “neurons,” approximately the same number of “hidden neurons,” and a number of output “neurons” between one and 256.29 This, despite a 1988 prediction by one computer guru that by now the world should be filled with “neuroprocessors” containing about 100 million artificial neurons.30

    Even if every neuron in each layer of a three- layer artificial neural net with 64 neurons in each layer is connected to every neuron in the succeeding layer, and if all the neurons in the output layer are connected to each other (to allow creation of a “winner-takes-all” arrangement permitting only a single output neuron to fire), the total number of “synapses” can be no more than about 17 million, although most artificial neural networks typically contain much, much less — usually no more than a hundred or so.

    Furthermore, artificial neurons resemble generalized Boolean logic gates more than actual neurons. Each neuron can be described by a single number — its “threshold.” Each synapse can be described by a single number — the strength of the connection — rather than the estimated minimum of ten thousand numbers required for a real synapse. Thus, the human cortex is at least 600 billion times more complicated than any artificial neural network yet devised.

    It is impossible to say how many lines of code the model of the brain would require; conceivably, the program itself might be relatively simple, with all the complexity in the data for each neuron and each synapse. But the distinction between the program and the data is unimportant. If each synapse were handled by the equivalent of only a single line of code, the program to simulate the cerebral cortex would be roughly 25 million times larger than what’s probably the largest software product ever written, Microsoft Windows, said to be about 40 million lines of code.31 As a software project grows in size, the probability of failure increases.32 The probability of successfully completing a project 25 million times more complex than Windows is effectively zero.

    Moore’s “Law” is often invoked at this stage in the A.I. argument.33 But Moore’s Law is more of an observation than a law, and it is often misconstrued to mean that about every 18 months computers and everything associated with them double in capacity, speed, and so on. But Moore’s Law won’t solve the complexity problem at all. There’s another “law,” this one attributed to Nicklaus Wirth: Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.34 Even though, according to Moore’s Law, your personal computer should be about a hundred thousand times more powerful than it was 25 years ago, your word processor isn’t. Moore’s Law doesn’t apply to software.

    And perhaps last, there is the problem of testing. The minimum number of software errors observed has been about 2.5 errors per function point.35 A software program large enough to simulate the human brain would contain about 20 trillion errors.

    Testing conventional software (such as a word processor or Windows) involves, among many other things, confirming that its behavior matches detailed specifications of what it is intended to do in the case of every possible input. If it doesn’t, the software is examined and fixed. Connectionistic software comes with no such specifications — only the vague description that it is to “learn” a “pattern” or act “like” a natural system, such as the brain. Even if one discovers that a connectionistic software program isn’t acting the way you want it do, there’s no way to “fix” it, because the behavior of the program is the result of an untraceable and unpredictable network of interconnections.

    Testing connectionistic software is also impossible due to what’s known as the combinatorial explosion. The retina (of a single eye) contains about 120 million rods and 7 million cones.36 Even if each of those 127 million neurons were merely binary, like the beloved 8x8 input grid of the typical artificial neural network (that is, either responded or didn’t respond to light), the number of different possible combinations of input is a number greater than 1 followed by 38,230,809 zeroes. (The number of particles in the universe has been estimated to be about 1 followed by only 80 zeroes.37) Testing an artificial neural network with input consisting of an 8x8 binary grid is, by comparison, a small job: such a grid can assume any of 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 configurations — orders of magnitude smaller, but still impossible.

    2. Computationalism

    Computationalism was originally defined as the “physical symbol system hypothesis,” meaning that “A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligent action.”38 (This is actually a “formal symbol system hypothesis,” because the actual physical implementation of such a system is irrelevant.) Although that definition wasn’t published until 1976, it co-existed with connectionism from the very beginning. It has also been referred to as “G.O.F.A.I.” (good old-fashioned artificial intelligence). Computationalism is also referred to as the computational theory of mind.39

    Continued in article

    "What Is I.B.M.’s Watson?" by Clive Thompson, The New York Times Magazine, June 14, 2010 ---
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html?th&emc=th
    Thanks Steve Hornik

    “Toured the Burj in this U.A.E. city. They say it’s the tallest tower in the world; looked over the ledge and lost my lunch.”

    This is the quintessential sort of clue you hear on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” It’s witty (the clue’s category is “Postcards From the Edge”), demands a large store of trivia and requires contestants to make confident, split-second decisions. This particular clue appeared in a mock version of the game in December, held in Hawthorne, N.Y. at one of I.B.M.’s research labs. Two contestants — Dorothy Gilmartin, a health teacher with her hair tied back in a ponytail, and Alison Kolani, a copy editor — furrowed their brows in concentration. Who would be the first to answer?

    Neither, as it turned out. Both were beaten to the buzzer by the third combatant: Watson, a supercomputer.

    For the last three years, I.B.M. scientists have been developing what they expect will be the world’s most advanced “question answering” machine, able to understand a question posed in everyday human elocution — “natural language,” as computer scientists call it — and respond with a precise, factual answer. In other words, it must do more than what search engines like Google and Bing do, which is merely point to a document where you might find the answer. It has to pluck out the correct answer itself. Technologists have long regarded this sort of artificial intelligence as a holy grail,

    artificial intelligence as a holy grail, because it would allow machines to converse more naturally with people, letting us ask questions instead of typing keywords. Software firms and university scientists have produced question-answering systems for years, but these have mostly been limited to simply phrased questions. Nobody ever tackled “Jeopardy!” because experts assumed that even for the latest artificial intelligence, the game was simply too hard: the clues are too puzzling and allusive, and the breadth of trivia is too wide.

    With Watson, I.B.M. claims it has cracked the problem — and aims to prove as much on national TV. The producers of “Jeopardy!” have agreed to pit Watson against some of the game’s best former players as early as this fall. To test Watson’s capabilities against actual humans, I.B.M.’s scientists began holding live matches last winter. They mocked up a conference room to resemble the actual “Jeopardy!” set, including buzzers and stations for the human contestants, brought in former contestants from the show and even hired a host for the occasion: Todd Alan Crain, who plays a newscaster on the satirical Onion News Network.

    Technically speaking, Watson wasn’t in the room. It was one floor up and consisted of a roomful of servers working at speeds thousands of times faster than most ordinary desktops. Over its three-year life, Watson stored the content of tens of millions of documents, which it now accessed to answer questions about almost anything. (Watson is not connected to the Internet; like all “Jeopardy!” competitors, it knows only what is already in its “brain.”) During the sparring matches, Watson received the questions as electronic texts at the same moment they were made visible to the human players; to answer a question, Watson spoke in a machine-synthesized voice through a small black speaker on the game-show set. When it answered the Burj clue — “What is Dubai?” (“Jeopardy!” answers must be phrased as questions) — it sounded like a perkier cousin of the computer in the movie “WarGames” that nearly destroyed the world by trying to start a nuclear war.

    This time, though, the computer was doing the right thing. Watson won $1,000 (in pretend money, anyway), pulled ahead and eventually defeated Gilmartin and Kolani soundly, winning $18,400 to their $12,000 each.

    “Watson,” Crain shouted, “is our new champion!”

    It was just the beginning. Over the rest of the day, Watson went on a tear, winning four of six games. It displayed remarkable facility with cultural trivia (“This action flick starring Roy Scheider in a high-tech police helicopter was also briefly a TV series” — “What is ‘Blue Thunder’?”), science (“The greyhound originated more than 5,000 years ago in this African country, where it was used to hunt gazelles” — “What is Egypt?”) and sophisticated wordplay (“Classic candy bar that’s a female Supreme Court justice” — “What is Baby Ruth Ginsburg?”).

    By the end of the day, the seven human contestants were impressed, and even slightly unnerved, by Watson. Several made references to Skynet, the computer system in the “Terminator” movies that achieves consciousness and decides humanity should be destroyed. “My husband and I talked about what my role in this was,” Samantha Boardman, a graduate student, told me jokingly. “Was I the thing that was going to help the A.I. become aware of itself?” She had distinguished herself with her swift responses to the “Rhyme Time” puzzles in one of her games, winning nearly all of them before Watson could figure out the clues, but it didn’t help. The computer still beat her three times. In one game, she finished with no money.

    “He plays to win,” Boardman said, shaking her head. “He’s really not messing around!” Like most of the contestants, she had started calling Watson “he.”

    Continued in article

    June 16, 2010 reply from J. S. Gangolly [gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU]

    Thanks to Roger for the cite.

    While I agree with most stuff in the article, I think the author has misunderstood the aims of AI as opposed to the hype that makes some of its practitioners promise more than they can deliver and so appear to be compulsive liars.

    It is interesting that Amy talked about "brain" that will continue to be needed. I personally think the day is not far off when "brain" can be substituted. However, "mind", that ugly word that has been expunged from our vocabulary, thanks to muddle-headed positivist thinking, is an entirely different matter. I am reminde of a lecture George Miller (of the Magical number 7 fame) where he he said most psychologists believed he studied the "mind" while he actually studied the "brain".

    It is silly to say that no progress has been made, unless you anchor progress to wild statements of a few scientists-turned-business-men. However, it is true that the statements were wild, and used to drum up financing for their businesses. It was snake oil and not science.

    I am sure there are many contributions of AI to life in general, but one that I am a bit familiar with is the semantic web that owes its existence entirely to AI (in particular description logics). It was devised precisely for the reason given by the author why AI must fail (complexity). First order logic, as we all know, is not decidable (ie., no guarantee that a question can be answered in finite time), and therefore AI research devised description logic, a fragment of FOL that is decidable.

    Because of its bad reputation,thanks to the few too-confident scientists-turned-businessmen, much of the direct AI funding dried (the so-called AI winter) and much AI research went underground or was disguised as something else (description logics, for example). The results are well-buried in present-day software.

    As for the future, I think the most promising work lies at the intersection of physiology, physics, chemistry,... with computing and mathematics essentially providing the infrastructure. Some call it computational systems biology. Those interested might like to see

    Computational Systems Biology, by Andres Kriete and Roland Eils Academic Press (November 8, 2005)

    A fascinating talk on a tangential topic (debunking some Freudian myths) is by one of my daughters' teachers at UC San Diego:

    http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html 

    Jagdish

     

    Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


    How to Do It Examples Rather Than Just Who is Doing It:  Two mathematics tutorials rooted in research at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of California 

    Dan Gode sent me these links concerning highly regarded math tutoring technologies.  The Carnegie link is interesting due to its roots in cognitive processes.  The ALEKS link is interesting because of its unique use of artificial intelligence and interactivity.

    Carnegie Learning Corporation --- http://www.carnegielearning.com// 
    Carnegie Learning's products are the result of 15 years of research in the field of cognitive science led by Dr. John R. Anderson, a preeminent psychologist and computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, one of the premier institutions of higher learning in the world. The site of the Department of Defense's Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University is highly regarded for its contributions to cognitive psychology, computer science and software engineering, and for its work in the fields of artificial intelligence.

    Carnegie Learning was founded in 1998 in order to further develop and support the Cognitive Tutoring(tm) technology for mathematics initiated at Carnegie Mellon University.

    Research support for the technology used in Carnegie Learning's Cognitive Tutors was provided by such institutions and agencies as Carnegie Mellon University, the National Science Foundation, DARPA, the Office of Naval Research, the US Department of Education, the Carnegie Foundation, the Howard Heinz Endowments, the Buhl Foundation, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the Grable Foundation and the Pittsburgh Foundation.


    ALEKS --- http://www.aleks.com/ 
    ALEKS is a revolutionary Internet technology, developed at the University of California by a team of gifted software engineers and cognitive scientists, with the support of a multi-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. ALEKS is fundamentally different from previous educational software. At the heart of ALEKS is an artificial intelligence engine -- an adaptive form of computerized intelligence -- which contains a detailed structural model of the multiplicity of the feasible knowledge states in a particular subject. Taking advantage of state of the art software technology, ALEKS is capable of searching an enormous knowledge structure efficiently, and ascertaining the exact knowledge state of the individual student. Like "Deep Blue," the IBM computer system that defeated international Chess Grand master Garry Kasparov, ALEKS interacts with its environment and adapts its output to complex and changing circumstances. ALEKS is based upon path breaking theoretical work in Cognitive Psychology and Applied Mathematics in a field of study called "Knowledge Space Theory." Work in Knowledge Space Theory was begun in the early 1980's by an internationally renowned Professor of Cognitive Sciences who is the Chairman and founder of ALEKS Corporation.


    Philosophers Look Toward Artificial Intelligence and Learning

    "Upgrading to Philosophy 2.0," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed, December 31, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/31/apa

    There was no theorizing about ghosts in the machine at an annual meeting of philosophers last Friday. Instead, they embraced technology’s implications for their field, both within the classroom and beyond.

    . . .

    The reason for those misconceptions, Croy argued, is that adaptive learning techniques require AI, and good AI algorithms require long-term empirical research into how students learn and which methods predict classroom success. Moreover, he said, if a computer program that employs AI increases the range of students being taught, any economy of scale would be counterbalanced by the greater diversity of learning approaches reached — and that would require further development into more sophisticated processes to encompass them (and more money).

    Bypassing that vicious cycle requires some brains, and not just the human kind. The problem becomes: How can a program learn how an individual student thinks, and use that insight to offer constructive suggestions as he or she works online?

    One of Croy’s attempts to solve that problem involves a system designed to provide intelligent help to students constructing deductive proofs. As they graphically map out the steps from a given initial proposition to the provided end point, the software ideally provides helpful suggestions to students who can be working both forward and backward at the same time.

    In looking for an algorithm that can offer hints “in a way that doesn’t cost us an arm and a leg,” Croy noted, the software employs a mathematical model called a Markov decision process that can map students’ steps toward the solution and “learn” the chosen path as they work. Such proofs can be solved in varying sequences, so the possibilities are numerous.

    “They do stuff that I wouldn’t have expected them to do,” Croy said of the students. By anticipating the logical direction of the students’ reasoning, the program can ideally guide them along the way.

    To see if such techniques are empirically useful, Croy also tested to see if he could predict students’ performance in his class early on, based on results from a computerized test of “justified thought” — for example, choosing from a multiple-choice list whether a given logical sequence was an example of modus ponens, modus tollens or neither. By dividing one class of 50 into two groups, one whose grades were below 65 percent and those with 65 or higher, Croy found that the test predicted their performance “fairly well.”

    This being a meeting of philosophers, he touched on a few of the ethical implications of his work, such as the potential of conflicting roles as both a teacher and a researcher within the same classroom. “It does put you in a very strange position,” he admitted, since students could be both pupils and subjects at the same time. One clear solution, he said, was to seek informed consent. At the same time, Croy raised the question of whether technology should seek to replace or supplement student-teacher interactions.

    In his own experience, he said, “the class is a lot better today than it used to be a year ago.”

    Continued in article

     


    Real Aud Audit Simulation

    August 17, 2007 message from John Schatzel [JSchatzel@STONEHILL.EDU]

    A significant update to the Real Audit(tm) simulation will be released this fall.  Real Audit(tm) is an interactive multimedia simulation of financial statement auditing.  The upcoming version will incorporate the new risk assessment standards required by SAS 104 -111.  To ensure the quality and realism of the upcoming release, I am requesting some help in testing the latest build of the software.  The changes affect primarily the planning and accounts receivable sections of the simulation (as discussed below).  It should take less than a couple of hours to go through it and provide the feedback.  About six AECMers helped me with play testing about ten years ago during the initial development and it was very helpful (credit will be given in the credits section of the software).  If you can play test, please let me know right away, thanks,
     
    John Schatzel
     
    Background:
     
    Real Audit(tm) has been around for over ten years now and has been improved with new features and user support. Ten years ago it was just a simulation game with planning and accounts receivable.  A couple of years later, accounts payable and inventory were added and then fixed assets.  Now, there is an interactive game tutorial within the simulation to show users how to use it and an extensive downloadable user's manual.  Screen shots and further explanation is available at http://realaudit.com   About three years ago, Real Audit 2: The SOX Era was developed and released in response to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.  The simulation focused primary on a SOX 404 audit of internal control. On the academic side, I wrote a paper on the development of the software, which won a best paper award at the Northeast Regional Conference of the AAA in 2006.  The paper examined the development, realism, ease of use, and learning outcomes of the simulation.  Now the AICPA has released new risk assessment standards, which require an understanding of the entity and its environment including internal control for private company audits (effective at the end of this year).  These changes are major (over 200 pages) and will take a great deal of training for CPA firms to implement.  Is was also a major challenge to learn these new requirements and to incorporate them into the simulation for this fall.
     
    What I am looking for: 
     
    I hope that you can run through the simulation as soon as possible and give me feedback.  The primary changes are in planning and its relationship to AR (for the private client PTP).  In general,
    1.  The permanent file has more information about the business and the revenue cycle.
    2.  The audit program has more steps in planning including identification of significant accounts, evaluation of internal control design for the five components of COSO, the required team meeting on RMM including fraud, and the identification of risks of material misstatement (RMMs).
    3. The opening conversion between the auditor and the audit manager in planning is significantly expanded and is like a tutorial on the new SAS 104-111 requirements (so if you are not familiar with them they can be reviewed).
    4. A new client response mode at login [automatic or manual] has been added.  Please test the manual which is new - it allows you to advance the client responses using the space bar  (as requested by students)
     
    At the end, if you could send me an e-mail explaining your audit program choices for the five internal control elements and the RMMs and your general comments, I would really appreciate it.  Also, anything that doesn't make sense, is not working, or needs to be improved - please let me know, thanks!
     
    I don't know how many people will volunteer this time, but my plan is to stagger the reviews so I don't have to respond to all of the comments at once,

    Thanks!

     


    Interactive Network Simulation Learning Example

    "The B-School Case Study Gets a Digital Makeover:  Tablet technology is beginning to transform case studies from straightforward narratives into complex and changeable plots—a metamorphosis nearly a century in the making," by Erin Zlomek, Business Week, July 25, 2011 ---
    http://www.businessweek.com/business-schools/the-bschool-case-study-gets-a-digital-makeover-07252011.html

    Jensen Comment
    The question in my mind is why case writers supposedly had to wait for tablet computing for some of these cases. As a point of fact, interactive cases are even better on the more powerful laptop computers that students have been using for years. As a matter of fact it may be a mistake to write interactive cases only for tablet computing since many (most?) tablet apps will not run on laptop computers.

    In history, interactive cases have been around for over 20 years ---
    http://bcq.sagepub.com/content/55/4/60.extract
    For updates see
    http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Interactive-Cases-in-Organizational-Behavior/9780673993724.page
    See the Michigan State University Case Depositories at http://aib.msu.edu/resources/casedepositories.asp

    In history, interactive case-computer simulations have been around for decades
    Inspiration: Games versus Teachers
    "Creator of 'The Sims' Talks Educational Gaming," Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2009 ---
    http://chronicle.com/media/video/v55/i41.5/wright/?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
    Introduction to (video) Game Design 2009 --- http://pod.gscept.com/intro2gd2009.xml 
    Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment and learning games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
    Bob Jensen's threads on virtual worlds in education are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

    From Carleton College (Interactive Simulation Role Play by Residents (students) of a Town Alongside an Active Volcano
    The Sleeping Mountain --- http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/roleplaying/examples/sleepmtn.html


    Management Accounting Simulations

    May 1, 2009 message from Roger Collins [rcollins@TRU.CA]

    I've been assigned to teach a course in "Strategic Management Accounting" as part of our summer session offerings for final year BBA undergraduate accounting majors. The previous presenter of the course built it around a set of cases plus a simulation - VK Gadget. See..
    http://www.microbuspub.com/maspg3.htm 

    While I'm in general agreement with the approach I'm wondering whether anyone on the list has experience of the VK Gadget simulation, or of any other simulations that they would think appropriate. There is an optional text with the simulation - "Management Accounting - A Venture Into Decision Making" - but our students have a more in-depth knowledge of management accounting by the time they reach their final year than this book provides.

    The only potential alternative that I've discovered to the VK Gadget simulation so far is "The Business Strategy Game" from Globus.See..
    http://www.glo-bus.com 

    I get the impression that this simulation is easier to run and to administer than VK Gadget (important to me, as I have to get up to speed quickly) but it doesn't seem to go into management accounting issues in such depth.

    Any comments would be much appreciated.

    Regards,

    Roger Collins
    TRU School of Business

    May 1, 2009 reply from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

    I used the Management Accounting Simulation from the same company. I found it required a significant investment on the part of students before they ever could get started. The time and effort needed was so significant, that only two groups of two students even went ahead with the investment. Most students just entered numbers. I was using the simulation for cost accounting students, which I find to be more dedicated to work than the typical managerial accounting students.

    What was scariest was the amount of work that would be required of the professor before even starting. I had difficulty in figuring out what to do from the instructions. I think I could have figured it out eventually if I had gone ahead and made the time investment and completed the assignments, just like I later asked the students to do. My estimate was about 25 hours to get up to speed, and I wasn't willing to make that investment. No wonder most students didn't do it either.

    I found the instructions to administer the game to be confusing, and I couldn't even input data without being talked through it by the simulation author.

    My campus bookstore charged students 38.40 for the instruction book. I eventually dropped the simulation, and refunded students their 38.40 from my own pocket (ouch).

    I don't know if the simulation game you are talking about is the same, or a related product by the same company, but I'd be very skeptical.

    A far better managerial accounting simulation is to use a business computer game called Gazillionaire (from Lavamind). In this computer game, each player owns a company with two products/services--either transporting passengers or transporting materials/products on the single company vessel. Each player must make decisions about financing, setting prices, allocating space on vessel between passengers/cargo, purchase of insurance, payment of taxes, where to travel, etc.

    I have students play the game until they figure out the various components. Then I have the students play the game on paper until they have a plan that will work: enable them to ultimately accumulate retained earnings of 1,000,000. Once I approve their plans, they go ahead and play the game and then do a variance analysis, and figure out what they can do for the next time they play they play the simulation game.

    If anyone goes this route, I can share my very rudimentary instructions. Also, I warn: students must truly immerse themselves in the business--figuring out what info they need that can help them cut costs and increase revenues. It cuts down on the amount of classroom content that can be covered. But it is well worth it.

    Sometimes I hear from students that they learned more from my monopoly simulation game and gazillionaire simulation game than the rest of their collegiate experience.

    David Albrecht

    May 2, 2009 reply from dekalmte [dekalmte@XTRA.CO.NZ]

    Roger

    We use a simulation called Mikes Bikes Advanced through http://www.smartsims.com/ 

    Most of the administration can be undertaken by the helpful staff at Smartsims. The multiplayer version is housed on their servers and can be accessed by anyone (who has paid the requisite fee) with an internet connection.

    I have run in it our Strategic Management Accounting course for five years. Students find it easy to access and use. I form them into teams and they compete against each other to manufacture and sell bicycles (no knowledge of bicycle manufacture required).

    Assessment is around a business plan and establishing KPI (along the lines of a 'balanced score card'). Each team is 'in business' for a number of years and they are to report on successes and failures. It doesn't necessarily focus on the technical skills of 'management accounting' - we cover and assess through other mechanisms - but does really open their minds to the strategic, and integrated, nature of decision making. It requires that they develop the soft skills that accounting bodies expect to be squeezed into the curriculum. Students do enjoy the competitive nature of the challenge.

    Good Luck,

    Frank Weterman
    frank.weterman@manukau.ac.nz 
    Faculty of Business Manukau Institute of Technology
    Auckland New Zealand

    May 2, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Roger,

    The Mike's Bikes author is Pete Mazany. Pete's one of Frank's colleagues on the faculty at the University of Auckland. In the past, In the past I've used Pete in my technology workshops. If management accounting is to be emphasized to students who are relatively advanced in management accounting, the Mike's Bikes case may be too superficial in terms of accounting content, although this is an excellent policy decision making simulation. The case is networked and online. Pete spent a lot of money and time in programming this simulation. Pete earned his doctorate at Yale under one of the top game theory scholars of the world.

    There is an excellent case study directory at Michigan State University --- http://aib.msu.edu/resources/casedepositories.asp
    Most cases are not simulations. However, enter "simulation" in the search box on the left margin of the AIB home page and see what you find.

    It is not common to find simulation cases with good accompanying textbooks. One problem is that if the simulation cases are updated quite often, the accompanying textbook may be a little out or date. If neither the simulation case nor the textbook is updated quite often, then I become dubious about using such material over time. Updating financial accounting simulations is probably a bigger problem relative to managerial accounting because of the way financial accounting standards are amended monthly.

    Bob Rubin at Depaul has a video of possible interest, but it's more of a teaser. You would have to contact Bob or Gayle for more information (and may not have enough accounting content) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz1VNyJpmQw 
    Also see Gayle Landuyt's video --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Oo2jaCN-v8 

    Bob Jensen


    SmartSims.com has its roots in a research group from the University of Auckland that formed in 1992. Its goal was to put together resources to improve the learning process for business students. Since we place a high value on experiential learning, we felt a simulation was 'the way to go' to get students more actively involved in the subject matter of their courses.

    Our first product was an interactive simulation of a manufacturing company called Mike's Bikes. From the Mike's Bikes Project, we have broadened our horizons into a complete suite of resources for students and instructors. These products range from interactive business simulations and server administration tools to lecture notes, presentations, assignments and model answers. While universities are an important part of what we do (and who we are), we also do a lot of work 'out in the real world'. One of our core activities is helping companies to develop their internal staff development programmes.

    Since its first release in 1997, Mike's Bikes and other SmartSims.com learning resources have been extensively used in corporate and academic (both graduate and undergraduate) business courses throughout the United States and Canada, Asia, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. 

    Mike's Bikes Home Page --- http://www.smartsims.com/    

    Mike's Bikes is a state of the art internet-based, business learning simulation. By simulating a bike industry with market segments, distributors and firms, Mike's Bikes allows students to learn by doing and practice a wide range of business disciplines and skills effectively, in a compelling and responsive simulated environment.

    Mike's Bikes Student Learning Outcomes:

    An understanding of core business functions Ability to visualise a business as an interactive system of these components Opportunity to analyse company data using higly visual graphics Practice of quantitative skills required for management using MS Excel Development of the skills for effective team management.


    "No Lectures or Teachers, Just Software," by Joshua Green, The New York Times, August 10, 2001 --- http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/08/circuits/articles/10prof.html 

    The aim is to get students to delve into a course's volumes of academic information, including hours of videotape of experts in a field related to the program. Students running Krasnovia, for example, can draw on video advice from Thomas Boyatt, a former ambassador, and Bruce Laingen, an American diplomat who was held hostage in Iran and is president of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

    Rather than subject students to full-blown lectures, Dr. Schank breaks the video into snippets that address only the question at hand. He believes students learn more effectively through this piecemeal approach, which he calls "just in time" learning.

    "The value of the computer is that it allows kids to learn by doing," he said. "People don't learn by being talked at. They learn when they attempt to do something and fail. Learning happens when they try to figure out why."

    Bald, bearded and powerfully built, Dr. Schank's appearance and demeanor suggest Marlon Brando in the movie "Apocalypse Now." His professional reputation is somewhat similar. His brusque manner and outspoken criticism of those he disagrees with have alienated some colleagues and earned him the reputation of iconoclast. But his success in designing teaching software has made him a much sought after figure among businesses, military clients and universities.

    His company puts extraordinary effort into creating software courses, each of which can take up to a year to design and can cost up to $1 million. Video is an important component of Dr. Schank's program. After interviewing professors, his staff develops a story, writes a script, hires professional actors and begins filming. Cognitive Arts even arranged the use of CNN footage of the Bosnian conflict to lend the aura of authenticity to Crisis in Krasnovia.

    The programs allow students to progress at their own pace. Dr. Schank says the semester system is badly outdated, a view he also holds for most tests, which foster only temporary memorization, he says. His programs require students to write detailed reports on what they have learned. A student who cuts corners does not finish the course, and the failing grade is delivered in the spirit of a video game. In Krasnovia, for instance, an incomplete report would draw a mock newscast in which commentators ridicule the president's address. Students must then go back and improve their work.

    These multimedia simulations differ radically from current online offerings. "When you look at online courses now, what do you see?" Dr. Schank said. "Text online with a quiz. We're not taking a lecture and putting it on screen. We're restructuring these courses into goal-based scenarios that will get kids excited."

    Dr. Schank says that such courses will render traditional classes -- and many professors -- obsolete. "The idea of one professor for one class is ancient," he said. "New technology is going to give every student access to the best professors in the world."

    But many academics dismiss Dr. Schank's prediction that traditional teaching methods will soon become obsolete and question software learning's pedagogic value. "Education depends on relationships between people," said David F. Noble, a history professor at York University in Toronto and a critic of online learning. "Interactive is not the same as interpersonal. What Schank doesn't recognize is that teaching is not just about relaying knowledge."

    Others warn against accepting radical new technology without pause. "The American university system is a highly functional institution," said Phil Agre, an associate professor of information studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. "The danger is that we will apply overly simplistic ideas about technology and tear apart the institution before we really know what we're doing."


    Management Accounting: A Venture into Decision Making provides the conceptual framework and the fundamentals of Management Accounting Tools.

    The Management/Accounting Simulation allows Students to Experience the Use of Management Accounting Tools in a Dynamic Decision-making Environment

    To learn more about these two books, visit our Web site at www.microbuspub.com To Receive a complimentary copy call us at 501 224 8708 or email us at simulations@microbuspub.com. 



    Advantages and Disadvantages of Education Technologies


    October1, 2004 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu

     

    Instructors understand the importance of creating and distributing clear, explicit course policies to their students. These generally cover the course requirements and deadlines, absences and assignment make-up policies, and other "housekeeping" areas. When moving into the online environment, setting up policies can get more complicated. In "The Importance of Policies in E-Learning Instruction" (EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, vol. 27, no. 3, 2004, pp. 28-39), Shirley Waterhouse and Rodney O. Rogers provide a useful collection of sample policies that cover using the basic tools of online instruction. Their examples cover email use, discussion forum participation, online submission of assignments, and getting technical help. They also include a checklist for fair use of copyrighted materials and a student permission-to-use form. The article is available online at http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm04/eqm0433.asp 

    EDUCAUSE Quarterly, The IT Practitioner's Journal [ISSN 1528-5324] is published by EDUCAUSE, 4772 Walnut Street, Suite 206, Boulder, CO 80301-2538 USA. Current and past issues are available online at http://www.educause.edu/eq/ 


    THE MULTIMEDIA PARADOX

    "Dr. Richard Mayer's research proves that there are great benefits to using multimedia in the classroom. It also proves the opposite is true." In "The Multimedia Paradox" (PRESENTATIONS, vol. 18, no. 9, September 2004, pp. 24-5, 28-9), Tad Simons explores the perennial problem of how we assess the impact of multimedia (or, for that matter, any technology) on learning. He discusses the research into this problem by Richard Mayer, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Some of Mayer's findings indicate that when text and graphics are combined student retention goes up an average of 42 percent; if the text is spoken rather than read by the students, retention increases by an average of 30 percent. The paradox that Mayer discovered is that "while a little multimedia may be a good thing, too much multimedia is often a bad thing." Too much multimedia may interfere with a student's ability to absorb the message and diminish the effectiveness of the medium.

    The article is not available online, but subscriptions to the print version of Presentations are free. Presentations: Technology and Techniques for Effective Communication [ISSN 1041-9780] is published monthly by VNU Business Media, 50 S. Ninth St., Minneapolis, MN 55402 USA; tel: 612-333-0471; fax: 612-333-6526; Web: http://www.presentations.com/ 

    See also:

    MULTIMEDIA LEARNING by Richard Mayer Cambridge University Press, 2001 ISBN: 0521787491 (paperback) $24.99 http://us.cambridge.org/titles/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521787491 


    STUDY SHOWS LAPTOPS IN THE CLASSROOM IMPROVE STUDENT LEARNING

    A recent study of West Point first-year students, all of whom have laptop computers, examined teaching techniques, lessons learned, and student performance during the integration of laptops in teaching and learning psychology in the traditional classroom. The study found statistically-significant improvements in learning for student using laptops. A report of the study, "Miracle or Menace: Teaching and Learning with Laptop Computers in the Classroom" by James Efaw, Scott Hampton, Silas Martinez, and Scott Smith, is available online at http://www.educause.edu/pub/eq/eqm04/eqm0431.asp  (EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, vol. 27, no. 3, 2004, pp. 10-18).


    WHAT DO SCHOLARLY AUTHORS WANT?

    The Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (ciber) surveyed 91,500 senior authors published in an ISI-indexed journal in order to "enable publishers and libraries to make a sensible contribution, based on concrete evidence, to the increasingly heated debate over the future of the scholarly communication system, open access, etc." Nearly 4,000 senior researchers from 97 countries responded to the survey. The survey results, written by Ian Rowlands, Dave Nicholas, and Paul Huntingdon, are available in "Scholarly Communication in the Digital Environment: What Do Authors Want? Findings of an International Survey of Author Opinion: Project Report."

    The survey found that authors want to be able to "target a very specific group of key readers, narrowcasting to those working on similar problems," which might indicate that more journals, rather than fewer, would be needed in some disciplines. Not surprisingly, they want to publish in "peer-reviewed, high impact" journals that offer refereeing and editing services. The much-discussed "Open Access" funding model that charges authors (or their institutions) for publishing services did not receive much support from the authors. Only 16% of the survey responders said they would pay more than US$500 to have their papers published. The majority of those in the social sciences and arts and humanities fields responded that they would not be willing to pay anything. The report is available online at no cost at http://ciber.soi.city.ac.uk/ciber-pa-report.pdf 

    ciber "seeks to inform by countering idle speculation and uninformed opinion with the facts. It engages in funded studies, contract research, scholarship and dissemination events in its areas of expertise." For more information, contact: Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research, Department of Information Science, City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB United Kingdom; tel: 44 020 7040 8381; fax: 44 020 7040 8584; email: ciber@soi.city.ac.uk    Web: http://ciber.soi.city.ac.uk/ 

    See also:

    "Journal Publishing: What Do Authors Want?" by Ian Rowlands, Dave Nicholas, and Paul Huntingdon http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/31.html 

    NATURE's online series: "Access to the Literature: The Debate Continues" http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/ 

    "Open Access to Journals Won't Lower Prices" by John H. Ewing THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, vol. 51, issue 6, October 1, 2004, p. B20 http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i06/06b02001.htm  (Subscription required to access article online.)

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 


    Chapter 2 of Jensen and Sandlin (1997) at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245ch02.htm 

    Email Messaging and Paperless Courses Advantages of Email Messaging and Paperless Courses.
    There are many claimed advantages that have undoubtedly contributed to the exponential growth of course messaging.

    Disadvantages of Email Messaging and Paperless Courses.
    There are many problems that have undoubtedly contributed to the frustrations of course messaging.

    Distribution of Student Work on the Internet Advantages of Publishing Student Work on the Internet.
    Probably the main advantage is improved quality and honesty of student work.

    Disadvantages of Publishing Student Work on the Internet. 
    There are technical things that must be learned about WWW publishing and this may add heavily to the workload of the student and the instructor.

    Computer Aided Teaching (CAT) Synchronous CAT Presentation Lecture Aids Advantages of Using Synchronous CAT Presentation Lecture Aids. 
    CAT presentation aids might benefit both local and synchronized distance education classes.

    Ways to Avoid the Dangers of Using Synchronous CAT Presentation Lecture Aids
    Use electronic transparencies and other computer presentations sparingly in class meetings.

    Computer Aided Learning (CAL) Asynchronous CAL Modules and Courses Advantages of Asynchronous CAL Modules and Courses. 
    The main advantages of asynchronous CAL are that student learning is self-paced and interactive.

    Ways to Avoid the Disadvantages of Asynchronous CAL Modules and Courses. 
    Try to resist temptations to dehumanize some courses by eliminating face-to-face encounters.

    Virtual Learning and MUD-Type (MOO) Interactions Advantages of Virtual Learning and MUD-Type (MOO) Interactions. 
    Virtual settings, especially VR settings, are increasingly more realistic.

    Update on MOOs and MUDs  
    "Instructors Try Out Updated MOOs as Online-Course Classrooms" 
    Jeffrey R. Young, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 24, 2000 
    http://chronicle.com/free/2000/10/2000102401u.htm
     

    The updated MOO systems aren't as graphics-heavy as three-dimensional "virtual worlds," in which virtual spaces are rendered in constantly-updated drawings. Both types of software encourage group activity, but in MOOs the written word is still king and the pictures merely serve as links between areas of a text-based environment.

    One such updated MOO system, called enCore Xpress, is distributed free of charge online, provided that users agree to share any improvements they make to it. The software was created by Cynthia Haynes and Jan Rune Holmevik at the University of Texas at Dallas, where Ms. Haynes is director of rhetoric and writing and Mr. Holmevik is a visiting scholar in arts and humanities. Together, the two scholars also run Lingua MOO, which serves as an environment for online classes and a meeting place for people studying arts and humanities.

    By making the chat environments easier to use, they hope to "bring MOOs into the mainstream," says Mr. Holmevik. "We have probably seen over 100 to 150 educational MOOs start because of our software."

    Among the professors using enCore Xpress for online courses is Joel A. English, an assistant professor of professional writing at Old Dominion University. Last spring, he used the MOO to teach an advanced composition course.

    Ten of his students logged in to the classes from their homes via the MOO, while the rest of the students sat in a classroom. Mr. English used a video camera to stream his lectures live over the MOO. The students in the MOO could type to each other, or type questions for the professor, while they watched and listened to the lecture. A teaching assistant moderated the online chat and voiced students' questions to Mr. English.

    "That may sound cumbersome," Mr. English says, "but it was just my attempt at making sure that those students sitting at home at a computer could add to the discussion just like everybody else."

    Mr. English says he doesn't mind if online students chat among themselves during his lecture -- provided they discuss the material. "If they're talking so much about course content that they miss something I say, then something right is going on," he says. "The best classrooms are those which are active, where students have active participation and don't just sit there sucking down content." He says the MOO students developed a stronger sense of community than the ones in the traditional classroom.

    Other professors who've taught in MOOs report that the environment encourages free-for-all discussions rather than lecturing to a group.

    "It can feel like you're herding cats online," says Linda G. Polin, a professor of education at Pepperdine University. She says the trick for a professor is to allow students to drive discussion without losing complete professorial control. For her courses, Ms. Polin uses a MOO-software package called Tapped In, which is similar to enCore Xpress.

    Even with the updated MOO software, however, it can take a few weeks for students to get used to the environment, the professors say.

    "The biggest challenge for students, by the way, is typing," says Ms. Polin. "Some students are very fast and some are not."

    At its best, Ms. Polin says, the software can provoke discussions that are richer than traditional class sessions. "It can fulfill that fantasy we faculty all carry around in our hearts of the intense late-night coffeehouse intellectual discussion."

    Background articles from The Chronicle:

    A veteran MOOer in tax education is that funny (I mean doubles-you-up kind of funny) Professor Robert C. Rickets, Haskell Taylor Professor of Taxation, Texas Tech University.


    Alternate ways of organizing knowledge --- http://www.thebrain.com/ 

    Containers versus Links Traditional information management systems use folders and focus on separating information – they force you to divide information into containers. Separating information in this way creates barriers between information and ignores the naturally occurring relationships inherent in the information. TheBrain takes the opposite approach – it enables you to link information into a network of logical associations.

    The Power of Association Traditional directory trees confine information to a strict hierarchical organization and are incapable of expressing the multi-layered relationships that exist in the real world. TheBrain is an associative information organization system – any piece of information can be linked to any other piece. The power of TheBrain lies in the flexibility of these links. You can quickly create structures of information that reflect the way you think about your information. Each item triggers related items, bringing relevant information together as you need it.

    Visualizing Information Flow Items in TheBrain are called "thoughts," which can represent files, web pages, or database records. TheBrain's display is organized around a thought, surrounded by all its related thoughts. Clicking on any thought brings it to the center of the display, and the interface is automatically reconfigured to new related thoughts. (Try it by clicking on TheBrain above - just click back to the Overview thought to return here.) As you navigate through data, the information displayed on the screen is always related to the selected data. TheBrain lets you follow a train of thought, flowing from one item to the next.

    Using TheBrain Using TheBrain is as simple as pointing and clicking. The interface lets you browse visually through its unique, animated display. Adding new information and integrating existing information is a simple drag and drop. Using The Brain, anyone can create and share a context rich information environment.

    The Black Shoals site is interesting to study from many angles, including database design and retrieval.  It is a bit like The Brain design at http://www.thebrain.com/. Gaze up in the Black Shoals Planetarium and and have a look.

    From Yahoo on May 14, 2001

    Black Shoals Stock Market Planetarium --- http://www.blackshoals.net/ 

    Gaze up at the starry heavens of the international finance. Here's the setup -- this perfectly natural-looking night sky is in fact a real-time representation of the world's stock markets. Each star represents a publicly traded company, and industries tend to clump together in star clusters. So if the automobile industry is hot, its constellation in the night sky will light up bright and shiny. Asteroids, pulsars, and red dwarfs haven't been addressed yet, but we could easily suggest a likely sector for a black hole..


    Technology, Disability Studies, and Supports for People with Disabilities (including the learning challenged)

    Free Monitor
    I don't know anything about this free monitor or the open-source software for sight-impaired people, but it sounds wonderful
    http://www.nvaccess.org/
    Thank you Scott Bonacker for the heads up.

    MUSEUM OF DISABILITY HISTORY: VIRTUAL MUSEUM ---
    www.museumofdisability.org/virtual-museum/index.html

    Disability History Museum --- http://www.disabilitymuseum.org

    Disability History Association --- http://dishist.org/

    Dos & Don'ts on Designing for Accessibility---
    https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/02/dos-and-donts-on-designing-for-accessibility/

    Get Ready to Read! (aids for disabled learners) --- www.getreadytoread.org

    Understood (technology for the learning disabled) --- www.understood.org/en
    Expert Guide For Students With Disabilities To Succeed In College ---
    https://testprepinsight.com/resources/students-with-disabilities-college-guide/

    Disability History in the Classroom --- www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/edu/overview.html

    Disability History Museum --- http://www.disabilitymuseum.org

    Paralysed man uses ‘mindwriting’ brain computer to compose sentences ---
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/12/paralysed-man-mindwriting-brain-computer-compose-sentences

    The DAISY Consortium (access to reading and learning for disabled persons) --- http://www.daisy.org/

    Google has launched two new apps for deaf people ---
    Click Here

    DEAFTEC: TEACHING & LEARNING (for the deaf and otherwise hearing impaired) ---
    https://deaftec.org/teaching-learning/

    YouTube: American Sign Language University --- www.youtube.com/user/billvicars

    Ted Talk on How Technology Has Changed What it's Like to Be Deaf ---
     https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_knill_how_technology_has_changed_what_it_s_like_to_be_deaf?utm_source=recommendation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=explore&utm_term=newest-talks-2

    NSTA: Science for Students with Disabilities --- www.nsta.org/disabilities

    Technology Aids for People With Disabilities ---
    https://edubirdie.com/blog/technologies-for-people-with-disabilities

    Literacy Resources from the Verizon Foundation
    What Happened to Thinkfinity.org?
    https://www.mymove.com/broadband/provider/verizon-fios/

    Ability Media (communication studies for the disabled) ---
    https://abilitymediagroup.com/

    INTERNATIONAL DISABILITY AND DEVELOPMENT CONSORTIUM SOCIAL STUDIES --- www.iddcconsortium.net

    Speech Disorder Resources for Students ---
    https://edubirdie.com/blog/speech-disorder-resources-for-students

    NATIONAL CENTER ON DISABILITY AND JOURNALISM --- https://ncdj.org/

    ACCESSIBILITY HUB --- www.queensu.ca/accessibility

    CANADIAN COUNCIL ON REHABILITATION AND WORK: CHILDREN'S BOOKS ON INCLUSION ---
    www.ccrw.org/childrensbooks

    CENTER FOR INCLUSIVE DESIGN AND INNOVATION ---
    https://cidi.gatech.edu/

    WEB AXE --- www.webaxe.org

    DEAFVERSE (for the hearing impaired) --- https://deafverse.com/  


    Apps for Students With Learning Disabilities: Organization and Study ---
    https://writix.co.uk/blog/apps-for-students-with-ld


    Berkeley will begin removing more than 20,000 video and audio lectures from public view as a result of a Justice Department accessibility order ---
    https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/u-california-berkeley-delete-publicly-available-educational-content?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=ee5e601e16-DNU20170306&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-ee5e601e16-197565045&mc_cid=ee5e601e16&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

    Jensen Comment
    Why don't we remove all the books from the electronic libraries (think millions of books now available free from Google)  that the blind cannot read?

    For on-campus students the university can invest in what it takes to accommodate students with disabilities. This can be very costly such as paying a signing expert to be in a seminar when there is one deaf student in the classroom. But for off-campus students it can be so costly as to make an online course too prohibitive to offer and requiring that all videos have captioning.

    There are many technologies to help disabled students (including the blind, deaf, and learning-challenged). The issue becomes whether it's the university's responsibility to pay the tab in every instance ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

    In my estimation having to remove such a massive amount of learning material (much of it free) from pubic view punishes everybody for the special needs of a relatively few number of potential learners.


    The Prado Museum Creates the First Art Exhibition for the Visually Impaired, Using 3D Printing ---
    The Prado Museum Creates the First Art Exhibition for the Visually Impaired, Using 3D Printing


    Jensen Comment
    The outcome of this lawsuit could have very expensive ramifications on tens of millions of online videos and live broadcasts. Many learning videos will simply be withdrawn from the Internet. It might be a good time to consider downloading and archiving the videos most likely to be withdrawn from the Internet such as those on YouTube learning channels and those now available at links provided at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
     

    What I think is at issue here is whether free learning materials should be subject to the same criteria as fee-based materials.

    For example, providers of fee-based courses and learning materials can factor in the extra cost of learning aids such as when a live course factors in the cost of employing "signers" when delivering a live course on campus or over the Internet ---
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_loss#Sign_language

    "Harvard Accessibility Lawsuit Moves Forward," Inside Higher Education, February 23, 2016  ---
    https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/02/23/harvard-accessibility-lawsuit-moves-forward?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=de86d60543-DNU20160223&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-de86d60543-197565045

    "Harvard and MIT Are Sued Over Closed Captioning for Online Materials," by Andy Thomason, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 12, 2015 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/harvard-and-mit-are-sued-over-closed-captioning-for-online-materials?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    A new lawsuit accuses Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of failing to provide closed captioning in online teaching materials, in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws, The New York Times reports. The lawsuits were filed by the National Association of the Deaf, and seek an injunction requiring that closed captioning be provided for all online materials.

    Both colleges provide extensive educational resources free online, including through their membership in edX, which offers dozens of MOOCs to students around the world.

    Advocates for the deaf on Thursday filed a federal class action against Harvard and M.I.T., saying both universities violate antidiscrimination laws by failing to provide closed captioning in their online lectures, courses, podcasts and other educational materials.

    Bob Jensen's links to free learning materials, videos, tutorials, and complete courses provided free ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    College Resources for Students with Disabilities Guidebook --- http://www.affordablecollegesonline.org/college-resource-center/resources-for-students-with-disabilities

    Bob Jensen's threads on new technology tools for disabled students, including the hearing and sight impaired, ---
    See Below

     


    Jim Martin in MAAW's Blog reports that his neighbor with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) is using Eyegaze to surf the internet with her eyes
    http://www.eyegaze.com/


    "For Bill on Disabled Access to Online Teaching Materials, the Devil’s in the Details," by Rebecca Koenig, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 30, 2014 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/for-bill-on-disabled-access-to-online-teaching-materials-the-devils-in-the-details/54651?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

    . . .

    While the bill, known as the Teach Act, has bipartisan support in Congress, several higher-education organizations have raised concerns about what they consider the legislation’s broad language, inflexibility, and misplaced oversight. For example, the American Council on Education objects to the bill in part because it grants authority to create guidelines to the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, which the council says lacks higher-education expertise.

    “This provision creates an impossible-to-meet standard for institutions and will result in a significant chilling effect in the usage of new technology,” wrote Molly Corbett Broad, ACE’s president, in a letter last month to Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who is chairman of the education committee. The letter was sent on behalf of the council and 19 other higher-education groups. “Such a proposal, if implemented, will seriously impede the development and adoption of accessible materials, harming the very students it is intended to assist.”

    Rep. Thomas E. Petri, a Wisconsin Republican, introduced the Teach Act in the House of Representatives in November 2013, and Sen. Elizabeth A. Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced an identical bill in the Senate in February 2014. This past summer, Senator Harkin included it in his discussion draft for the reauthorization to the Higher Education Act.

    “Congressman Petri believes that if there is a way to have these educational materials accessible to students who are disabled, they should have them,” said Lee Brooks, Representative Petri’s communications director.

    The National Federation of the Blind and the Association of American Publishers are proponents of the measure, which would allow colleges to opt out of the guidelines if they already provide materials that serve students with disabilities “in an equally effective and equally integrated manner.”

    “Every day, blind college students face frustration and despair in the pursuit of their education because of inaccessible technology,” Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind, said in a written statement in February. “E-readers, web content, mobile applications, and learning management systems are integral to the 21st-century college experience, and students with disabilities are being needlessly left behind. … Schools and manufacturers must embrace readily available accessibility solutions so that all students can benefit from educational technology, and the guidelines established by the Teach Act will make it clear how manufacturers and institutions of higher education can best serve students with disabilities.”

    In a letter published this month in The Chronicle, Terry W. Hartle, ACE’s senior vice president for government and public affairs, rejected the assertion that the Teach Act is the best way to protect students with disabilities.

    “The bottom line is that the bill as written would damage the quality of learning for all students, and it would freeze the development and implementation of new learning technologies to benefit our students, including students with disabilities,” he wrote.

    Officials at the associations declined requests for further comment.

    Ron Zwerin, director of marketing for Educause, a higher-education-technology group that has opposed the Teach Act, said the proposed law would limit technology development. “For example, in a college chemistry course, the information a sighted student might get from an interactive 3D simulation of a chemical compound might be made available to a blind student through the use of physical models,” he said by email. “This reasonable accommodation would not be allowed under Teach, and thus institutions most likely would not be able to use such simulations, even if they might be made accessible to some but not all students with disabilities.”

    Tracy Mitrano, director of Internet culture, policy, and law at Cornell University, plans to discuss the bill during a panel this week at the annual conference of Educause.

    “I understand completely why the associations have been reluctant about the specifics of the Teach Act as an approach, but I think the conversation around all this is an opportunity to come out on top of it,” she said. “The question that remains for ACE or Educause or any other higher-education institution is, Are you satisfied with simply rejecting this approach and saying nothing else?”

    Ms. Mitrano believes a solution already exists: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0,developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. But any well-thought-out, codified standard would benefit universities and students with disabilities, she said.

    “It would make compliance relatively easy,” she said. “There would be no more need to debate what the standards are.”

    Isabella Moreno, associate director of the office of disability services at Oberlin College, agrees. “Having federal guidelines would be extremely helpful,” she said. “We are always most interested in ensuring we are giving our students the absolute best. That doesn’t always mean that we know what is available. Despite our efforts to try to stay on top, there’s always new technologies that would assist our students.”

    Compliance has been an issue at several colleges. Most recently, in July 2013, the Department of Justice announced a settlement with Louisiana Tech University regarding a complaint that a digital product was inaccessible to a blind student.

    Federal guidelines would help colleges avoid litigation and help publishers produce the materials students need, according to Allan Adler, general counsel and vice president for government affairs at the Association of American Publishers.

    “The legislation sets up a safe harbor for institutions of higher education and, at the same time, approaches the work of the manufacturers of materials with some amount of flexibility,” he said.

    Continued in article

     


    "U.S. Department of Education Wants to Eliminate '2% Rule'," by Leila Meyer,  T.H.E. Journal, August 26, 2013 ---
    http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/08/26/u.s.-department-of-education-wants-to-eliminate-2-rule.aspx?=THENU

    The United States Department of Education (ED) has proposed new regulations that would eliminate the "2 percent rule," which allows some students with disabilities to be assessed using alternate assessments aligned to modified academic achievement standards (AA-MAAS).

    The current regulations allows states to develop alternate assessments for up to 2 percent of students in the grades assessed using AA-MAAS. However, according to ED, students with disabilities can make academic progress when they receive appropriate support and instruction, and that by making general assessments accessible to those students, with support, they can achieve a higher level of success.

    "We have to expect the very best from our students and tell the truth about student performance, to prepare them for college and career," said Arne Duncan United States secretary of education, in a prepared statement. "That means no longer allowing the achievement of students with disabilities to be measured by these alternate assessments aligned to modified achievement standards. This prevents these students from reaching their full potential, and prevents our country from benefitting from that potential."

    Continued in article


    A 2011 article that's still relevant
    Learning-Disabled Students Graduate from Clemson University

    "Clemson graduates first class of disabled students," by Anna Bard Brutzman, Independent Mail, May 2011 ---
    http://www.independentmail.com/news/2011/may/29/clemson-graduates-first-class-disabled-students/ 

    Mary Alice Shartle, 24, dreams about getting a job someday working with small children.

    At the same time, Shartle is clear about the hurdles she faces.

    “I have Down syndrome,” she said. “I have trouble thinking sometimes.”

    Shartle learned how to speak frankly about her disability during a two-year life skills program at Clemson University. She built on her strengths and can articulate her challenges — both key to a prospective employer, said the program’s director, James Collins.

    This spring, Shartle and five other intellectually disabled young adults were among ClemsonLIFE’s first class of six graduates.

    “They are adults now,” said Sharon Sanders, the program’s founder and former director. “They were not when they came to me. We treat them like adults. We so often treat them like children, and they grow. All students do that.”

    ClemsonLIFE is among five college programs in South Carolina for intellectually disabled adults seeking higher education. The state’s public schools allows these students to remain in high school until they are 21, but there were no further education options for them until three years ago, when the first such program started at the University of South Carolina.

    Without opportunities to keep learning, the prospects for independent living are poor for these adults, said Donald Bailey, executive director for College Transition Connection. His non-profit organization coordinates state funding to five colleges, including Clemson, that offer higher education for the intellectually disabled.

    South Carolina has about 2,000 intellectually disabled adults who would be eligible.

    With 92 percent of this population unemployed, the benefits to the state are obvious, Bailey said. A similar program at Tate College in California has reported that 88 percent of its graduates over the past decade are employed.

    “This will ultimately save the state millions of dollars,” Bailey said.

    Shartle not only forged friendships with other disabled adults, but also with mainstream Clemson students. She also tried a range of jobs she might someday take on full time.

    Her parents live in Greenville. After moving away from home, Shartle learned online banking, sharing chores with roommates, traveling by bus on her own, shopping for groceries and cooking her own meals. She attended Clemson football games and recitals at the Brooks Center.

    “I like to cook healthy foods,” Shartle said. “Salmon is my favorite.”

    Collins said Shartle shared a normal college experience with other people her age.

    Shartle’s mother, Janice Shartle, said her daughter has always wanted to learn.

    “As a parent, we found out she can do more than we expected,” she said.

    ClemsonLIFE has grown from six students to nearly 20 this coming fall and has acquired dedicated office and classroom space in Godfrey Hall. Created as a two-year program, ClemsonLIFE will add a third-year program in the fall for four students who want to get work internships and try living off campus without a mentor.

    Cally Vollmer of Atlanta will be one of those students. She has a summertime job selling jewelry at a store in Delaware, and her parents had to discourage her from taking on too many hours.

    “When I first got there, I was completely nervous,” Vollmer said of ClemsonLIFE. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t expect to be with so many awesome kids.”

    She and her classmates interacted with more than 130 Clemson student volunteers.

    Clemson has drawn several out-of-state students because of the relative rarity of the programs.

    “These kids desperately need them,” said Saralynn Vollmer, Cally’s mom. “We couldn’t have made it any better than it was.”

    This past year, 30 students were enrolled in the state’s five new programs, but Bailey predicts that number will quickly grow closer to 100 over the next year.

    The College of Charleston and Clemson each had 20 applicants for the fall, he said. Two challenges still facing families are affordability — tuition is comparable to full tuition and board for a regular university — and awareness.

    Continued in article


    Disabilities --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability

    Jensen Question
    Are there any HTML processors that automatically code for sight and hearing impaired readers?
    Are there any Web browsers that will read text aloud? See the Jaws Screen Reader cited below.

    There is software available for captioning video for the hearing impaired but it is purportedly tedious to use for authors. Increasingly learning videos are captioned for the hearing impaired.

    Stanford University:  The country’s oldest school for blind students turns to mobile apps, online courses, and driverless cars.---
    https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/bringing-business-mindset-educating-visually-impaired-students?utm_source=Stanford+Business&utm_campaign=af3235699e-Stanford-Business-Issue-103-1-8-2017&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b5214e34b-af3235699e-70265733&ct=t(Stanford-Business-Issue-103-1-8-2017)

     

    "The Challenges of Surfing While Blind:  My seeing-eye dog can’t help me with your website. Please code it for accessibility," by Deann Elliott, The Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2015 ---
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-challenges-of-surfing-while-blind-1437950347?tesla=y

    . . .

    A well-designed website that conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) permits use by people of all abilities. In my case, text labels that identify the buttons and graphical features allow me to “see” what’s on the screen. The code is hidden and need not interfere with the way the website works for sighted customers. But without these features, a site that works beautifully with a mouse is useless to me.

    Technology has removed many of the barriers that people with disabilities face in the physical world, making life in the mainstream tantalizingly close. Can’t drive to the mall? There’s Amazon! Can’t read the electric bill? Bank online! As my guide dog and I contemplate the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the landmark civil-rights law signed July 26, 1990, the gap between sight and blindness has never been narrower.

    The ADA requires government websites to be accessible. Sadly, the law provides little guidance to the private sector on this point, since it was passed before the Internet became ubiquitous. It applies to a “place” of public accommodation—but is the Internet a place? That question has been wending its way through the courts.

    Disability advocates have worked to broaden the law’s applicability, with some success. In April, Harvard University and M.I.T. announced plans to voluntarily make their edX website for online courses compliant with the WCAG after deaf advocates filed federal lawsuits alleging discrimination. In 2010 the Justice Department announced it would consider issuing Web-accessibility regulations under the ADA, though the rule-making process lumbers on. With the number of websites growing rapidly, change isn’t coming fast enough.

    “More than 50 percent of the websites on the Internet are either inaccessible or unusable for people who use adaptive technology,” Brian Charlson, director of technology at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Mass., told me in his office a few months back.

    The consequences range from inconvenient to significant. When I can’t place an online order at my favorite Vietnamese noodle shop, I get Chinese instead. If a task is urgent, I pester family and friends for “favors.” When they hover over my screen to help me navigate around a virtual barrier, I’m keenly aware that my charge-card number and the details of my transaction are on display. At work, unequal access in an increasingly networked economy contributes to an unemployment rate that’s more than twice as high for people with disabilities—and that’s not counting many who have given up looking for work.

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    The above article is disappointing in that it does not mention most technologies and newer products that can be tried by the sight-impaired learners.

    "For Bill on Disabled Access to Online Teaching Materials, the Devil’s in the Details," by Rebecca Koenig, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 30, 2014 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/for-bill-on-disabled-access-to-online-teaching-materials-the-devils-in-the-details/54651?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

    User:Steinsky/Encyclopaedia for the blind --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Steinsky/Encyclopaedia_for_the_blind
    Scroll down to Software for the Spoken Wikipedia

    Stanford University:  The country’s oldest school for blind students turns to mobile apps, online courses, and driverless cars.---
    https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/bringing-business-mindset-educating-visually-impaired-students?utm_source=Stanford+Business&utm_campaign=af3235699e-Stanford-Business-Issue-103-1-8-2017&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b5214e34b-af3235699e-70265733&ct=t(Stanford-Business-Issue-103-1-8-2017)

    Free Monitor
    I don't know anything about this free monitor or the open-source software for sight-impaired people, but it sounds wonderful
    http://www.nvaccess.org/
    Thank you Scott Bonacker for the heads up.

    Jaws Screen Reader --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_%28screen_reader%29

    JAWS (Job Access With Speech) is a computer screen reader program for Microsoft Windows that allows blind and visually impaired users to read the screen either with a text-to-speech output or by a Refreshable Braille display.

    JAWS is produced by the Blind and Low Vision Group of Freedom Scientific, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA.

    A May 2012 screen reader user survey by WebAIM, a web accessibility company, found JAWS to be the most popular screen reader worldwide; 49.1% of survey participants used it as a primary screen reader, while 63.7% of participants used it often.[1]

    Continued in article

    "Awesome FingerReader Gadget Lets the Blind Read Printed Text," Chris Smith, Yahoo Tech, April 18, 2014 ---
    https://www.yahoo.com/tech/awesome-fingerreader-gadget-lets-the-blind-read-printed-83091898650.html

    Useful Products for the Blind --- http://acb.org/node/1644?gclid=CILy1Ymm-8YCFQeLaQodK74Iiw

    Carroll Store Products for the Blind --- http://carroll.org/products-for-the-blind-specials/?gclid=CKuM0vKo-8YCFYsRHwodm-8D8g
    Web Accessibility Services --- http://carroll.org/accessibility-services/web-accessibility-services/ 

    World Access for the Blind --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Access_for_the_Blind

    Royal Society for the Blind --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_for_the_Blind

    NAVIGATING COLLEGE WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENTS ---
    https://www.collegeconsensus.com/resources/college-life/navigating-college-with-visual-impairments/

    "Apple’s AssistiveTouch Helps the Disabled Use a Smartphone," by David Pogue, The New York Times, November 10, 2011 ---
    http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/apples-assistivetouch-helps-the-disabled-use-a-smartphone/

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology for disabled and otherwise handicapped learners (including the blind) ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped


    How Technology Is Changing The Way Blind People Get Visual Information ---
    http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/04/26/blind-people-apps-technology


    "Potential income tax benefits for families with special needs children," by Thomas M. Brinker Jr. and W. Richard Sherman, Journal of Accountancy, June 2013 ---
    http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2013/Jun/20137378.htm

    Bob Jensen's taxation helpers ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation


    What a Neat Invention for the Blind
    "Awesome FingerReader Gadget Lets the Blind Read Printed Text," Chris Smith, Yahoo Tech, April 18, 2014 ---
    https://www.yahoo.com/tech/awesome-fingerreader-gadget-lets-the-blind-read-printed-83091898650.html

    Jensen Comment
    This could be especially helpful for sight-impaired online learners. It enables them to read email messages and printed online course materials. Online instructors should be especially careful in fully explaining charts, exhibits, and other visuals that are difficult to comprehend with the FingerReader.

    Now if we could get a reader for Division 1 varsity athletes life would be even better.

    "Apple’s AssistiveTouch Helps the Disabled Use a Smartphone," by David Pogue, The New York Times, November 10, 2011 ---
    http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/apples-assistivetouch-helps-the-disabled-use-a-smartphone/

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology for disabled and otherwise handicapped learners (including the blind) ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

     

    "Look, Ma, No Hands! Operating a Laptop With Eyes Only," by David Pogue, The New York Times, January 26, 2012 ---
    http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/look-ma-no-hands-operating-a-laptop-with-eyes-only/

    When the great history books of technology are written, the early 2000s may be remembered as the Age of Human-Computer Interface Exploration.

    For nearly 40 years, we’ve had the keyboard and the mouse. Point, click. Point, click. It works, but it’s indirect. You may be too young to remember, but the mouse wasn’t always the easiest thing to learn. (I spent many years working as a personal computer tutor, paying house calls to frustrated adults who were struggling to enter the digital age.)

    ¶But then came the Wii. We could control a computer by waving a wireless remote in space. There was the iPhone and iPad: we could control a computer by pointing and dragging a finger on glass. There was the Microsoft Xbox Kinect: we could control a computer without touching it at all, just by moving our limbs in space. Then came Siri on the iPhone 4S, which took voice control to a much more sophisticated, fluid level.

    ¶Each of these breakthroughs works brilliantly in its particular niche — but we’re not done yet.

    ¶At the International Consumer Electronics Show a couple of weeks ago, I’d heard buzz about a company called Tobii, which was demonstrating a laptop with built-in eye-tracking software. (That’s Tobii, “with two eyes,” get it?)

    ¶Now eye tracking isn’t new. It is available, at huge cost, in the military, in specialized industries, for disabled people, and so on. But it’s one thing to pay millions for a heads-up display in a fighter jet, and quite another to have it on your laptop.

    ¶I found the company’s booth out in the deepest reaches of C.E.S.’s 37-football-fields-big exhibition halls.—.the Siberia of tiny booths from companies without a lot of money to spend. The entire booth was pretty much one laptop and one desktop PC.

    ¶A representative helped me through the demo on the laptop. First, the system finds and learns where your eyes are by using a 10-second calibration procedure, in which you simply look at an orange dot as it jumps to four positions around the screen. Then you’re ready.

    ¶The first demonstration was an Asteroids game, in which you’re supposed to blow up incoming asteroids just by looking at them. You discover that Tobii’s system works perfectly, flawlessly, exhilaratingly. Your hands are free, your body is relaxed, and you’re blowing up space rocks instantly with nothing but the awesome power of your gaze.

    ¶Another demonstration involved Google Maps: the software automatically focuses and zooms in wherever you seem to be focusing.

    ¶There was a slide show app, in which you see the thumbnails of many photos, and whenever you gaze at one in particular, it automatically blows up full screen.

    ¶On a PC running Windows 8, you could click toolbar buttons in Word, click tile buttons and swipe through screens, all using your eyes. In an architecture-design program, you could effortlessly move around a large blueprint with your eyes, using the mouse’s scroll wheel to zoom in at any point. (For the disabled, Tobii makes a kit that lets you “click the mouse” by blinking or staring, but the system really works best in conjunction with a regular trackpad or mouse.)

    ¶The demo that really rocked my world, though, was something much less glamorous: reading. Imagine a Web page or Word document on the screen before you — and the page scrolls automatically, gracefully and effortlessly as you proceed through the article. The system knows where your eyes are and how fast you are going, so it keeps your place centered on the screen, scrolling automatically as you go, even if you jump back to reread something. It feels as if this is how reading on a computer screen was always meant to be.

    ¶The rep said that the company was marketing this system to computer manufacturers, not individuals (although the company also sells hugely expensive add-on kits for existing computers — for disabled people, for example). And he said it would take a couple of years before you could buy it.

    Continued in article


    What a Neat Invention for the Blind
    "Awesome FingerReader Gadget Lets the Blind Read Printed Text," Chris Smith, Yahoo Tech, April 18, 2014 ---
    https://www.yahoo.com/tech/awesome-fingerreader-gadget-lets-the-blind-read-printed-83091898650.html

    Jensen Comment
    Now if we could get a reader for Division 1 varsity athletes life would be even better.

    "Apple’s AssistiveTouch Helps the Disabled Use a Smartphone," by David Pogue, The New York Times, November 10, 2011 ---
    http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/apples-assistivetouch-helps-the-disabled-use-a-smartphone/

     


    Bob Jensen's threads on wearable computers and other forms of ubiquitous computing ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm


    "Obama signs technology access bill for disabled," MIT's Technology Review, October 8, 2010 ---
    http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/26500/?nlid=3614&a=f

    Blind and deaf people will be able to more easily use smart phones, the Internet and other technologies that are staples of life and work under a bill signed into law on Friday.

    Such a step has been a priority of advocates for the millions of people who cannot see or hear.

    In the East Room of the White House, where he was flanked on stage by lawmakers and Stevie Wonder, President Barack Obama portrayed the occasion as another step in guaranteeing equal access, opportunity and respect for all Americans.

    He recalled celebrating this year's 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, banning workplace discrimination against qualified people with disabilities and requiring improved access to public places and transportation.

    "We've come a long way but even today, after all the progress that we've made, too many Americans with disabilities are still measured by what folks think they can't do, instead of what we know they can do," Obama said.

    The new law "will make it easier for people who are deaf, blind or live with a visual impairment to do what many of us take for granted," he said, from navigating a TV or DVD menu to sending an e-mail on a smart phone.

    "It sets new standards so that Americans with disabilities can take advantage of the technology our economy depends on, and that's especially important in today's economy when every worker needs the necessary skills to compete for the jobs of the future," Obama said.

    In one corner of the East Room, sign language interpreters translated Obama's remarks as he spoke. Across the room, his words scrolled on a large video monitor with help from a stenographer who transcribed them.

    Under the law, the quality of life will improve for 25 million people who are blind or have difficulty seeing, along with the estimated 36 million people who are deaf or hard of hearing, advocacy groups say.

    Nondisabled people stand to benefit, too. They may find the devices and screens easier to use.

    The law sets federal guidelines that require the telecommunications industry to:
     

    --Make getting to the Internet easier by improving the user interfaces on smart phones.

    --Provide audible descriptions of on-screen action to help the blind more fully enjoy television.

    --Add captions to online TV programming to help the deaf.

    --Make the equipment used for Internet telephone calls compatible with hearing aids.

    --Add a button or other switch to television remote controls for simpler access to closed captioning on television.
     

    Paul Schroeder, a vice president at the American Foundation for the Blind, said many blind or deaf people have had to spend hundreds of dollars on costly accessories or software to make their cell phones and other devices easier to use.

    "We hope that companies will start working immediately on making solutions available and affordable for people with disabilities," he said.

    Blind since childhood, Schroeder described the bill as "life changing."

    "As a person who is blind, it will bring some of the new technologies that are changing the workplace, education and leisure into my hands," he said.
     


    American Speech-Language-Hearing Association --- http://www.asha.org/


    I hope you watched CBS 60 Minutes on October23, 2011
    Following an informative segment on the life of Steve Jobs (he was much more of an unbathing mystic hippie than I realized), there was an even better segment on the impact of the iPad on many autistic people (not just children, but it's best to try them on iPads as early as possible). Note that the iPad is not a magic bullet for all people afflicted with autism. But for some the touch screen using some amazing autism apps became a miracle that allows them to communicate what has heretofore been locked inside their heads. The iPad for some is an amazing way for them to reveal their talents and their emotions. Also note the recent discoveries using brain scans of autism victims.

    I still have no incentive myself to invest the time and money in an iPad, although I should perhaps begin testing some apps that might be relevant for my life and work. But for autistic victims and their families, it's grossly negligent not to try out iPads. Note that it may be best to also have teachers specially trained in both iPad apps and autism rather than just starting an autistic person out cold with an iPad.

    The video segment entitled "Studying autism and iPads" is for a short time available free at
    http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7385702n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.1
    This is a fantastic module as long as you realize they might've cherry picked the success cases.

    The earlier segment "Steve Jobs: Revelations from a tech giant" us fir a short time available free at
    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-20124391/steve-jobs-revelations-from-a-tech-giant/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
    Note that he was not a particularly good manager of people and did some mean things in his life. This segment illustrates how even our heroes have their imperfections.


    "Some Juicy Audiobook Tidbits," by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, July 4, 2013 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com//blogs/technology-and-learning/some-juicy-audiobook-tidbits

    Bob Jensen's threads on free audio books and poems ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Audio

    "Let's Give the Blind Better Access to Online Learning," by Virginia A. Jacko, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 8, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Lets-Give-the-Blind-Better/127392/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

    "College-Made Device Helps Visually Impaired Students See and Take Notes," by Rachel Wiseman, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 1, 2011 --- Click Here
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/college-made-device-helps-visually-impaired-students-see-and-take-notes/32527?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    College students with very poor vision have had to struggle to see a blackboard and take notes—basic tasks that can hold some back. Now a team of four students from Arizona State University has designed a system, called Note-Taker, that couples a tablet PC and a video camera, and could be a major advance over the small eyeglass-mounted telescopes that many students have had to rely on. It recently won second place in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup technology competition.

    There are roughly 75,000 students at colleges and trade schools who are visually impaired. The telescopes allow students with low vision to see the blackboard, but they can only focus on one section at a time. Then they have to take off the telescope, write notes, and then go back to the board and try and catch up with the lecture.

    David S. Hayden, who graduated from Arizona State in May, understands these challenges—he can only read texts if he gets about two inches away from the material. Mr. Hayden, the lead designer of Note-Taker, says he faced a “morbid tradeoff” in class. Using the assistive technology that was available to him, he could either take notes or listen and absorb the information, but never both. After he had to withdraw from three senior-level math classes, he says, “I realized the existing technologies weren’t going to assist my needs, so I had a project on my hands.”

    The result was Note-Taker, which connects a tablet PC (a laptop with a screen you can write on) to a high-resolution video camera. Screen commands get the camera to pan and zoom. The video footage, along with audio, can be played in real time on the tablet and are also saved for later reference. Alongside the video is a space for typed or handwritten notes, which students can jot down using a stylus. That should be helpful in math and science courses, says Mr. Hayden, where students need to copy down graphs, charts, and symbols not readily available on a keyboard.

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's threads on learning helpers for disabled persons ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped


    Now that a landmark study conducted by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University has confirmed that students at two-year campuses perform worse in online courses than in the face-to-face version, perhaps we can move on the important question: What can we do about that?

    "Improving Online Success," by Rob Jenkins, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 16, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/onhiring/improving-online-success/29390?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Jensen Comment
    Most of the performance inhibitors apply to onsite and well as online education, but there are some things that can be done to improve online learning for many students. The first task, in my opinion, is to determine if there are unique learning disabilities that should be dealt with separately.


    Ted Talk on How Technology Has Changed What it's Like to Be Deaf ---
     https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_knill_how_technology_has_changed_what_it_s_like_to_be_deaf?utm_source=recommendation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=explore&utm_term=newest-talks-2

    Google has launched two apps for deaf people ---
    Click Here

    DEAFVERSE (for the hearing impaired) --- https://deafverse.com/  


    New version of Camtasia v7.1
    Closed Captioning for Camtasia Videos

    October 12, 2010 message from Richard Campbell

    The primary new feature is speech-to-text recognition for closed captioning.

    This facilitates section 508 compliance for the hearing impaired.

    http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/ 

    Richard J. Campbell
    mailto:campbell@rio.edu

    Bob Jensen's threads on Camtasia are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Video


    Question
    What hand-held device can photograph close up and read aloud from books, price labels, receipts, and newspapers?

    Hint:
    This device has far more uses beyond being a helper for sight impaired people.
    For one thing, auditors might make use of this when detail testing.

    Intel Reader --- http://www.intel.com/healthcare/reader/index.htm

    The Intel Reader, powered by an Atom processor, is a handheld device with a five-­megapixel camera that can read aloud any printed text it is pointed at, including product labels, receipts, and pages from books and newspapers. Previously, visually impaired or dyslexic people required a desktop scanner connected to a computer to convert print into speech.
    "Scan and Listen," MIT's Technology Review, December 17, 2009 ---
    http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/24198/?a=f

    For Dyslexics, A Font And A Dictionary That Are Meant To Help ---
    http://lisnews.org/for_dyslexics_a_font_and_a_dictionary_that_are_meant_to_help

    Technology Aids for the Handicapped, Disabled, and Learning Challenged ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

     


    ASIMO [Flash Player of robot built by Honda] http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/


    "Blackboard Earns Certification for Accessibility to Blind Students," Inside Higher Ed, August 13, 2010 ---
    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/13/qt#235367

    The National Federation of the Blind Thursday gave Blackboard, the e-learning giant, its top accessibility certification. Blackboard is the first learning-management company to earn the certification, although federation spokesman Chris Danielsen says the group had not tested all of Blackboard's competitors. Given that learning-management systems are so critical to modern education, it started working with Blackboard; the company was able to make a number of accessibility improvements in its latest version, released in the spring. Since Blackboard is by far the biggest player in the learning-management market, the federation's stamp of approval represents a big step for the visually impaired in an age when such online tools have become crucial even to brick-and-mortar institutions, Danielsen says.

    Bob Jensen's threads on Blackboard ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm


    "Special Education Students Beat the Odds With Technology," by Converge Staff, Converge Magazine, June 16, 2010 ---
    http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Special-Education-Students-Beat-the-Odds-With-Technology.html
    Bob Jensen's threads on technology aids for handicapped learners are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped


    Tate Learning: i-Map (art appreciation for the blind) --- http://www.tate.org.uk/imap/


    Question
    What is a newly-discovered (discovery actually dates back to 1974) barrier to learning accounting and mathematics?

    Answer
    Dyscalculia --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia

    "Math disorder makes consumers easy prey," by Bob Sullivan, MSNBC, June 13, 2011 ---
    http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/13/6851179-math-disorder-makes-consumers-easy-prey?ocid=twitter
    Thank you Robert Harris for the heads up.

    Some people seem to get taken to the cleaners every time they buy a car, subscribe to TV service or get a new cell phone.  New research suggests the problem might not be in their wallets, but in their genes.

    Brain scientists are starting to get a handle on a relatively new disorder called "dyscalculia," which is loosely described as dyslexia with numbers.  While plenty of people are insecure about their number skills, dyscalculics are bad at math in a very fundamental way: Studies indicate their brains can't even recognize groups of five or six objects, or link numeric symbols with their corresponding values.

    Researchers believe dyscalculia is as common as dyslexia -- perhaps impacting  one in 20 adults, as explained in a recent Body Odd column.

    The implications of this disorder for high school algebra students are obvious; but the nightmare it can cause adult consumers is a far more serious -- and largely misunderstood -- social problem.

    Dyscalculics often can't count change, said Professor Brian Butterworth, of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, and perhaps the world's leading dyscalculia expert.  They don't understand interest calculation or exchange rates.  By the time they become adults, they are so insecure about numbers that they frequently cede all money issues to others, a recipe for disaster.

    "Unfortunately, there have been no studies that I know of, looking into the vulnerability of dyscalculics as consumers," Butterworth said.  "It would be a valuable addition to this area."

    Butterworth's latest research, published in last month’s Science Magazine, focused on the fundamental causes of dyscalculia, which he believes comes from an undeveloped ability of some people to recognize and quantify sets of objects, something called "numerosity processing." But he's also interviewed hundreds of adults who can't perform basic math calculations and he understands the heartbreaking impact the disorder can have.

    "One of the first dyscalculics we saw, many years ago, was in prison for shoplifting,” he said. “It turned out that he was too embarrassed to go to the till because of his problems with money." 

    On his website, MathematicalBrain.com, there's an interview with successful author Paul Moorcraft, who managed to hide his disorder from everyone until he "came out" with the problem at age 55.  He'd been making lousy business deals his whole life.

    “I was very successful but I couldn’t count. I kept it hidden my whole life … even counting under the table with my fingers at a board meeting,” he said.  

    Continued in article

    Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difficulties in Adults ---
    Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difficulties in Adults - writix.co.uk


    "How a Professor Gave a Blind Student a New Outlook on Science," by Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 21, 2011 ---
    Click Here
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/how-a-professor-gave-a-blind-student-a-new-outlook-on-science/34424?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Amanda Lacy was frustrated with her physics class and ready to drop it.

    Ms. Lacy, a blind student at Austin Community College, is a computer-science major who loves her classes but often struggles in them, not because she doesn’t understand the material, but because she doesn’t have access to adequate textbooks. And when she started taking the introduction-to-physics class, things got even worse, until a professor stepped in with a solution.

    The college provides blind students with digital copies of textbooks so they can listen to them on the computer or read them using an electronic Braille display. But the figures and graphs in Ms. Lacy’s physics book don’t easily translate the same way that text does.

    “There are many symbols that the computer doesn’t recognize,” Ms. Lacy said, “so it just comes out as gibberish.” For example, Ms. Lacy said in an interview, the computer will read ‘X squared’ simply as ‘X2′.

    When Ms. Lacy showed her digital textbook to her computer-science professor, Richard Baldwin, he was shocked, she said. He told her if someone didn’t take her problem seriously there was no way she would make it through the course.

    So Mr. Baldwin started working with Ms. Lacy for a few hours each week, slowly going through the textbook and trying to explain the graphics to her in a way that she understood. “He’d do whatever he could to get these concepts across,” Ms. Lacy said. “He’d scratch them out on paper, draw them on my hand, things like that.” While they were working together, Mr. Baldwin began creating an open-access online tutorial for blind students learning physics.

    In Mr. Baldwin’s tutorials, equations are written using only symbols found on keyboards so that everything is one-dimensional and presented in a format that blind people can read. Using the tutorials, Ms. Lacy excelled in her physics class and received an A in the course.

    Working with Ms. Lacy taught Mr. Baldwin many things, too, such as that blind people can’t draw with much accuracy. So he came up with a new software for that as well. “I sent this thing to her at home, and the next time I saw her she was pretty elated,” Mr. Baldwin said. “She told me, ‘Finally, I can doodle.’” Before that, her physics professor would just allow her to skip the problems that required sketches for answers. Now, Ms. Lacy says, she is working with the software so that when she takes Physics II she can turn in her completed homework with the rest of the students.

    Sometimes people ask her why she doesn’t just study something easier for blind students, like English or history, Ms. Lacy says. What does she tell them? “Because I’ll get bored.”


    "Textbooks for the Disabled," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, August 28, 2009 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/28/access

    The Association of American Publishers and the University of Georgia this week unveiled an electronic database aimed at making it easier for blind, dyslexic and otherwise impaired college students to get specialized textbooks in time for classes.

    The database, called AccessText,, is designed to centralize the process by which electronic versions of textbooks are requested by colleges and supplied by publishers. Experts say it will allow disabled students to get their textbooks more efficiently, help colleges save money and avoid lawsuits, and protect publishers’ copyrights.

    For students whose disabilities prevent them from using traditional texts, the normally straightforward task of acquiring books for their courses can be tedious and frustrating. Federal law requires that colleges and universities provide disabled students equal access to educational materials, but this is often easier said than done. College officials have to track down and contact the publisher of every textbook that each of its disabled students buys and request an electronic copy. If such a copy exists -- the likelihood shrinks the older the book and the smaller the publisher -- college officials still have to convert the file to a format that can be read by whatever reading aid the student uses. If not, the college has to wait, sometimes weeks, to obtain permission to scan the book and create its own electronic version.

    Once a college has an electronic copy, converting to a readable format can be another complex process, says Sean Keegan, associate director of assistive technology at Stanford University. Math and science texts often arrive as scanned pages, and cannot always be easily read by the character-recognition software the university uses to turn them into standard electronic files, Keegan says. “That can take a longer amount of time to process that material internally and turn it around and give that to the student efficiently,” he says.

    Meanwhile, delays in the process can make it impossible for disabled students to prepare for and participate in classes. “Students need to have a book in time so they can do the assigned reading and study for tests and papers,” says Gaeir Dietrich, interim director of high-tech training for the California Community Colleges system. “So if the book doesn’t come until the term has been in session for three or four weeks, that puts that student very far behind.” Some students have sued colleges over such delays, she says.

    AccessText aims to mitigate these woes by streamlining the request and delivery process, says Ed McCoyd, executive director for accessibility affairs at AAP.

    “There’s a lot of transactional friction taking place currently,” says McCoyd. “What AccessText is trying to do is take some of that out of the transaction by having parties agree to streamlined rules up front.”

    Having colleges submit requests using the AccessText portal should eliminate the need for the publishers to require endless paperwork with each request to protect its copyrights, McCoyd says. Under the system, the copyright protection agreements can be handled once, during registration, and the requester’s bona fides can be verified by a log-in.

    Currently, colleges that get tired of waiting for publishers to process the paperwork and procure an electronic copy of a text sometimes just scan a text themselves to try to satisfy the needs of disabled students in a timely fashion, says Dietrich.

    AccessText is also set up to eliminate the need for different colleges to convert the same text to a readable format once it is acquired. Currently “numerous schools could be doing the exact same thing, converting the same text,” says Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education at the publishers' association. Under the new system, “if one school has already spent the time and the money to convert a file to a format, they could advise the AccessText network, which could then make the info available that it was still available in that format, and that school could share it with another school” -- thereby sparing those colleges the time and resources it would have used to convert the file themselves, he says.

    Eight major publishing houses paid a total of just under $1 million to develop the AccessText network and maintain it through its beta phase, which will end next July. From then on, it will sustain itself by billing member colleges between $375 and $500 annually, depending on size.

    Dietrich notes that community colleges might not benefit from the AccessText network as much as other institutions, since “we have a lot more vocational classes and basic-skills classes, and a lot of those books don’t come through those big publishers, they come through specialized publishers,” she says. “It doesn’t solve that part of the problem for us.”

    The network includes 92 percent of all college textbook publishers and is recruiting even more, according to AAP officials.


    Accounting and Other Books for Sight Impaired "Readers"

    "Archive Makes Over a Million Digital Books Available for Those Who Can't Use Print," by Mary Helen Miller, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 7, 2010 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Archive-Makes-Over-a-Million/23816/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    With a service it started Thursday, the Internet Archive has more than doubled the number of books available to blind people and others who cannot read print books. The nonprofit organization, based in San Francisco, has made more than a million digital books available free in a format that can be downloaded to a device that reads them aloud.

    The Internet Archive has been scanning books and making them available free online since 2005, and the books in the new format are part of the organization's collection of more than two million texts. To make a book accessible for those unable to read print volumes, the Internet Archive uses an automatic process to digitize it into a special format, Daisy.

    The process does not work well for textbooks or other kinds of texts with complex formatting, said Brewster Kahle, the archive's founder and digital librarian. Other organizations, like Bookshare, make textbooks available for people who can't use print books, Mr. Kahle said.

    He added that the Internet Archive's collection is useful for research. "You could find books that are now out of print that you wouldn't find in your library," he said.

    Arielle Silverman, the president of the national association of blind students, said college students are often required to read popular books, which they might be able to get sooner through the new service.

    "The situation right now is that for the majority of books, if we want to obtain them, we have to negotiate with the disabled-students office," said Ms. Silverman, who is a doctoral student at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

    Ms. Silverman said that students sometimes have to wait months for the books they request to be provided in a digital format. Now many more books will be available instantly, she said. Ms. Silverman also said that the Daisy format is preferable to the traditional audio book because it lets the user skip around easily.

    The Internet Archive will make all new additions to its library available in Daisy if the text's format allows. It is seeking book donations, and it has promised to pay for digitization of the first 10,000 volumes it receives.

    Internet Archive --- http://www.archive.org/

     


    "Virtual Worlds Turn Therapeutic for Autistic Disorders," by Katherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i18/18a02601.htm

    The 19-year-old woman glares at her computer screen, furious because her roommate wants a friend to move in with them, rent-free. But instead of calmly asserting herself, she begins yelling, and her virtual world is put on pause.

    Then the woman replays the encounter, which occurred not with a live roommate, but between digital characters, or avatars, guided by a clinician in the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas. The woman and the clinician consider how she could have handled the situation better

    Then the woman is back in the virtual town, created specially for patients who, like her, have Asperger's syndrome. The disorder is a mild form of autism marked by normal intelligence and a variety of cognitive defects, including troubles with social interaction or adapting to change.

    Asperger's patients have been treated by role-playing with real-life therapists. The virtual-reality town at the medical center is a new twist. "The clinicians can change the virtual world to increase the complexity of the exercise, control for sensory overload, provide motivation, and record feedback. It's very safe," says the center's executive director, Sandra B. Chapman.

    The university uses a platform from Second Life, the popular virtual world, in which patients go to an "island" customized for therapeutic purposes. The island was built by undergraduates in the university's game-design program, guided by the center's clinicians.

    Patients design their avatars to look as much like themselves as possible, and can readily access programmed gestures to make their likenesses smile, shrug, or express impatience by tapping their feet.

    Building Social Skills

    Virtual reality is gaining traction as a form of psychotherapy at many academic medical centers, says Zachary Rosenthal, director of the Cognitive Behavioral Research and Treatment Program at Duke University Medical Center. It "allows you a wider, more flexible platform, with a broader variety of cues and potential scenarios to build social skills," he says. Mr. Rosenthal has created a virtual crackhouse at Duke to help addicts control their craving.

    In Dallas, says Ms. Chapman, Asperger's patients experience the same emotions they would in a direct encounter. "They're interacting in real time with real people in surprisingly realistic scenarios," she explains. They make small talk, using headsets and microphones, and settle conflicts with people in virtual restaurants, shops, offices, and parks. These people are mostly clinicians and volunteers represented by their own avatars.

    Researchers in Dallas also conduct brain-imaging and neurocognitive tests on the patients before and after the virtual-world therapy sessions. The three patients they have tested so far have shown improvements in several areas, including "social appropriateness." They are less likely, for instance, to make inappropriate jokes and more likely to be able to read a person's body language.

    Matt Kratz, a 35-year-old graduate student with Asperger's syndrome who has been treated in the program, says he feels more confident making small talk, especially with women, since practicing in virtual reality.

    "I'm usually not good with someone face to face," he says. "I tend to feel awkward and put my foot in my mouth."

    In his virtual world, Mr. Kratz was able to see, for example, that an innocent comment about a rose on a woman's shirt could be misconstrued as a pickup line, and how his flat tone when talking with a friend who had just received a promotion could be construed as a lack of concern. "I feel like I'm more prepared now," he says, "when I go out into the real world."


    "Finding a College That Suits Students With Special Needs," by Susan Shallenbarger, The Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2008 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122160388151245179.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal


    YouTube: American Sign Language University --- www.youtube.com/user/billvicars


    "How Armbands Can Translate Sign Language," by Rachel Metz, MIT's Technology Review, February 17, 2016 ---
    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600818/how-armbands-can-translate-sign-language/#/set/id/600825/

    Jensen Comment
    This is a promising way for someone good at sign language to communicate with others who cannot read sign language. Next would be a vice versa technology.


    From Gallaudet University: 
    People who are deaf or hard of hearing rely heavily on visual cues, regardless of the specific means of communication. If you suspect a user cannot hear you, try some of the strategies suggested below
    ---
    http://libguides.gallaudet.edu/c.php?g=773982


    PEPNet Northeast at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf - RIT --- http://www.netac.rit.edu/index.html

    "Signing Up for a Video Dictionary for Deaf People," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 27, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3033&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    As many as two million people in the United States use American Sign Language, but not every user knows what every one of the thousands of signs mean. And there is no dictionary in which to look them up—sign dictionaries are organized by the written definition of the sign, not by the physical movement.

    Now a team of researchers at Boston University is working on an interactive video project that would allow someone to trace an unfamiliar sign in front of a Web camera and have a computer program interpret and explain its meaning, according to the Associated Press.

    The researchers, working with a three-year, $900,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, are trying to capture 3,000 ASL signs on video. Their goal is to develop a “backwards” dictionary that will allow people to look up any unfamiliar gesture.

    If a deaf person signs to a someone who doesn’t understand the sign, that person could sit down in front of a computer, repeat the sign into a Web cam, and the program would identify possible translations by recognizing the sign’s visual properties.

    May 28, 2008 reply from William Sloboda [william.sloboda@GALLAUDET.EDU]

    Dear Bob
    Thanks for bringing this to our attention! I hope that it will work since every deaf person signs any signfrom a tiny bit to a lot more differently than the next deaf person does. This promises to be a longer term project.

    Bill

    William Sloboda, MBA, CPA Associate Professor of Accounting and Accounting, Program Coordinator Department of Business Gallaudet University 800 Florida Ave. NE Washington, D C 20002-3695 202-651-5312


    PEPNet Northeast at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf - RIT --- http://www.netac.rit.edu/index.html


    On occasion in the past the Counseling Center at Trinity University notified me when a student had dyslexia. In most cases the student requested extra time on quizzes and examinations. If you discover that a student has dyslexia, it may help that student  if you request that the student sit near the front of the classroom as well as giving more time for examinations.

    "Study Unravels Mystery of Dyslexia:  Children With Dyslexia Can't Focus on Repeated Speech Sounds, Researchers Say," by Kelli Miller Stacy, WebMD, November 11, 2009 ---
    http://children.webmd.com/news/20091111/study-unravels-mystery-of-dyslexia

    New research may provide an answer as to why children with dyslexia often have difficulty hearing someone talk in a noisy room.

    Dyslexia is a common, language-based learning disability that makes it difficult to read, spell, and write. It is unrelated to a person's intelligence. Studies have also shown that patients with dyslexia can have a hard time hearing when there is a lot of background noise, but the reasons for this haven't been exactly clear.

    Now, scientists at Northwestern University say that in dyslexia, the part of the brain that helps perceive speech in a noisy environment is unable to fine-tune or sharpen the incoming signals.

    "The ability to sharpen or fine-tune repeating elements is crucial to hearing speech in noise because it allows for superior 'tagging' of voice pitch, an important cue in picking out a particular voice within background noise," Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern University's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, says in a news release.

    The brainstem is the first place in the brain to receive and process auditory (hearing) signals. It is supposed to automatically focus on the information, such as repeated bits of speech, and sharpen it so you can discern someone's voice from, say, the noise of a chaotic classroom. The new study, however, provides the first biological evidence that children with dyslexia have a deficit in this auditory process. As a result, the brainstem cannot focus on relevant, predictable, and repeating sounds.

    The new evidence is based on a brain activity study of children with both good and poor reading skills. The children wore earphones that repeated the sound "da" in different intervals while watching an unrelated video. The first time, "da" repeated over and over again in a repetitive manner. In a second session, the sound "da" occurred randomly along with other speech sounds, in a variable manner. Electrodes taped to each child's scalp recorded the brain's response to the sounds.

    The children also underwent standard reading and spelling tests and were asked to repeat sentences provided to them amid different noise levels.

    "Even though the children's attention was focused on a movie, the auditory system of the good readers 'tuned in' to the repeatedly presented speech sound context and sharpened the sound's encoding. In contrast, poor readers did not show an improvement in encoding with repetition," Bharath Chandrasekaran, one of the study's authors, says in a statement.

    The tests also revealed that children without dyslexia were better able to repeat sentences they had heard in noisy environments. However, the researchers noted enhanced brain activity of the children with dyslexia during the session when the "da" sound was variably played.

    "The study brings us closer to understanding sensory processing in children who experience difficulty excluding irrelevant noise. It provides an objective index that can help in the assessment of children with reading problems," Kraus says.

    The findings, which appear in this week's issue of Neuron, may also help teachers and caregivers devise better strategies for teaching children with dyslexia. For example, the study authors say children with dyslexia who have trouble sorting out voices in noisy classrooms may benefit simply by sitting closer to the teacher.

    Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difficulties in Adults ---
    Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difficulties in Adults - writix.co.uk


    Speak to Me Only With Thine Eyes:  The Sound of Colors for the Blind
    Researchers at the Balearic Islands University in Spain are developing a device that will allow blind children to distinguish colors by associating each shade to a specific sound. The project, dubbed COL-diesis, is based on the synesthesia principle--a confusion of senses where people involuntarily relate the real information gathered by one sense with a different sensation. "Only 4 percent of the population are true synesthetes, but everybody else is influenced by associations between sounds and colors," said Jessica Rossi, one of the coordinators of the project. For example, people tend to associate light colors with high-pitched sounds. "We want to give the user a device that allows [blind children] to chose specific associations of colors and sounds based on each user's sensitivity," Rossi said. The device will include a sensor the blind kids will wear on their fingertips to touch the objects they want to know the colors of, and a bracelet that will transform the color into a sound. The researchers expect to have their prototype ready by September.
    Maria José Vińas, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 23, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3109&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
    Jensen Question
    Do we need multiple sounds for some colors? For example, there's Wall Street green, Al Gore's green, vegetable green, freshman green, and seasick green.

    Bob Jensen's threads on technology aids for handicapped learners are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

    Jensen Comment for Accountants
    Proposed (actually now optional) fair value financial statements have so many shades of accuracy regarding measurements of financial items. Cash counts are highly accurate along with cash received from sales of financial instruments. Unrealized earnings on actively traded bonds and stocks are quite accurate according to FAS 157. Value estimates of interest rate swaps may be inaccurate but inaccuracy doesn't matter much since these value changes will all wash out to zero when the swaps mature. Value estimates of most anything highly unique, like parcels of real estate, are highly subjective and prone to fraud among appraisal sharks.

    Could we add information to fair value financial statements by colorizing them according to degrees of uncertainty and accuracy? And could we add sounds of uncertainty so that SEC-recommended bracelets could listen to the soothing waltzes cash of Strauss and the rancorous hard rock shares in a real estate development company?

    Bob Jensen's threads on visualization of multivariate data are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm 
    I think the above document is interesting, but I never get any feedback about it.
    There are all sorts of research opportunities in visualization of multivariate fair value financial performance!

    Bob Jensen's threads on alternative valuations in accounting are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#UnderlyingBases


    "Video:  Deaf Graduates Tackle Move to Hearing World,"  By Ashley Marchand, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 25, 2010  ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Video-Deaf-Graduates-Tackle/65668/

    American Speech-Language-Hearing Association --- http://www.asha.org/


    "Addressing the Needs of Students with Disabilities in Math (Part 1)," by Patricia Deubel, T.H.E. Journal, June 2008 ---
    http://www.thejournal.com/articles/22789


    Question
    What are some of the features of UserView from TechSmith

    Some of the reviews of the revised “free” Sound Recorder in Windows Vista are negative. It’s good to learn that Richard Campbell is having a good experience with it when recording audio and when translating the audio into text files --- http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2006/05/24/windows-vista-sound-recorder 

    For those of you on older systems as well as Vista there is a free recorder called Audacity that I like --- http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ 
    I really like Audacity. There are some Wiki tutorials at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/tutorials 
    Some video tutorials are linked at http://youtube.com/results?search_query=audacity+tutorial&search=Search 

    I have some dated threads on speech recognition at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/speech.htm  Mac users can find options at http://www.macspeech.com/ 

    In addition, I like Camtasia (recording screen shots and camera video) and Dubit (for recording audio and editing audio) from TechSmith --- http://www.techsmith.com/ 
    TechSmith   products are very good, but they are not free downloads.

    UserView --- http://www.techsmith.com/uservue/features.asp 
    TechSmith has a newer product called UserView that really sounds exciting, although I’ve not yet tried it. It allows you to view and record what is happening on someone else’s computer like a student’s computer. Multiple computers can be viewed at the same time. Images and text can be recorded. Pop-up comments can be inserted by the instructor to text written by students.

    UserView can be used for remote testing ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus

    Userview offers great hope for teaching disabled students such as sight and/or hearing impaired students --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped


    Connect With Accessible Resources
    AccessNSDL --- http://accessnsdl.org/


    "Virtual Worlds Turn Therapeutic for Autistic Disorders," by Katherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i18/18a02601.htm

    The 19-year-old woman glares at her computer screen, furious because her roommate wants a friend to move in with them, rent-free. But instead of calmly asserting herself, she begins yelling, and her virtual world is put on pause.

    Then the woman replays the encounter, which occurred not with a live roommate, but between digital characters, or avatars, guided by a clinician in the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas. The woman and the clinician consider how she could have handled the situation better

    Then the woman is back in the virtual town, created specially for patients who, like her, have Asperger's syndrome. The disorder is a mild form of autism marked by normal intelligence and a variety of cognitive defects, including troubles with social interaction or adapting to change.

    Asperger's patients have been treated by role-playing with real-life therapists. The virtual-reality town at the medical center is a new twist. "The clinicians can change the virtual world to increase the complexity of the exercise, control for sensory overload, provide motivation, and record feedback. It's very safe," says the center's executive director, Sandra B. Chapman.

    The university uses a platform from Second Life, the popular virtual world, in which patients go to an "island" customized for therapeutic purposes. The island was built by undergraduates in the university's game-design program, guided by the center's clinicians.

    Patients design their avatars to look as much like themselves as possible, and can readily access programmed gestures to make their likenesses smile, shrug, or express impatience by tapping their feet.

    Building Social Skills

    Virtual reality is gaining traction as a form of psychotherapy at many academic medical centers, says Zachary Rosenthal, director of the Cognitive Behavioral Research and Treatment Program at Duke University Medical Center. It "allows you a wider, more flexible platform, with a broader variety of cues and potential scenarios to build social skills," he says. Mr. Rosenthal has created a virtual crackhouse at Duke to help addicts control their craving.

    In Dallas, says Ms. Chapman, Asperger's patients experience the same emotions they would in a direct encounter. "They're interacting in real time with real people in surprisingly realistic scenarios," she explains. They make small talk, using headsets and microphones, and settle conflicts with people in virtual restaurants, shops, offices, and parks. These people are mostly clinicians and volunteers represented by their own avatars.

    Researchers in Dallas also conduct brain-imaging and neurocognitive tests on the patients before and after the virtual-world therapy sessions. The three patients they have tested so far have shown improvements in several areas, including "social appropriateness." They are less likely, for instance, to make inappropriate jokes and more likely to be able to read a person's body language.

    Matt Kratz, a 35-year-old graduate student with Asperger's syndrome who has been treated in the program, says he feels more confident making small talk, especially with women, since practicing in virtual reality.

    "I'm usually not good with someone face to face," he says. "I tend to feel awkward and put my foot in my mouth."

    In his virtual world, Mr. Kratz was able to see, for example, that an innocent comment about a rose on a woman's shirt could be misconstrued as a pickup line, and how his flat tone when talking with a friend who had just received a promotion could be construed as a lack of concern. "I feel like I'm more prepared now," he says, "when I go out into the real world."


    How to Teach With "Start" and "Remote Control" in Windows

    For over two years, after we bought our retirement home in New Hampshire, and before I retired from Trinity University in Texas, I used GoToMyPC to remotely operate my desktop computer in Texas from hotel rooms and my home in NH during summers, holiday breaks, a sabbatical leave, and other visits to NH. GoToMyPC works great and did penetrate my university's firewall. This is an annual-fee based option for remotely controlling your office computer or the computer of a friend or student in a distant location --- https://www.gotomypc.com

    I now use Cisco's VPN which is free to me when I want to download files into various servers on the Trinity University Network. But VPN is not quite the same as a remote control system for operating a distant computer --- http://compnetworking.about.com/od/vpn/p/ciscovpnclient.htm

    Since I no longer have an office and desktop computer in Texas, I no longer use GoToMyPC. However, the other day I had call to use a free utility that is built into the Windows operating system. I simply clicked on "Start" and "Remote Control" and gave a Trinity University computer technician remote control of my PC (actually it's joint control since we both had control of my computer). This remote control can be granted for any specified amount of time (e.g., 20 minutes or two hours) and can be granted without having to give your password to the remote operator, although you can also choose the password-required option.

    Note especially that the pre-specified time allotment is a key advantage over the free  "Start" and "Remote Control" alternative relative to the fee-based GoToMyPC alternative. However, GoToMyPC has some key advantages when the remote user is on public computers such as Internet cafes and public library computers.

    The remotely located technician named Gabe and I were both on the telephone and jointly operating my computer. He performed some repairs and updates to my computer's email system while I watched. He also explained what he was doing on the phone. This saved us both a lot of time relative to the typical technical support phone call in which the technician asks you over the phone to do a sequence of complicated things on your computer. You have to fumble with your keyboard and phone at the same time, and the technician sits and waits doing nothing for periods of time. It is much faster to use "Start" and "Remote Control" and let the technician do the work while you watch and listen. I might add that I did not have to turn off my firewall for this, although firewalls may be a problem for some users.

    It suddenly struck me that  "Start" and "Remote Control" might be a useful option for teaching one-on-one to a student at a remote site ranging from an on-campus dorm room to a site half way around the world. It would be much more efficient than trying to explain something technical on the phone with the student and then having to wait until the student makes it work on her/his computer.

    This could be especially useful as a free alternative for remotely teaching certain types of handicapped students such as students having limited use of their arms or hands. Special course materials could even be designed with the  "Start" and "Remote Control" features in mind.

    It also struck me that Gabe and other technicians are often doing the same things over and over with computer users. It would save a lot of money and time if technicians like Gabe and Microsoft made Camtasia videos explaining common repetitive solutions to computer problems --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm


    What is the Landmark Act?
    What is the Landmark College? 

    "Reaching Students With Learning Disabilities," by David Epstein, Inside Higher Ed, October 25, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/10/25/landmark

    According to a report by the American Council on Education, the number of full-time college freshmen with learning disabilities — dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactive disorder are among the most common — more than doubled in the decade leading up to 2000, to nearly 27,000.

    Betit said the spike is because more of those students are being identified than in the past, and that, now that colleges are recognizing their own students with learning disabilities, it is time to learn more about educating them. A large part of Landmark’s intent is to use the grant to make information about teaching techniques available online, so teachers at colleges that do not cater only to students with learning disabilities can easily access information. If it works at the five partner colleges, Landmark hopes to share its wisdom more widely. “We’ll never be a big college,” Betit said. “But we want to share what we know.”

    Many of the shared techniques will focus on expanding the available types of sensory input a student can use for learning. “I don’t know how many college classrooms have boxes of Legos” like Landmark classrooms, he said, noting that some students “are more tactile, and need to grasp an idea literally, rather than intellectually.”

    But Betit said other colleges don’t necessarily need to go to Legos to better accommodate students with learning disabilities. He said sometimes easy adjustments, such as using more graphics, can help students who are visual learners. And other strategies that focus on basic skills that students with learning disabilities often have not developed — such as time management, and study skills — can benefit all of the students in a conventional college classroom.

    One of the systems that Landmark uses, “master notebooks,” gives students a separate notebook for each course that is divided into sections like “ideas,” and “curriculum.” In the “notes” section, students use a two-column note-taking system that uses paper with a large left-hand margin, for students to organize major ideas of a course, and then they can fill in details pertaining to each idea on the right.

    Betit encourages techniques as simple as a daily checklist to help teach time management. “Better time management is something all students can use,” he said, so it shouldn’t be difficult to incorporate into a conventional college classroom.

    It isn’t clear yet exactly which new teaching methods will be carried out in classrooms beyond Landmark, but the partner colleges will start by educating their own employees. Charles Blocksidge, vice president of organizational development and the Frieda G. Shapira Center for Learning, which works with students with learning disabilities at Allegheny County, wants to adapt some of the training techniques of Landmark personnel to develop a training program for “our support services personnel,” he said, but also for faculty members.

    Susan Trist, disabilities support coordinator at Western Nevada, said she works with around 100 students with learning disabilities, and hopes that, through contact with Landmark, she can be kept up to date on prevailing thought about teaching methods, “and especially on assistive technology,” she said. The students Trist works with are mixed in with other college students, and she will sometimes “have the exam read to them if they have a visual processing disorder, or get them textbooks on CD,” she said. Trist said she “is anxious to hear about” the techniques Landmark faculty use to accommodate students. “We need to start a community of people to share best practices,” she said.

    The Landmark Disabilities Act is celebrated at http://www.eeoc.gov/press/7-27-99.html

    The Landmark College site is at http://www.landmarkcollege.org/

    I might add the following from accounting education:
    Sherry Mills and Cathleen Burns won the American Accounting Associations Innovation in Accounting Education Award by using a Lego project to teach cost accounting --- http://aaahq.org/awards/awrd6win.htm 

    Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difficulties in Adults ---
    Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difficulties in Adults - writix.co.uk


    "Case Study," TechSmith Promotion Release, September 2008 --- http://www.techsmith.com/morae/casestudy/landmarkcollege.asp?NLC=edu57

    Landmark College in Putney, Vermont, is one of the only accredited colleges in the United States designed exclusively for students with dyslexia, attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), and other specific learning disabilities.

    In 2001, the college started the Landmark College Institute for Research and Training (LCIRT). The Institute promotes understanding and support for the needs of individuals with learning disabilities at the regional, national, and international level, working with college and high school systems and educators to help students realize their academic potential. The Institute develops and disseminates educational research and theory-based teaching practices that set the standard for educating students with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorders.

    The Institute also houses several significant federal grant projects that support the continued development of innovative practices, publications, and research projects.

    Before we had the Universal Design and Usability Lab, much of our work was anecdotal – now that we have Morae, it’s undeniable. Morae has enabled us to conduct research and communicate results in ways we never thought possible, and we are able to have a positive impact in the way other organizations design learning content and technologies.

    You can read (and watch a video) more about Morae at http://www.techsmith.com/morae.asp

     


    Eye Controlled Computer for the Disabled
    The MyTobii P10 is an eye-controlled communication device aimed at users with ALS, MS and other neurological disabilities. The unit integrates a 15-inch screen, a computer and an eye-control device for easy portability. It simply requires the user to sit in front of it and follow a dot for 30 seconds to calibrate the eye tracker and then it's ready to go. The MyTobii P10 maintains precision performance in any light conditions and whether or not the user wears glasses or contact lenses and will not be fudged by head movements. The unit, which can be mounted on desks, beds and wheelchairs, will sell for $17,000 but we're hoping insurance may cover some of that.
    "Eye Controlled Computer for the Disabled," Wired News, August 10, 2006 --- http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/#1535962


    Text-to-Speech (Audio) is Quite Good Unless There Are Words Not in a Standard Dictionary

    Try it out at http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal
    The free software tries on such terms as "homoscedasticity" and "heteroscedasticity."

    This software is useful for blind persons.

    The pioneer in this technology is Bell Labs.

    Also see http://atto.buffalo.edu/registered/ATBasics/Curriculum/Reading/textScreen.php 

    Bob Jensen's threads on  speech/text recognition are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Speech.htm


    Question
    What made the old Sony Walkman better than all new "audiobooks" for the blind?

    As a library trying to implement digital audiobooks for our patrons, the dreadful state of player technology presents us with a serious obstacle ("Getting an Earful of Printed Words -- Downloads, Small Devices Draw a Wider Audience of Audiobook Listeners," Personal Journal, Sept. 28). The nearly 30-year-old Sony Walkman is easy to grasp and can be used by anyone with about 10 seconds of training. The controls can be manipulated with ease in the dark or by a blind person. It is cheap, reliable and has a consistent form factor. But the new, portable digital media players, regardless of price and maker, suffer from overengineering, and their features are focused on the music customer, ignoring the needs of the audio book user. None of the new devices can be used by the blind or visually impaired because the controls have no tactile feedback, are multifunction and ridiculously small. The displays, when they exist, are too small even for people with good eyesight. The process of downloading the book, transferring it to the device and then trying to keep your place while "reading" over a series of hours, days or weeks is daunting to the best and impossible for many. Many users give up after trying it once or twice.
    Vern Mastel, "New Audiobook Technology Frustrates Blind Listeners," The Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2006 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116017662453985426.html?mod=todays_us_opinion


    New technology transforming life for the deaf
    Multi-function phones, webcams and other new technological innovations have transformed the lives of the hard of hearing, delegates at an international congress of the deaf said Tuesday. "Technology is important for the deaf community. There's the internet, internet, webcams, email, SMS and chat systems," said Amparo Minguet, director of training at the institute for the deaf in the eastern city of Valencia. Minguet finds her little multi-function phone a godsend and like other participants at the congress of the World Federation of the Deaf under way in Madrid, finds new technology a boon bolstering face-to-face communication at an event such as this. Communicating via sign language, she points to her small flatscreen phone which she has placed on her knees after first activating the vibration mode. "Thanks to that I can easily stay in touch through receiving texts and checking my voice mail," Minguet reveals.
    PhysOrg, July 17, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news103887393.html


    Before reading the article below, you may want to read about Asperger's Syndrome at
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger%27s_Syndrome

    "Higher Education and Asperger's Syndrome," by Jennifer Lynn Hughes, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 26, 2009 ---
    http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i40/40a02701.htm?utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en

    Two years ago, one of my students came to my office and told me that she wanted to major in psychology. It was her second try at Agnes Scott College, having dropped out a decade earlier. During that time she was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, and she was back to try again, armed with knowledge about her diagnosis.

    This time she's making it because she's getting the help she needs.

    Asperger's syndrome, first listed in the American Psychiatric Association's manual of mental disorders in 1994, affects two to six of every 1,000 Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health. People who have the disorder often have social difficulties, verbal and nonverbal communication problems, and repetitive and restricted activities. Students with Asperger's are often seen as eccentric or odd, but many have a normal or higher-than-average IQ, as well as an exceptional talent in one specific area — traits that make them likely to want to attend college. For such students, however, college presents significant challenges related to adjustment, organization, and social interaction. They often experience sensory overload and misunderstandings because of their overly literal thinking.

    The Americans With Disabilities Act is clear that colleges must make reasonable accommodations for students with Asperger's if those students request them. But the law doesn't define "reasonable accommodations," and campus disability offices vary in what they offer. They are having to learn as they go, because unfortunately there is little published literature about how to help, and what information does exist is not presented in a comprehensive list. The most common accommodations that disability offices use include additional time on exams, alternative exam locations, tutoring, or mentors. But much more can and should be done.

    To start with, several weeks before orientation, residence-life staff members should give students with Asperger's a schedule of activities for the first week of college and an overview of what to expect. While such schedules are of course helpful for all students, they are especially so for those with Asperger's, as they can have difficulty adjusting to change.

    Some experts argue that students with Asperger's should live at home during the first year of college, but if that is not possible or the student chooses not to, a single room might be advisable. A quiet dormitory room can provide a safe space. Also, dining halls can be a challenge because of sensory overload, so students with Asperger's often skip meals if not given alternatives, such as residence halls with kitchens.

    During orientation, it is especially helpful for students to get a tour of the campus that includes the bookstore, the tutoring center, and the public-safety, disability, and counseling offices. Again, while such tours are helpful for most students, those with Asperger's may need them even more because they often are not skilled at finding or taking advantage of resources. They often don't know where to go for help, so the disability office should have information on the college Web site, with a contact person specified.

    Students with Asperger's should be encouraged by their families to register with the disability office. Disability staff members can be valuable sources of academic advice and support. They can help students set up time-management systems, which are especially beneficial because students with Asperger's often have problems knowing how much time it takes to accomplish tasks (many students can benefit, for example, from programming their cellphones with timers and reminder messages). Staff members should encourage students with Asperger's to take breaks between classes and to assume a lighter course load in the first year. Finally, staff members should continue to keep in contact throughout the school year, all the while watching for depression, anxiety, or eating disorders — and recommend counseling if needed.

    Professors, if they know of a student's diagnosis, can also be a tremendous help. They should be aware, for example, that students with Asperger's usually have strong rote memory skills but can get fixated on details and be unable to see the big picture. Students with Asperger's also often display classroom behaviors that may seem disrespectful. However, if a professor knows that a student is, for example, showing poor eye contact because he or she finds it distracting to look at people and listen or think at the same time, the professor might not misinterpret such behavior as rudeness or inattention.

    Students with Asperger's also can have problems interacting with others because of their inability to pick up on social and emotional cues. For example, they may interrupt others to change the topic of conversation to one that they prefer to talk about. Professors can help monitor classroom interactions and smooth over such interruptions (while making sure not to reveal a student's diagnosis, of course).

    Faculty members can help students with Asperger's succeed in many other ways if they:

    Give clear instructions on assignments, including deadlines.

    Provide organization and structure to lectures by summarizing important points from the prior class, stating the key information to be covered that day at the beginning of each lecture, and summarizing main ideas at the end of class.

    Ensure that some visual learning is included in their courses.

    Share PowerPoint slides with students with Asperger's before class.

    Ensure that student work groups include students with Asperger's, even if that means assigning the groups.

    Allow students with Asperger's to send assignments by e-mail so they do not lose or forget them.

    Help them break down assignments into manageable parts.

    Encourage them to use computers to type assignments and even to take exams, as they usually have poor handwriting.

    Assign peer tutors to clarify assignments and supplement notes.

    Encourage students with Asperger's to seek help at the writing center, use note-takers assigned by the disability office, work on study questions, attend review sessions, and write papers without original sources at hand to avoid inadvertent plagiarism.

    Even if only a few staff and faculty members put some of these strategies in place, students with Asperger's can greatly benefit. By being proactive, we can help prevent them from getting too frustrated, which can increase their retention and graduation rates. The more educated and aware a campus is about the needs of students with Asperger's, the better their chances are of succeeding in college.

    Jennifer Lynn Hughes is an associate professor of psychology and vice chair of the psychology department at Agnes Scott College.

    June 23, 2009 reply from Linda A Kidwell, University of Wyoming [lkidwell@UWYO.EDU]

    I have a girl in my scout troop with Asperger's, and much of this article is spot-on. Her mother tells me that many people we used to perceive as nerdy computer-geek types were likely people with this syndrome. Many are drawn to computer science because of its high level of technical detail and the lack of a high level of social interaction. Many with Asperger's, according to the mom, are fascinated with the minute details and will talk endlessly about them but demonstrate complete lack of interest in topics of interest to others -- I have certainly observed this in her case. Accounting is unlikely to be as appealing in its modern form because of the high level of social engagement required, as opposed to the stereotypical green eyeshades days.

    This thread has also reminded me of my experience with a hearing-impaired student a few years back. I made relatively minor modifications for her, such as making sure I faced the class when I spoke and assigning her to a group with her friends. I usually break up cliques, but I knew that her friends understood how to work effectively and inclusively with her whereas others might get impatient with repeating themselves, etc. What I didn't expect was that this made me an exceptional professor for her. I got invited to speak to faculty groups about working with the deaf and hearing impaired, honored for my efforts, etc. I just thought I was doing my job! But apparently, sadly, many faculty are not so reasonable about making adjustments. Students with Asperger's are likely to be much more high-need, in some courses especially, so they must have a pretty tough go of it.

    Linda K.

    June 24, 2009 reply from Rowena Rayner [r.rayner@QUT.EDU.AU]

    Hi Linda,

    Thank you for sharing your story. You are right, people with a hearing loss do not want to be treated any differently from other people though just understanding and considering their circumstances and their requirements to adapt to their environment is important. (A hearing loss has nothing to do with a person's intelligence.) Giving this consideration, you will always be an exceptional professor.

    Rowena R (A student with a hearing loss.)

    You can read some of Linkda Kidwell's earlier messages about teaching hearing-impaired students below.


    May 9, 2006 message from  Linda Kidwell, University of Wyoming [lkidwell@UWYO.EDU]

    There's a lot we can do as professors to make things so much easier for students who are hearing impaired -- it just takes a little thought! I'm certainly no expert, but I've learned more about this lately and wanted to pass it along to this group of concerned educators on AECM.

    I participated in a panel session here at the University of Wyoming last week about teaching the deaf and hard of hearing. I was invited to be on the panel because I had been recommended by a hard of hearing student who was in my auditing class last fall. I didn't think I had really earned my way onto this panel, but apparently so many professors do not think about the simple things they can do, that those who do stand out.

    Here are some tips (some I used intuitively, others I learned about on the panel from some profoundly deaf students):

    1.
    Face the class. If this means preparing power point slides or writing on an overhead projector instead of facing the board, do it.

    2.
    If you are a fast talker, slow down a little bit. Everyone will appreciate it, and here's your excuse to make the effort!

    3.
    Find out whether your student wants an interpreter. Your university should provide one under ADA if you're in the U.S. But sometimes students do not want them. This was the case for my student who has lost hearing gradually and is still not fluent in sign language. For her it was an unwelcome distraction, so we didn't do it. But if they want one, be sure you stay in communication about schedule changes.

    4.
    Repeat student questions from behind your hearing impaired student. If he or she isn't looking at the right questioner immediately, the chance to hear or read lips has been lost. It's a good idea anyway but essential under these circumstances.

    5.
    Plan ahead if showing videos. You may have a disabilities office at your university that can prepare transcripts of the video if you give them enough notice. There is also some capability in some of the video playing software to produce closed captioning, but give yourself time to get help from the IT folks so you can use it when needed. (I haven't tried it, but apparently Windows Media Player and others can). Be willing to allow your student to watch the video a few times outside of class time with an interpreter, so they can take in the translation and the pictures without having to look back and forth in a frenzy. With a TV monitor in a class room only, your deaf student has to choose either the video or the translator, as both can't be in view at the same time.

    6.
    Be flexible with group work. Even if you (like me) prefer to assign groups, let your deaf student choose at least one member of the group or assign someone you have seen that student work with, and make that group small (no more than 4). Deaf students have already identified friends who understand their strengths and frustrations in working with hearing students, and they need an ally. If you assign your student to a group he or she does not normally work with, the other students may be insensitive, or more likely just oblivious, to how their group dynamics need to adjust. And groups any larger than 3 or 4 tend to be too frustrating for a deaf student. Just think for a moment how group members tend to interrupt each other or talk over each other as they deliberate. This is very difficult for a hearing impaired student to deal with, and smaller groups mitigate the risk of that student just disengaging.

    7.
    Here's one I would never have thought of on my own. Think about how native English speakers learn grammar. Yes, we get taught the rules in school, but we also develop a feel for what is right -- what sounds right and what sounds wrong (okay, I hear the jokes now, but think about it). For years I have told my students to read their papers aloud to themselves as an excellent grammar check. Well a student who has been deaf most of his or her life has never developed that feel for proper grammar. And ASL, the most common sign language, is not a literal translation at all. Therefore written English is essentially equivalent to "English as a second language" to a deaf student. Keep that in mind when assigning and grading written work. If you make any accomodations for foreign students, the same ones are pertinent for deaf students. Of course if you don't then you shouldn't here either. Obviously this is more of an issue with essay questions on exams than on writing assignments that have the time to be polished.

    8.
    If you are using audio materials from your textbook, ask the publisher about versions for deaf students or transcripts. PWC was very diligent about this one I made a request for help with their Alchemy case materials. I would hope the textbook publishers would be accomodating as well.

    Those are the issues we discussed in this session. I don't know how often I'll bump into this issue, but I'd certainly enjoy hearing other suggestions from you. I already know I'll be on this panel again next year, so your advice would be welcome and passed on to other interested folks.

    Linda K.

    May 9 reply from Judy Fisher [judy.fisher@SAINTLEO.EDU]

    A great post, Linda, thank you. I would just like to add one thing, based on an experience I had. I had a deaf student in my intermediate accounting class several years ago. She chose not to have an interpreter and told me she could read lips, so I was very conscientious about facing her directly when I lectured.

    This student sat to my left, and not too long into the semester I noticed that the students on the right side of the room seemed a little disgruntled. I quickly realized that, in accommodating my deaf student, I always seemed to be addressing only the left side of the classroom (even when I was answering questions from students on the right side of the room). As a result, the students on the right felt like they were getting a "cold shoulder" from me.

    The upshot was that I spoke with the students on the right side of the room and explained the situation. That resolved the matter, and we all had a great semester!

    With regards,
    Judy

    May 9, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

    Thank you Linda and Judy!

    The leading university for the deaf is Gallaudet University at http://www.gallaudet.edu/

    There is a good links page on this topic at http://www.gallaudet.edu/x412.xml

    If it is all right with you, I will add your modules to my document entitled "Technology Aids for the Handicapped and Learning Challenged" --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped 

    Bob Jensen

    May 17, 2006 reply from Allen Ford [amfnbt@rit.edu]

    Bob, et al,

    My contribution here is twofold. First, to elaborate on the reference to Gallaudet by adding it the leading Liberal Arts university for the deaf. Secondly, at Rochester Institute of Technology deaf students are provided an array of support services that range from note-takers and faculty tutors, to interpreters and C-pint captionists at seven of the university’s colleges. The eighth college, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, is the leading technical college for deaf and hard-of-hearing students with an accounting AS degree program that may lead to direct entry into the RIT’s College of Business.

    Glad to see this discussion and sensitive posts.

    Allen Ford
    Business Studies Department
    NTID, Rochester Institute of Technology

    Rochester, NY Allen.Ford@rit.edu 

    From the Scout Report on June 4, 2010

    AbiWord 2.8.5 --- http://www.abisource.com/ 

    AbiWord is a nice alternative for those individuals looking for a word processor application that is entirely free. Several of the most notable features include a built in web service which allows users to share documents and an annotation feature that is fully integrated. The support for the application is quite good, and there's an extensive user manual and FAQ on the website. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000, XP, and Vista as well as Linux.

     

     


    From Gallaudet University
    Deaf Education Information Center from the Clerc Center --- http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/

    edX Distance Education: Sign Language Structure, Learning, and Change --- www.edx.org/course/sign-language-structure-learning-change-georgetownx-slsx-401-01x


    American Sign Language University --- http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/


    National Federation of the Blind --- http://www.nfb.org/


    "Seeing-Eye Computer Guides for the Blind," by Louise Knapp, Wired News, March 30, 2004 --- http://www.wired.com/news/gizmos/0,1452,62810,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html 

    "Computer algorithms process the images and extract information from them to give the user information about what they are looking at," said Nikolaos Bourbakis, professor at Wright State University's College of Engineering and Computer Science in Dayton, Ohio.

    Users can program iCare to feed them information continuously or only when prompted by a question, such as "What is directly in front of me?" or "Who just walked into the room?"

    So far, iCare's greatest talent is its ability to translate type into spoken words. The iCare-Reader translates text into a synthesized voice using optical character recognition software and other software that compensates for different lighting conditions and orientations.

    David Paul, one of two blind computer science students at Arizona State University, or ASU, who tested the system, said speed is one of the system's greatest assets. "It's as fast as a sighted person could read a book -- this is one of the phenomenal things about it."

    The iCare-Reader not only enables blind people to choose any book from the library shelf, but also allows them to check out a restaurant menu, the size marked on a shirt tag or the label on a soup can.

    The reader doesn't translate handwritten text well yet, but the team is still working on it.

    ICare also lets the blind or visually impaired persons navigate websites previously only accessible with a mouse.

    Screen-reader software, such as Jaws, can translate information on a computer screen to spoken word. But this is only useful if users are able to get to the pages they are interested in.

    "The way a blind person navigates around the screen is with the keyboard, but there are some sites that don't work so well with keyboard alone and have some mouse-driven applications," said Terri Hedgpeth, disability research specialist at ASU. "But a blind person can't tell where the mouse cursor is, so (he or she) can't access these sites."

    To overcome this problem, the ASU team developed another facet of the system, called the iCare-Assistant, that works with Blackboard, software designed to manage university course material.

    "We have developed a software interface that bridges the screen-reader software and Blackboard through keyboard shortcuts that get you into these areas," Hedgpeth said.


    Amazon Pages:  Amazon's Breakthrough Technology to Help Quadriplegic's Read

    "Turning Pages for Those Who Can't," by Steven Edwards, Wired News, January 24, 2006 --- http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70052-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

    I've been watching companies' efforts to develop e-book offerings for a long time. As a quadriplegic, I can't hold a book, so reading literature on the computer seems like an obvious solution.

    Alas, companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Palm have failed in their e-book endeavors. They've introduced proprietary, encrypted formats that require their respective software to be installed before reading them, in effect destroying a book's inherent characteristic: portability.

    Amazon seems to be on the brink of doing e-books right, and I'm keeping my proverbial fingers crossed. By taking advantage of the web's ubiquity, Amazon can restore portability: Pay once, read anywhere.

    In November, Amazon announced two new services for accessing books online. The company seems to be targeting programmers and students who would welcome freedom from toting enormous texts. But Amazon has another, perhaps unforeseen, set of customers: the disabled.

    Amazon Pages will allow readers to buy online access to individual pages and chapters from books instead of the entire thing, presumably for a few cents a page. Amazon Upgrade will let readers purchase, for a similar premium, perpetual access to an online digital copy of the text.

    If the services turn out to be as good as they sound, I plan on taking full advantage of them. I miss the comforting sensation of curling up with a good book at night, promising myself that I would only read one more chapter before becoming so engrossed in the story that I devour it whole and am barely aware of the fact that, as my eyelids are closing, the sun is rising on the next day.

    It truly is the little things in life that make it worth living.

    The joy of holding a book again won't be happening in the next year, but Amazon's proposed services, assuming they are well implemented, will reopen the boundless horizons of literature to me and other similarly disabled readers.

    Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, told Fox News that publishers will decide whether their books will be included in the programs, unlike Google Print, which requires publishers to opt out. Among the publishers I'm rooting for are Penguin Group and Tor. (So, give Mr. Bezos a call. Today. Please? The Shadowrun and The Wheel of Time series, among others, beckon.)

    The Amazon services should allow publishers to have their content available as plain text, as do niche sites such as The National Academies Press, InformIT's Safari and Safari's predecessor site, MacMillan's Personal Bookshelf (an all-time favorite, now deceased, that allowed me to learn a lot for free).

    Continued in article

    Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on electronic literature are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm


    Learning-challenged students in Ohio are using wearable computers that are helping the kids be more independent and confident.

    "A Wearable Aid for Special Kids," by Katie Dean, Wired News, May 10, 2002 --- http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,52148,00.html 

    Jeremy Rossiter was not able to speak when he first entered Lisa Zverloff's class for the multiple-handicapped. The third-grader, who is autistic, communicated by hitting and biting. But with the help of a wearable computer, Jeremy learned to mimic, then utter, words and small phrases.

    His success story propelled Xybernaut, the manufacturer of the wearable computer, into a new market.

    Xybernaut is more known for supplying computers to telecommunications companies and the military. The devices are used for maintenance purposes in locations where carrying a laptop is not possible, such as manholes and the tops of telephone poles.

    Credit Zverloff, a teacher at Erwine Middle School in Akron, Ohio, with bringing wearables into the classroom. Her experience led to the product launch of the XyberKids wearable computers in March.

    Zverloff says the durable, touch-screen portable computers have made her students more independent and confident. Some kids use it all day; others use it for specific activities. Several students are able to fully participate in mainstream classrooms while using the devices.

    It all started with a cold call to Xybernaut.

    Zverloff's fiance, Eric Van Raepenbusch, a special education teacher at Turkeyfoot Elementary, owned stock in the company and suggested she call them.

    On the phone, she convinced a nearby sales representative to meet with her and Jeremy -- even though the company's initial response was along the lines of, "But ma'am, we don't use (the computers) for people with disabilities," Zverloff said.

    Jeremy eventually tried the device and "he wouldn't put it down," Zverloff said. "That's the only proof I need. He didn't bite me, scratch me, pinch me –- this is a positive thing."

    The device cost $9,000, but the company agreed to loan the device to Zverloff, a first-year teacher at the time, to see how Jeremy progressed.

    She replaced the belt –- made for an adult -- with a bookbag so Jeremy would be able to carry the 6-pound, 8.4-inch touch screen, hard drive and battery. The device runs on the Windows operating system.

    When Jeremy touched different pictures on the screen, a computer-generated voice dictated what the item was. He responded better to the digitized voice because the output is the same volume and tone every time, she said.

    "After repeated mimicking of the computer, he then started mimicking the teacher, then he started putting utterances together," Zverloff said. "A three-word utterance is an amazing thing for someone who's only been speaking for two months."

    Zverloff also discovered that Jeremy was learning to spell and read.

    When she showed him pictures of different animals, he started typing the words and used the voice output. He regularly took the wearable to lunch and on field trips to help him communicate outside the classroom.

    "At the end of the year, he was reading words and sentences on a first-grade level," she said.

    Researchers are developing similar devices at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI).

    Continued at  http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,52148,00.html 


    Susan Spencer is designing online economics courses for San Antonio College (SAC). All online courses at SAC must be accessible by hearing and sight impaired students. Susan will discuss her innovative ideas in designing economics courses that can be delivered online to blind students.

    Susan is an associate professor of Economics at San Antonio College. She has an MA from Washington University, a BA in Economics from the University of Missouri at Columbia and has worked at the Federal Reserve Board and Bureau of Labor and Statistics in Washington, DC. In San Antonio, she has taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio and owned and managed Flexware Systems, Inc. a computer software/consulting company.

    Susan Spencer's Presentation File Download: 

    Susan's presentation file is not yet available.  It will be here soon.

    Susan Spencer's MP3 Audio File Download

    You may download Susan's MP3 file from the list of fMP3 files at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/

    All MP3 LINKS ARE CASE SENSITIVE!

     


    This is fascinating with all sorts of implications for research and future communication!

    "Animated face helps deaf with phone chat," by Will Knight, NewScientist.com, August 4, 2004 --- http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996228 

    Software that creates an animated face to match someone talking on the other end of a phone line can help people with hearing difficulties converse, suggests a new study.

    The animated face provides a realistic impersonation of a person speaking, enabling lip-readers to follow the conversation visually as well as audibly.

    The prototype system, called Synface, helped 84 percent of participants to recognise words and chat normally over the telephone in recently completed trials by the UK's Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID).

    The RNID trials involved hard-of-hearing volunteers trying to decipher preset sentences and also taking part in real conversations.

    Synface takes around 200 milliseconds - one fifth of a second - to generate the animated annunciations. But the system incorporates a fractional delay, so that the face is perfectly synchronised with the voice on the end of the line.

    Regional dialects

    Synface runs on an ordinary laptop and can be connected to any type of phone, including a cell phone. It uses a neural network to match voice to mouth movements. This mimics the way neurons operate inside the brain and can be trained to recognise patterns.

    The neural network used by Synface identifies particular sounds, or "phonemes", rather than entire words. This has been shown to be a particularly fast way of matching words to animation. By concentrating on sounds the system can also represent words that it has not encountered previously.

    The technology is not meant to assist people who are profoundly deaf, but rather those who have some hearing difficulties. Around one in seven people in western countries fall into this category. So far, Synface has been trained to work in English, Swedish and Dutch. It could also be fine-tuned to recognise different regional dialects.

    "The accuracy still needs to be improved," admits Neil Thomas, head of product development at the RNID. But he says it could eventually make life easier for many people who have trouble hearing.

    "There are a lot of people who struggle with using the telephone," Thomas told New Scientist. "It really gives them an added level of confidence."

    The system was developed by researchers at Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden, University College London, UK as well as Dutch software company Viataal and Belgian voice analysis firm Babletech.

    Bob Jensen's threads on text reading are at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Text2 

    Bob Jensen's threads on multivariate faces are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#faces 

     


    "2-Year Colleges Help Learning-Disabled Students Break Into Math and Science," Chronicle of Higher Education, March 7, 2010 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Community-Colleges-Help/64531/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

    For as long as he can remember, Robert T. Calloway has had a fascination with engineering and all things mechanical. He wanted to pursue an engineering career despite a diagnosis of dyslexia, which challenged both his confidence and his ability in the classroom.

    "I first learned I had dyslexia when I was in the Army," he says. "My platoon sergeant would make us read technical manuals. He noticed that I had a problem with loop letters, like p's, b's, d's, and q's."

    Mr. Calloway, who is 42, weighed his options as he neared the end of his military service, in 2005. He decided that somehow, some way, he had to pursue a higher education, to better provide financially for his two teenagers.

    That fall he enrolled in the Community College of Allegheny County, in Pittsburgh, where professors and the college's academic-support staff helped him work around his dyslexia.

    Now, a program being developed by a two-year college in Vermont aims to assess the successful practices of Allegheny and other colleges to help more students, like Mr. Calloway, succeed academically in math and the sciences.

    Landmark College, in Putney, Vt., was created to serve students with learning disabilities. It has a 25-year history of preparing students for a range of fields, including the STEM disciplines—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

    The college won two federal grants last year and one grant this year, totaling more than $1-million, that will be used to help finance its STEM project. The grants, from the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, are a part of the government's larger focus on producing more math-and-science graduates.

    Steve Fadden, vice president for research and institute operations at Landmark, is using the money to develop a curriculum to teach educators how to support students in the STEM fields who have various learning disabilities, including dyslexia, autism, Asperger's syndrome, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

    Arne Duncan, U.S. secretary of education, expressed concern in October that only 23 percent of college freshmen were declaring STEM majors. What's more, "just 40 percent of those that elect STEM majors freshman year receive a STEM degree within six years," he told the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

    To develop its one-semester course for educators, Landmark is collaborating with three other community colleges—Western Nevada College, in Carson City; Lone Star College, in Houston; and the Community College of Allegheny County—because students with disabilities tend to be overrepresented in two-year institutions.

    Students with learning disabilities, Mr. Fadden says, have hidden problem-solving strengths. They live in a world that does not often conform to their learning style, constantly presenting challenges that require solutions. Instructors, he says, need to know how to tap into those strengths.

    Meeting Outside Class Two years after he enrolled at Allegheny, Mr. Calloway graduated with an associate degree in precision fabrication, another in robotics and automation technology, and a professional certificate in computer-aided drafting and design. He has since transferred to Point Park University, where he is a junior double-majoring in mechanical-engineering technology and global cultural studies.

    Key to his success, Mr. Calloway says, were community-college professors who met with him before or after class to offer extra help on assignments. They also introduced him to tools for students with learning disabilities, including a software program that essentially scans text to create an audio version of a book.

    He now trains other students to use the same tools, working as a technical-support specialist for students with disabilities at Allegheny.

    Mr. Fadden, of Landmark, intends to capitalize on the role that both instructors and support-staff members can play in helping students with learning disabilities succeed in the STEM fields. The college's project will culminate in an interactive pilot course, which is expected to be put into use for technology instructors and academic-support staff members this fall at the participating community colleges.

    The course will teach instructors how to help students with learning disabilities study better, prepare for job interviews, use assisted-learning software, and work in groups, among other skills that Mr. Fadden says students are ordinarily expected to know instinctively.

    "You might have a professor who says, 'I want a 15-page paper that's due by a certain time on a certain topic,'" Mr. Fadden explains. But some students "don't really know what that means, because no one has truly sat down and told them, 'Here's what a college-level paper looks like.'"

    The results of the educator-training program could enable community-college faculty and staff members to help not only students with learning disabilities, Mr. Fadden says, but also a broader range of students who might enter college in need of academic assistance—for example, those learning English who are struggling with reading comprehension.

    Sandi H. Patton, director of disability services at Lone Star College, says the college has about 730 students with diagnosed learning disabilities out of a total enrollment of about 62,000.

    In joining with Landmark, Ms. Patton says, she hopes to create "a culture of inclusion" by increasing awareness, among administrators and faculty and staff members alike, of students with learning disabilities and their needs. Another goal is to increase the retention and graduation rates of students with learning disabilities, who she says often have a talent for the "hands on" subjects offered in the STEM fields.

    "We want to see these students be successful," she says. "We want to help and retain them in achieving their educational and vocational goals."

    Continued in article


    edX Distance Education: Sign Language Structure, Learning, and Change --- www.edx.org/course/sign-language-structure-learning-change-georgetownx-slsx-401-01x
     


    Chris Dede's Vignettes on Distributed Education
    "Advanced Technologies and Distributed Learning," by Chris Dede, Higher Education in an Era of Digital Competition Edited by D.E. Hanna (Madison, WI:  Atwood Publishing, IBN 1-891859-32-3, 2000, pp. 771-92.

    1. Students who are silent and passive in classroom setting may "find their voice in an interactive medium." (Maria's story)
    2. Distributed education will educate more people at a lower cost per student (Karen's story)
    3. Distributed education will educate in smaller groups with easier and unprejudiced access by all. (Vesper's story)
    1. Distributed education is counter to privacy as instructors track every learning move and monitor learning in real time.
    2. Education will become a highly competitive medium with possible harm to long-term quality and creativity.
    3. Education will be more risky for innovators who may take heavy hits on evaluations and market choice by students.

     


    An Innovative Online Low Budget Synchronous International Accounting Course on Multiple  Campuses Around the World http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255light.htm

    Introduction

    The Course is Globally Synchronous On the Internet

    The Main Purposes of the Course

    Invited Guests are Also Online

    Technology Software Successes and Problems

    Coordination and Course Credit Problems

    Student Evaluations of the Course

    Advantages and Disadvantages from a Faculty Perspective

    Professor Lightner's Acknowledgements

    Conclusions by Bob Jensen

    The course syllabus is located at http://www.aznet.net/course/doors/ 

    Introduction

    A highlight for me at the November 6-7, 1998 AICPA Accounting Educators Conference was a presentation by Sharon Lightner from San Diego State University and Linard Nadig from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.  This presentation followed a ceremony presenting Professors Lightner and Nadig with the $1,000 AICPA Collaboration Award prize.

    The course syllabus is located at http://www.aznet.net/course/doors/ 

    The Collaboration Award was given for an online course that is now offered to a class comprised of five students from each of six universities in the United States, Japan, Switzerland, Spain, Hong Kong, and the United States.  I videotaped the presentation by Professors Lightner and Nadig.  The purpose of this document is to provide you with a summary of the highlights of this innovative international accounting course.

    The course has some highly innovative features including the online participation of accounting standard setting bodies in the various countries mentioned above.  The course is also innovative in that students in class and in team projects see and hear one another over the Internet in a manner much like they would see and hear each other if they were all in the same classroom.

     

    The Course is Globally Synchronous On the Internet

    At San Diego State University (SDU), the course is given as ACCT 596 Experiential International Accounting course with focus on international accounting standards and standard setting.  The course is simultaneously given on six campuses in Switzerland, Japan, Spain (two campuses), and Hong Kong.  Each school provides five students.   Hong Kong was added in the second year of providing this course online.  A professor from each of the campuses is assigned to jointly teach the course (in English).  

    The course meets once each week at the same time.  This means that SDU students must assemble in a computer lab at 11:00 p.m. at the same time students from other parts of the world assemble in their computer labs.  Other starting times were at 8:00 a.m. in Switzerland and Spain, 12:00 p.m. in Japan, and 4:00 p.m. in Hong Kong.   In addition, student teams must assemble at times when all team members can participate online.  Grading is based primarily upon class participation and team project performance.  The course professor from each campus also is online for each class.   In addition, one or more staff members from the standard setting body of each nation is online for some of the classes.

    A helper for the course is an Internet training online introduction called   "Opening Doors to Internet Knowledge" that is described at http://www.treuhaender.ch/10-96/Rechnung/14dnadig/14dnadig.html   Anyone can register for the online training materials.  A summary of the training course is given below:

    WHO. Anyone who has the capability of remote Internet access and has the desire to learn how to download/install software, ftp, browse the web, search the web, send/receive email, read/post to newsgroups, and create web pages. Also, you should have some familiarity with your own computer.

    WHAT. A class entitled, Opening Doors to Internet Knowledge (Acctg 397). This is a one unit, fun, self paced, hands on, credit/nocredit course. (This class has nothing to do with accounting!) This class will appear on your transcript; it will not count toward the total number of units required for graduation.

    WHY. Individuals need minimum Internet competencies to succeed in today?s environment. Internet access and Internet knowledge can open new doors in your life.

    WHEN. Work from your computer at your convenience. There are NO prerequisites and NO formal class meetings. The class may be added at anytime through Reg-line at SDSU or through the College of Extended Studies at SDSU.

    COMPUTER REQUIREMENTS. To take the class you need a PC running Windows 3.1 or higher, or a Macintosh running System 7.0 or higher. You need approximately 40 megabytes of free hard disk space to install and run an ftp program, Eudora, and Netscape. You also need at least a 14.4 modem (preferably 28.8 or 33.6)

    HOW MUCH. (Assumes you will use AzNET as your outside Internet provider)  Prices for the training course range from $0 to $115.

     

    The Main Purposes of the Course

    The main purpose is to  allow students from other nations to simultaneously study international accounting standards in a formal course.   Accounting standards differ between nations in many ways due to differing cultural, economic, and financial histories.  As business becomes more global, understanding of these differences and efforts to harmonize these standards grow in importance.

    Another purpose is to conduct a unique experiment in synchronized online learning in the presence of students from other nations, professors from other nations, and accounting standard-setting officials in other nations.

    The course deals with both cultural issues and accounting issues having the greatest differences between nations.  

    Other purposes deal with technology and innovation.  The course is an experiment in the efficiency and effectiveness of selected computer, networking, email, chat line, audio, and video technologies for delivery of synchronized lectures, cases, and class discussions simultaneously via the Internet.

    Other purposes included experimenting with remote submission of student projects via FTP transfers across the Internet.  Students also communicate via chat rooms and bulletin boards.

    A key purpose is to experiment with the ability of student teams to work efficiently and effectively online.  Students were members of two teams.  The first team is comprised of students on the same campus.  The second team is comprised of one student from each of the six campuses.

     

    Invited Guests are Also Online

    A unique feature of this course is the presence of invited guests to appear live online (in audio and video) in selected classes.  The accounting standard setting body in each nation provided one or more assigned staff members to participate in the course.  For example, in the United States, the Financial Accounting Standards Board representative is Thomas Porter.  From Connecticut, Tom must arise before 2:00 a.m. to appear on a course commencing in California at 11:00 p.m.

    In addition, online guests included employees of accounting and business firms from various nations.

     

    Technology Software Successes and Problems

    Each computer on each campus and guest participant site had a camera to transmit images of students, instructors and guests.  HoneyCom multi-purpose video software was used for that purpose.  The Honey Software home page is located at http://www.honeysw.com/   This company has a variety of software downloading options.

    Audio around the world was transmitted via Onlive Talker software multi-person audio from Onlive Inc. at http://www.onlive.com/
    (Today, a newer alternative is Grove.net described at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm#Grove )

    Text messaging, chat lines, and file transfer software used ICQ software from Mirabillis at http://www.mirabilis.com/    Professor Lightner reported that one thing she liked about ICQ chats is that up to six different screens can be viewed simultaneously from six different users.   She also liked it that messages could be viewed as they were being written rather than having to wait for a message to be completed and then transmitted. 

    Professors Lightner and Nadig reported general satisfaction with the hardware and software technology.  The main problem seemed to be bandwidth and Internet connection speed, especially in Spain.  At times, students must shut off the video in order to get reliable online audio.

     

    Coordination and Course Credit Problems

    One problem is that all six universities have different semester starting and ending dates. 

    Another problem lies in giving academic credit for the course.  Issues arise regarding having multiple instructors from multiple countries.  Course topics do not necessarily fit neatly into the curriculum plan for each university.  Admission standards are not uniform for all students across all countries.  Each campus controlled its own admissions of students to the course.

    Comparing and grading student performance on teams is always a challenge and having team members only meeting on the Internet adds to this challenge.  Professor Lightner felt, however, that student performance to date has greatly exceeded the expectations of all the instructors.

     

    Student Evaluations of the Course

    The most frequent complaint by students was in the difficulty of scheduling online meetings of their team members.  Time zone differences were particularly troublesome.

    In this course there are both national and international projects.  Making these projects due the same week was troublesome for some students.

    Students enjoyed being exposed to the advanced internet communication technologies.  However, these technologies were also troublesome at times.  For example, having to shut down the video images in order to improve audio communication can be troublesome.  Also, having to write messages in English that are viewed in real time while the messages were being viewed around the world must have been troublesome for Japanese, Swiss, Spanish, and Hong Kong students.

    In general, student evaluations of the course are very high.

     

    Advantages and Disadvantages from a Faculty Perspective

    At the AICPA Educators Conference, Professor Nadig from Switzerland discussed the advantages and disadvantages from the perspective of a faculty member in the course.   Advantages included improvement of student and faculty communication skills and technology skills.  It is far better to experience these newer technologies first hand than to merely read about how others use them.   Close interaction and teamwork by international students obviously improved communication skills and team building skills.

    Other advantages included cultural exposures, interactions with professional accounting standard setters and accounting practitioners in six nations, and networking both during and after the course.  The students had team projects much like projects they may encounter in their careers following graduation.

    Professor Nadig did not dwell on disadvantages.  I suspect there are hurdles to jump over.  Admission standards are not identical for all students.   Other problems included different semester dates and time zones across six nations.   Student evaluations by multiple instructors having international online teams is obviously a great challenge.  It was not mentioned by Professors Lightner and Nadig, but obviously communication is somewhat difficult in written and oral communications by students whose primary language is not English.  This becomes even more difficult using ICQ software where messages appear before foreign students and foreign faculty have a change to read over the message and correct the phrasings in English.

    Professor Lightner mentioned some difficulty in getting students into the course.   Each campus had a somewhat different process for admitting students.  She mentioned that some students as SDU balked at having a course meeting at 11:00 p.m.  She did assert that students who ended up in the course exceeded the expectations of faculty in terms of course performance.


    How to and how not to deliver distance education --- http://ubmail.ubalt.edu/~harsham/interactive.htm 
    War stories from teachers in the first accredited online MBA program.

    This site constitutes a report from the "frontliner" of e-learning, since the University of Baltimore was the first school to offer all-online accredited Web MBA. I taught the first course in this Web MBA program, which was Business Statistics: Revealing Facts from Figures. A second course in this same program was Applied Management Science: Making Good Strategic Decisions. The site covers how to begin, how to operate, and how to make e-learning successful and enjoyable. Its contents are developed over years, and is intended for my current students, and sharing my personal experiences and exchange of ideas with other educators.

    Kindly e-mail me your comments, suggestions, and concerns. Thank you.

    Professor Hossein Arsham 
    http://ubmail.ubalt.edu/~harsham/index.html
       

    Especially note the questions worth asking at http://ubmail.ubalt.edu/~harsham/interactive.htm#rqwa 

    Ohio State University:  Synchronous Partnering Course Modules in Universities in Different Nations


    "Frontiers in Higher Education: A Procedural Model," Ruth Sesco, The International HETL Review, Volume 2, June 9, 2012 ---
    http://hetl.org/

    The paper describes a procedural model implemented at Ohio State University that shares similar content and interaction among international partner classes for a short time, usually 3-5 weeks. The model is flexible and adaptive to any discipline at both the graduate and undergraduate levels and includes expertise from both partnering instructors. Technologies are embedded to integrate a variety of structured opportunities for interaction and to utilize different teaching and learning strategies. There is no exchange of credits or funding, and all instructors are individually responsible for grading their own students, thus allowing subject expertise and peer interaction from around the world at no extra personal cost. The model can be implemented to internationalize an entire curriculum to a broad spectrum of learners world-wide with a significantly reduced carbon footprint, at minimal cost, and in direct response to the needs of higher education.

    Jensen Comment

    I suspect that Ruth Sesco independently developed a model that was invented for an international accounting course by a San Diego State University accounting professor years ago when the most advanced online technology was rudimentary.

    You can read about this remarkable international accounting professor and what she accomplished with almost no budget by going to ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255light.htm

     

     


    Web Page Design:  Ah, What Rotten Webs We Weave 
    Here is an article from the Chronicle about "creative" web pages.
    "Ah, What Rotten Webs We Weave," by Neal A. Raisman, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 

    Most college and university Web sites are poorly designed. As a result, they reflect badly on their institutions. The problems range from embarrassing and inexcusable mistakes -- like poor grammar, misspellings, and out-of-date information -- to the failure to take full advantage of new technology. Furthermore, too many sites baffle or aggravate visitors, offering them links that do not work, sending them to pages that do not exist, referring them to information that they are not allowed to view, and so forth. Granted, some institutions have excellent Web sites, but they are in the minority.

    Web sites have become a primary marketing tool for colleges and universities. We must remember that how we present our institution online can make a difference to important outsiders. If an alumnus cannot learn from the site how to order tickets to the next football game, how happy will he be about the college when the next pledge card arrives in the mail? If a prospective student finds the site confusing or boring, how likely is she to apply?

    Every college Web site should provide accurate and complete information, and should have a design that makes the information easy to understand and technology that makes it easy to find.

    Does your college's Web site contain all the information a visitor is likely to want? A whopping 86 percent of the hundreds of sites I surveyed recently did not provide any e-mail addresses for individual members of the admissions staff, or information about how to contact them without trying to figure out who's who in the staff directory -- if the visitor can find that. A visitor who doesn't know the name of anybody in the admissions office may well be out of luck.

    Fifty-two percent had a button that potential students could click to contact the college or the admissions office in general. But 34 percent of the 1,244 students I interviewed in the course of conducting customer-service research for college and university clients reported that clicking on a "contact us" button felt as though they were sending personal information into cyberspace with no idea who would receive it. They worried about privacy and the misuse of their information. Moreover, very few students who clicked on those buttons said they ever got a response from the colleges. That only reinforced their anxiety.

    Many sites omit other information. I recently surfed one site that referred visitors to its spring schedule of courses, but the schedule did not exist. The problem was not that the link was inactive; I moved from one page to the other, but the new page was blank. How could a student sign up for spring courses at that Web site?

    Another college site had a link from the home page to "the administration," but when that page came up, it listed only employees in the human-resources department. Still another college provided a list of what appeared to be 63 kinds of information that visitors could access. Unfortunately, 31 of the items in the list had no active link. Clicking, for example, on "message from the president" produced no response at all.

    Too many sites offer little more than pages copied from the college's catalog and other official documents, like overly detailed registration policies, federal and state financial-aid regulations, or descriptions of courses written in impenetrable academic prose. That is a poor use of the Web's potential as a marketing tool. Students and visitors to your college's site do not want to have to wade through wordy, tedious jargon, like this real example: "Applications for admission in a given semester should be filed as early as possible prior to the semester or term for which the applicant intends to enter or the applicant may not be admitted to the college for that semester." Why not just say: "Apply as early as you can, to increase your chance of getting in"?

    Even colleges that provide appropriate content online, written in understandable English, can make a bad impression on visitors if a site includes incorrect grammar or spelling errors. Spell-checking software alone will not catch all the mistakes. A human being should go over everything on the site -- whether that person is an instructor of freshman composition, the secretary who proofreads the president's speeches, or someone hired to edit the site's contents.

    Once your college has put the right information online, you need to make that information easy to understand. Clear, consistent design of the pages throughout the site is essential.

    Either to permit self-expression or to save money by not hiring a professional, some institutions let departments or offices design their own pages. The result is often an example of academic freedom run wild: No two pages use the same layouts, graphics, or fonts; many pages do not link to each other, and some even contradict one another. The message that such chaos sends to the outside world is that the college is badly run, as well as inexperienced with modern technology. Remember that potential students will compare your institution's site with the slick commercial and game sites they visit.

    Off-the-shelf software programs for Web design and online building tools can provide only basic designs, not the kind of marketing tool that a college's Web site should be. If your institution has an employee who can design and construct good-looking Web pages, great. If not, you should hire an outside designer. Many good designers are available, and their services need not be expensive.

    Be sure to hire a designer who understands that simpler is often better. Some Web sites look like their designers wanted to use all of the different typefaces available. A development officer who created the Web page for his office told me he believed that many fonts "capture the eye." In fact, with too many typefaces, the eye doesn't know where to look.

    Choosing fonts is an important decision that should be made less hastily than it usually is. The typeface on your Web site can say a great deal about your institution. For example, many sites use traditional fonts, like Times Roman. Other colleges prefer fonts with a cleaner, more modern look, like Tahoma. If you don't have a designer to advise you, at least take a look at the fonts available on your computer and think about the image they would project for your institution.

    Once you have made your choice, stick with it throughout your Web site unless there is a good reason to switch. Use the italic and boldface versions of your font sparingly -- not every statement needs to shout. And make sure the font can be read easily. Tiny five-point type is almost indecipherable on most monitors. Use fewer words and larger fonts.

    You should also keep gimmicks to a minimum. One site I saw recently had evidently been designed by someone who had just learned to use PowerPoint. Pictures flew from the top, bottom, and side of the screen. Text crawled, exploded, and wiggled. Other sites have spinning letters, scrolling information, and other gimmicks that are supposed to make the page look exciting. Yet my interviews with students indicate that they find the gimmicks annoying and old hat. A good graphic design and the use of color can do more to make Web pages come alive than all the gimmicks available.

    In addition, gimmicks make a site load more slowly. Many visitors to your Web site will have been spoiled by commercial sites that have sophisticated technology to load the entire site almost instantly. Even a 15-second wait will seem interminable to younger visitors -- your potential students.

    For the same reason, it is not a good idea to put too many pictures on a single page, or to insist on a very high resolution for pictures. A resolution of 100 pixels per inch, or even less, will almost always provide a good photo on the visitor's screen and the lower the pixel count, the shorter the load time.

    Your institution's Web site may contain the information visitors are looking for, and the design to make the information easy to understand, but without the right technology, nobody will be able to find the information.

    Common problems include broken links and dead ends. Visitors rapidly become frustrated when they click on a link, say, and find themselves at a new page with no way out -- or worse, still on the link they clicked, with no way to move forward or backward. If the only way out is to close your site, chances are that the visitor will go on to another institution's site, in search of better service.

    Frequently, a visitor does not see a promised page but a message that says something like: "The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser's settings." The truth usually is that the visitor's browser is fine but the college's Web site is not -- and most visitors guess that is the case. Plenty of good programs exist to check links. Your institution should use them.

    Many sites intentionally restrict access to information, like the e-mail address of the institution's president. That sends a clear message to potential students and their parents: The president does not want to hear from you. Giving a phone number or snail-mail address instead of an e-mail address seems absurd to the visitor who is savvy enough to find your Web site in the first place.

    Another poor decision is to make a link blend invisibly into the page, as when the visitor needs to click on a picture instead of something that is obviously a link. Not all visitors will guess that a photograph of the football team will lead them to the fall 2003 football schedule.

    We live in a competitive world. You should make sure that your Web site shows off your institution's best side -- rather than sending visitors in frustration to the sites of other colleges and universities.

    Neal A. Raisman is president of AcademicMAPS, a consulting firm for educational institutions, and the vice president for the northeastern region for FACTS Tuition Management. He is the author of Embrace the Oxymoron: Customer Service in Higher Education (LRP Publications, 2002).


    Classroom Use of Laptops and iPods

    News from Duke on December 5, 2005 --- http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/12/ipodupdate.html

    Duke Sees Growth in Classroom iPod Use
    Since last year, students using iPods in the classroom has quadrupled and the number of courses incorporating the devices has doubled

    The number of Duke University students using iPods in the classroom has quadrupled and the number of courses incorporating the devices has doubled in the second year of an effort to mesh digital technology with academics.

    Computing and Technology Education and Training Students According to the university’s Center for Instructional Technology (CIT), 1,200 students are expected to use iPods to enhance classroom materials, lectures or assignments in 42 spring 2006 courses. Last spring, 280 students in 19 courses used iPods as part of the Duke iPod First-Year Experience, which has grown into the Duke Digital Initiative (DDI). Duke distributed free iPods to all first-year students in 2004; for the current academic year, it modified to program to provide free iPods only to undergraduates who enrolled in a course that required the device.

    Simultaneously, the university has broadened the focus of the program beyond iPods to a much broader effort to promote the effective use of new technology in higher education. The DDI is a university-wide program that is facilitating the experimentation, development and implementation of digital technology -– such as digital audio and video, online collaboration tools and tablet PCs -- for instruction and learning.

    “So many students today own personal computing devices like iPods that the increase in use of digital audio in courses, and now images and video, has expanded rapidly,” said Lynne O’Brien, director of CIT.

    A list of spring 2006 DDI courses is available online at <http://cit.duke.edu/about/ipod_faculty_projects_spring06.do> .

    “The total number of courses utilizing iPods may in fact be larger; we only know definitively about the courses coordinated through CIT,” O’Brien said, adding that anecdotal evidence suggests instructors are experimenting with using the devices outside of the formal DDI program.

    The increase in courses is matched by a growth in the breadth of distinct subject areas, with the use of digital technologies expanding beyond foreign languages and computer science to engineering, dance, medical physics, biomedical engineering and math.

    O’Brien said the increased familiarity with iPods and MP3 players on campus has allowed CIT to switch its focus from introducing the tools to faculty and students to developing and delivering content for the devices.

    An improved comfort level with personal computing devices like the iPod has allowed students such as Duke senior Gisselle Molinar to take her learning experience outside the classroom. “I definitely think students would be able to adapt to additional digital technology,” she said.

    Molinar’s instructor, Mark Williams, used a photo iPod this fall in his “Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain” course to house a visual glossary of 500 human neuro-anatomical structures and terms comprising text descriptions, images and corresponding audio pronunciations. Although Williams said the device interface isn't yet perfectly suited for complex learning applications, “the students adapted pretty quickly.”

    “There is always a risk associated with introducing a program nobody had ever tried before,” said Tracy Futhey, Duke’s vice president for Information Technology and CIO. “The increased use we’ve seen has been a direct result of faculty and student innovation. We expected we’d have this kind of interest, and it’s exactly the success we thought, but couldn’t be certain, it would be.”

    According to Futhey, the university is committed to continuing to support a broad range of technology uses.

    Both fourth-generation photo iPods and fifth-generation video iPods will be distributed to students enrolled in spring 2006 DDI courses, depending upon specific course requirements. Students enrolled in spring 2006 DDI courses using iPods will pick them up from the university Help Desk, and will be responsible for their care throughout their time at Duke. Students who have already been given an iPod by the university will not be given new ones; however, in some cases, students who previously received an iPod may be eligible to trade in their old model for a newer one if the course they are enrolled in requires functionality not available on their original model.

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technologies are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


    From: Ghazi Ishag Al-Khatib [mailto:alkhatib@QU.EDU.QA]
    Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 4:20 PM
    Subject: Re: Accounting Program and Classroom Laptops

    The lesson we learned from these discussions: do not let the technology drives the classroom lecture, let the classroom lecture drives technology. Also I suggest researching smart classroom uses for those who believe that lectures drive technology.


    From: "Charles M Betts" cbetts@COLLEGE.DTCC.EDU
    Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 9:43 PM
    Subject: Re: Accounting Program and Classroom Laptops

    Ray,

    You are wise in planning ahead for what can be a drastic change in the  way you utilize class hours and in recognizing that problems may exist.

    In the mid 80's I became obsessed with the idea that computers belonged in the accounting classroom and not in some remote lab. Administration  however at that time still believed that all you needed to teach any business course was a blackboard and a few pieces of chalk, so I  started looking into the possibility of getting a grant. Although I  was not that optimistic of success, I received a grant for a fully equipped, networked classroom on my third try. The following year of was faced with the problem of having a classroom with all the state-of-the-art equipment of the time, but not having a clue as to how I was going to use it. It can be pretty embarrassing standing in from of a room full of students each having a computer on their desk top and telling them to get out their pencils and calculators. But over time we learned...

    Today we still have the same set-up (not the same equipment - that's been replaced several times now) in several classrooms and almost all of our accounting  classes are scheduled in one of those rooms and for the most part I think we utilize them in a way that is beneficial to the students and that also adds elements to each of the courses that would not otherwise be there. I'll give you a short description of some of the things we've learned over the years, but I won't bore you by mentioning all the things we've done wrong while learning to do some of the right things.

    You mentioned projects to take the place of lecture time. Why not instead incorporate the use of the computer into your lecture and make it an integral part of the lecture itself. This may not work too well with pure theory, but it certainly does with application. In some cases this may simply be a high-tech way for students to take notes (at least their notes will be legible) but often it enables you to allow the students to participate more actively in the learning process. For instance, instead of saying "This is what would how net income would be affected if...." you can now ask "How would net income be affected  if..." and the students will be able to respond simply by changing a couple of numbers. This may require some more work on your part - you may need to set up an Excel template that they will be using ahead of time - but it pays off in the long run.

    Another suggestion would be to review what you are presently teaching in your classes and compare that to what you would like to be teaching if you only had the time. Often you may find that if the computer is utilized, time may no longer be a problem. Let me give you one example. When I used to teach cost behavior B.C. (before computers) I would draw some very rough scatter diagrams on the board, and then give a couple of examples of the high-low method of breaking down a mixed cost into its variable and fixed components. Somewhere along the line I would tell my class that there was a much better way of doing this called linear regression, but that it was a lengthy process and we really couldn't spare the class time to solve any regression problems. Today I have a video available for students that they are expected to  review before class, demonstrating scatter diagrams with excel and also the use of Excel's linear regression tool. Then when I lecture on Cost behavior, I will use an example problem to explain what all this means and how it can be applied to different situations. I expect the students to be following along on their own computers so that they will have their own example to refer to. And somewhere along the line I tell my students that there is also something called the high-low method that may come in handy if they're ever shipwrecked on a desert island without their computer. I'm sure that if you think through the course you are teaching you'll have not trouble finding your own examples of things that could be added with more in-class computer use.

    One more valuable in-class use of computers is basic research, which simply often simply means being able to find what you need to know on the Web. From my personal experience I would have to conclude that most of my students are much more knowledgeable about finding what they want to find on the web than I, but when it comes to finding information I would like them to know, for some reason they always have trouble finding it if it's given as an out-of-class assignment. In class they don't seem to have this problem as much, and they also get the benefit of your experience and help in learning to locate information, which is a tool they will definitely need in the future. One quick example. When we talk about financial statement analysis in the first-year accounting class, I only use a couple problems from the book to present the basics. After that I have the students chose a company, find their financials on the web, and answer some basic questions using their company's financial. I think this accomplishes several things.1. It's more interesting for the students. 2. They're going to be asking questions they wouldn't have know how to ask if all their information came from the textbook (like, "What's minority interest mean?") 3. The students are dealing with real-world date where  everything doesn't come out even. 4. The students are improving their ability to locate information on the internet. and 5. It's certainly a lot more interesting for me also.

    Since I didn't set out to write a book, I'll end this now. Hope this helps you in some way.

    Charlie Betts
    Delaware Technical and Community College
    100 Campus Drive
    Dover DE 19901
    (302) 857-1771
    cbetts@college.dtcc.edu 


    -----Original Message----- 
    From: pknutel@bentley.edu [mailto:pknutel@bentley.edu]  
    Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 2:15 PM 
    To: Jensen, Robert Subject: Re: Accounting and Laptops

    Hi Bob,

    I sent this to the aecm listserver, but it was rejected, so I saw your email today and thought I'd just resend it to you and you could either post it or just add it to your thread on this topic.

    Thanks.

    Phil


    On the issue of students with laptops surfing the internet, doing email,
    and chatting during class, we developed a solution for this with our
    network vendor, Enterasys.  Bentley has the oldest laptop requirement in
    the country (all undergrads have been required to have them since 1985,
    when they were really heavy, slow "luggables"), and thus we've been
    dealing with lots of these problems for quite some time.  We have around
    30 port-per-seat classrooms and PC-equipped classrooms, and in any of
    them, the podium (instructor) PC controls the network access of all the
    other laptops or PCs in the room.  There is an Internet Explorer window
    that pops up whenever the podium PC is started or rebooted (the window can
    be launched from a desktop icon as well), and this window displays five
    simple "buttons":

    -  Disable Internet Access
    -  Disable Bentley Email Access
    -  Disable Internet and Bentley Email Access
    -  Disable All Access (including intranet/Blackboard access)
    -  Reset

    There are hardware and software options that allow these sorts of options,
    but in a laptop environment, hardware options are cumbersome and students
    will uninstall any software you put on their laptops that they don't want.

    The system is something of a blunt instrument, in that you can't
    selectively enable access to some internet sites but not others, but it
    has still been very popular with many of our faculty who have students
    work on their laptops during class.  More info about it is available on
    Enterasys' website ( www.enterasys.com ), and they've been very easy to work
    with in building and customizing this system.

    Phil


    Phillip Knutel, Ph.D.
    Director of Education and Research Services
    Bentley College
    180 Adamian Academic Center
    175 Forest St.
    Waltham, MA 02452
    781.891.3422 (Fax .3125)


    Ray Zollo wrote:

    We are currently studying the introduction of laptops into the accounting program. In my opinion for the program to be successful (in the eyes of our students) there must be quality time spent using the laptops in the classroom (at home most have computers already).

    So we need to find or develop for many (if not all) of the classes quality projects for the students to do during the class. These projects must take the place of lecture time so that the material gets covered.

    Maybe some of you have gone through this already and know which projects work which don't. I would like to solicit your thoughts, advice and opinions about such an undertaking. Issues such as wired versus wireless classrooms, faculty training, hardware failure, delivering exams via classroom network, and any problems or benefits you may have.

    Thanks for your input.

    Raynard Zollo, CPA, MBA
    Associate Professor of Accounting and Taxation
    Tobin College of Business
    St. John's University, New York

     


    April 17, 2003 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU

    AECMers: For those of you looking for graphical tools to spice up your accounting labs - look at the following links to various interactive Java charts - I was doing a search on cost / volume / profit and got the hit on a Java breakeven calculator.

    http://dinkytown.com/business.html 

    Richard Campbell

    Bob Jensen's threads on calculators can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob3.htm#080512Calculators 


    "Creating Your Own 'Wiki' Web Site:  Program Simplifies Steps for Entries; Nothing Is Private," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2007; Page D8 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/the_mossberg_solution.html
     

    Wikipedia.com, the encyclopedia Web site created and operated with contributions from online users around the world, is a resourceful tool. Though accuracy isn't guaranteed, it reflects a collection of knowledge contributed and edited by many users.

    A "wiki" is a Web site or similar online resource that allows anyone to add and edit content collectively. But while the idea behind Wikipedia.com and other collaborative sites is a good one, the process of contributing content can be intimidating for nontechies. Instead, many people opt to publish their writing and digital media on personal blogs or Web sites. Yet these don't do much to encourage online communities and interaction.

    This week, I tested a free program from Wetpaint.com Inc. that helps regular users create wikis, which encourage interaction because they're constantly changed by contributors. Wetpaint's wikis ease the process of adding Web links, digital images, digital videos and additional text to sites made with Wetpaint. Likewise, your site can easily be adjusted and enhanced by anyone who views it. Compared with blogs or normal Web sites, my Wetpaint wiki felt much more alive and exciting.

    Wetpaint has room for improvement. Nothing created on its site can be kept private from random viewers. Some of its functions -- like adding content at the same time as someone else -- can be a bit confusing. And it has advertisements because it's free, but these aren't overly intrusive. The Seattle-based company has plans for upgrades, including introducing more privacy options this summer. But most of its features are overwhelmingly simple to use, and built-in tutorial videos demonstrate steps.

    In less than five minutes, my own wiki -- a site devoted to discussing television programs, compiling digital photos and video clips from shows, all of which could be added to or deleted by anyone at any time -- was up and running. I noticed other Wetpaint wikis for organizing sports teams, assisting with dog rescues and discussing favorite books. Setup was divided into three steps playfully termed The Easy Part, The Fun Part and The Other Part.

    I named my wiki and its URL, and considered the options for who I wanted to contribute to it: everyone (even anonymously); anyone with a Wetpaint.com account; or only those whom I invited. I chose to allow everyone's contributions in order to get the full feel of a wiki. Twenty four style templates provide a starting point for the color and overall look.

    I invited others to see my site so that they, too, could contribute their ruminations. When inviting others, you must designate how much authority you'll give each invitee. Whoever creates the wiki is an administrator with the ability to change everything, including the template and permission settings. You can give others the same ranking, or you might opt to make them moderators, letting them move and delete pages but not change settings. The least amount of power is given to registered users; they can't move or delete pages, but they, like everyone else, can still delete, change or add content on each page, by default.

    Every change made to the site is tracked in detail, letting everyone see which page was altered and by whom, the time and date of the change and the scope of each adjustment. Special views can compare how a page looked before and after changes, so you know whether you liked the way you had it or the new version. These details are important in the world of wikis, where changes can be slight, frequent and barely noticeable.

    The home page of your wiki allows space for explaining what you'd like to do. I used mine to say how much I like chatting about recent TV show episodes, and encouraged others to contribute anything relevant to the discussion, including write-in opinions, photos of show characters and clips from favorite scenes.

    Each page has a section for navigation in the top left, showing which page is currently in view and how it relates to Home -- as a subcategory of Home, or a subcategory within a category and so on. A toolbox on the far right offers one-click help for editing, adding attachments, inviting others and emailing a page. At the top of each page, an Easy Edit tool can be expanded to help you add digital photos from your PC or from specific URLs, hyperlinks or short video clips from sites like YouTube.com.

    I never saw any confusing jargon while adding content to my wiki. I just followed suggested links, searched for the right content online or on my computer and pasted that information into the right spot.

    Within a few hours, the friends I invited to my wiki caught on and added content to my pages or created pages of their own to be listed under my wiki. In addition to my pages for "Grey's Anatomy," "The Amazing Race" and "Friday Night Lights," others added pages for "American Idol" and "Battlestar Galactica." I even got into a fun back-and-forth battle with a friend as he and I each posted pictures of our favorite doctors on "Grey's Anatomy." Each of us had the ability to delete the other's posting or to add our own.

    I ran into some trouble when I tried to save a post and was told that someone else was simultaneously changing content on the same page. I chose to manually merge my content with the other person's content, but couldn't figure out how to do so and lost my entire post. This problem isn't likely to crop up often, but it's worth noting.

    When I had questions about other sections, a help section walked me through the wiki-building steps. I also watched how-to videos that demonstrated the way certain aspects of Wetpaint worked.

    If you're tired of reading blogs that only let you post comments in an obscure section of the page, the interactive community aspect of Wetpaint's wikis will appeal to you. Just be sure you're aware that until later this summer, nothing on your wiki can be made private.

     

     


    "Wikis Made Simple -- Very Simple:  Wetpaint and other wiki startups are offering free and easy-to-use tools. But will most consumers really care?," by Wade Roush, MIT's Technology Review, June 21, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17009&ch=infotech

    A Seattle startup called Wetpaint launched the newest Web-based "wiki" platform this week, offering people who register with the company the ability to create community websites that can be edited easily by any user, or by invited members only, depending on the creator's preference.

    Wikis have been a popular tool for Internet geeks for about a decade, and now they're beginning to be adopted inside many businesses. For the most part, though, they haven't crossed into the mainstream -- the way that other Web-based publishing technologies such as blogs have. Wetpaint's founders hope to make that transition -- in part, by making their free, advertising-supported service as easy to use as familiar software tools such e-mail and word-processor programs.

    Starting a Wetpaint site is as simple as picking a name and design, creating a few pages, writing something in them, and deciding who can edit them. The company's CEO, Ben Elowitz, says he hopes everyone from neighborhood watch groups to Cub Scout leaders will warm up to Wetpaint and start using it to collaborate on projects and manage group information.

    Elowitz believes that online collaboration is a largely unexplored market. "Message boards are good for dialogues, blogs are good as soapboxes, and social networks are good for meeting people, but none of those really let you manage relationships," he says. "For people who are online now, the technology is there to give them a chance to connect over their common interests."

    But the public still has a shaky idea of wikis. Surveys conducted by the Harris polling organization for Wetpaint show that only 5 percent of adults who go online can define the word "wiki," according to Elowitz. And it's not clear that Wetpaint or any other wiki-focused company has made the technology simple -- or useful -- enough to attract large numbers of users.

    The most famous wiki, of course, is Wikipedia -- it's the largest encyclopedia ever written, with 1.2 million articles contributed by more than 1.6 million registered users and policed by approximately 1,000 volunteer administrators. Indeed, Wikipedia has become the 16th-most-trafficked site on the Web; on any given day, about 4 percent of all Internet users stop there, according to Web traffic research firm Alexa.

    But while most of Wikipedia's readers are aware that they can edit encyclopedia entries, the average visitor does so very rarely. In fact, a core of around 500 people account for about half of Wikipedia's content -- an indication that the technical process of writing and editing wiki items remains forbidding for the average user.

    From the Scout Report on April 27, 2007

    Wikyblog 1.4.9 --- http://www.wikyblog.com/ 

    A number of people have been intimately involved in blending the worlds of the wiki and the blog together into one efficient and engaging application, and Wikyblog is one of the very fine results of those ruminations. Designed as a piece of open source software, Wikyblog allows users to create their own different data types, and to arrange various fields and variables as they see fit. Visitors can download this software, and also take advantage of the “how-to” section offered on the Wikyblog homepage. This version is compatible with all computers.

    University of Capetown's  Centre for Education Technology --- http://www.cet.uct.ac

    Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of education technology are at linked at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

     


    The Magic of DVR Recording

    The Miracle of DVR Instant Recording --- This Has Many Education Possibilities

    "With a DVR, the Puck Stops Here," by Katie Dean, Wired News, April 20, 2004 --- http://www.wired.com/news/gizmos/0,1452,63105,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html 

    When Scott Mellanby of the St. Louis Blues apparently scored the tying goal late in a recent National Hockey League playoff game with the San Jose Sharks, Sharks assistant coach Tim Hunter wasn't worried.

    He quickly replayed the whole scene on his tablet PC equipped with TiVo-like functionality and verified that there was no goal. In contrast, it took officials 2.5 minutes to call up to the booth and then rule on the play.

    "We knew instantly that it wasn't a goal," Hunter said. "We were able to calm our team down, and our team was recomposed and ready for the next face-off."

    The tech-savvy Sharks, who are now in the conference semifinals in the race for the Stanley Cup, are using a "bench monitor" to mark, review and zoom in on plays, and make adjustments to their strategy on the fly. The device also helps illustrate "coachable moments."

    A digital video recorder hooked up to a server records the game and then wirelessly transmits the data to a tablet PC. Hunter can then use a stylus or a remote to mark key moments in the game -- like a goal for, goal against, power play or penalty kill -- so that he can return to them with a quick click. He can diagram over the video as well.

    "We're able to make edit marks on the streaming video and then go back and replay those," Hunter said. "You can review why you got the goal or why the team broke down.

    "We can show a player, 'Here's a situation where you might have been able to exploit the passing lane of the opponent.' Later in the period this might prove to be beneficial," he said.

    Additionally, coaches can take prerecorded video from the DVR and call it up on the bench monitor during the game to illustrate how an opponent acts in a particular situation.

    Hunter said a lot of teams in the National Hockey League have a video coach who watches the game in the back office and communicates with coaches using a headset. The Sharks are the only team to use the bench monitor, however.

    "This just allows us as coaches to do it ourselves and see it with our own eyes," Hunter said.

    Randy Eccker, vice president of XOS Technologies, which provides the software for the bench monitor, said San Jose's coaches know how to use it as an effective teaching tool.

    "When you're a player, your vision of what happened is somewhat limited by your own perspective and vision and experience," Eccker said. "The bench monitor gives them an added dimension and therefore more information as to what really happened, and gives them that feedback immediately during the game."

    Of course, that also means players may get an earful after a boneheaded play.

    Still, "the players are very receptive," Hunter said. "These are all young kids. They have Xboxes and iPods, and they are techno wizards themselves. They're all used to the technology, and they think it's pretty cool."

    The team burns DVDs of players' shifts on the ice and hands them out to individuals. The Sharks regularly watch the DVDs on their laptops while traveling from game to game.

    Hunter and head coach Ron Wilson used the technology when leading the Washington Capitals during the 2000-2002 seasons. They got the Sharks' bench monitor up and running for the last two games of the regular season and for every playoff game this year.

    So far, hockey is the only sport to use the bench monitor, Eccker said. NHL officials were not available for comment on this story.

    XOS Technologies did a test run with several teams in the National Basketball Association, but the device has not yet been approved.

    "People feel like the team (using it) would have an advantage, and therefore (everyone else) would have to buy it," Eccker said. "A lot of owners and managers don't want to feel like they have to make that purchase."

    The National Football League has eliminated all electronic tools from inside the game, so a device like the bench monitor is not permitted.

    "It's another cool toy for us coaches," Hunter said. "Every little advantage you can get makes a difference."

    April 20, 2004 reply from Richard Campbell

    Bob:

    In contrast, the NFL does not allow teams to take advantage of TV technology. The current practice is for a cameraman to photograph multiple pre-snap images, and ferry them down to the field level on a wire. Football fans may see quarterbacks looking at those photos in between possessions in order to anticipate defensive strategies.

    One of my accounting graduates obtained a field pass for me for a Buffalo Bills game, and I was able to overhear the strategy between Marv Levy and Jim Kelly. I was able to hear the roar of the approving crowd as I walked down the runway from the locker room to the field. It was a little louder than the students as I walked into class for a thrilling (to them) lecture on financial statement ratios.

    Richard

    Richard J. Campbell 
    School of Business University of Rio Grande 
    Rio Grande, OH 45674


    Using a PC to Record and Save Television Shows

    "Cheaper Than TiVo: Souping Up Your Computer," by Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2004, Page D4  --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108190122404782063,00.html?mod=gadgets%5Flead%5Fstory%5Fcol 

    Beyond TV 3 Turns PCs Into Digital Video Recorders; The Installation Nightmare 

     The coolest, trendiest way to watch television today is by using a digital video recorder, or DVR. With a DVR system, you can pause or rewind live TV. And, more important, you can record any program for viewing later without enduring the twin hassles of videotape recording: complicated programming and the need to keep blank tapes handy. That's because DVRs record TV shows to a large hard disk, and you pick the shows to record by just clicking their names in an onscreen program guide.

    But buying a DVR can be costly. The most popular options are high-end set-top boxes containing technology from TiVo, or its rival, Replay TV, which require a fee-based service; or, high-end Media Center PCs, that use a PC's internal hard disk as a DVR.

    If your budget is limited, and you have a plain old Windows PC, however, you can turn it into a DVR by using a new product from SnapStream Media, a small company from Houston. SnapStream's Beyond TV 3 includes DVR software for Windows, and is bundled with the necessary hardware -- an external TV tuner from Hauppauge Computer Works that plugs into the computer with a simple USB cable. This bundle is sold on the SnapStream.com Web site for $229.99. No service fee is charged.

    . . .

    Actually using Beyond TV 3 was a so-so experience, but nothing to write home about. I recorded an episode of "Charmed" and used the ShowSqueeze feature, which compresses recorded shows into Windows Media format. The DVD burning software included with the hardware didn't work with my test PC. I also paused and skipped back through live programming. The picture was only fair, not nearly as good as the image on the $150 TV set sitting a few feet away.

    I found navigating through BTV 3's screens to be clumsy. Settings screens lacked a button like "Done" or "Apply" to let you apply new settings -- the only recourse was to arrow back to the prior screen. When you shut down Beyond TV, a geeky log, which shows you exactly what is shutting down, appears on screen. This could easily suggest to a casual user that her PC was melting down.

    The company acknowledges these rough edges, but says it will be taking steps to remove them in future versions. The multiple installations will be combined into one, it says, and the odd messages will be made more friendly. The log display at shutdown will be removed.

    Maybe that will turn Beyond TV into an acceptable product. But I'm not sure. My suggestion for those wanting a DVR in their PC is to save up for a Media Center PC, which comes equipped with a built-in TV tuner card and has a smarter interface.


    The Best Ways to Digitize Old Photos, Tapes and Discs So Your Memories Live On ---
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-ways-to-digitize-old-photos-tapes-and-discs-so-your-memories-live-on-11609943584?mod=djm_dailydiscvrtst

    If my son asked me today to see video of my late grandfather, whose name he bears, I’d be in trouble.

    First, I’d have to locate the VHS tapes. Then I’d have to hunt down a gray-market VCR. ($500 and up for defunct technology!) Then I’d have to meet in some other dark alley for a converter box to hook it up to my fancy smart TV. Then I’d have to hope that, back in 1996, someone was kind and did in fact rewind.

    Luckily, my 3-year-old only asks for “Dora the Explorer.”

    Technology allows us to preserve the stories of people who die—assuming the technology doesn’t die, too.

    The idea of old photos and videos being lost in obsolete media formats was something I thought about a lot as I was producing “E-Ternal: A Tech Quest to ‘Live’ Forever,” a documentary about death and technology.

    It’s something viewers have written to me about, too. Some even suggested in emails that paper is the best solution to ensuring stories are passed down. Of course, I never met a piece of paper that improved in time—or in fire. Printouts are great, but they’re not the same as digital copies living on a rugged hard drive or up in the cloud for the entire family to access.

    Converting old media into digital files might not sound like your idea of a good time, but it doesn’t have to be a struggle. Here are some tips on how to make these older formats enjoyable in 2021.

    Old Photos

    There are really two routes to digitizing any old media: 1) Source some specialized hardware, roll up your sleeves and do it yourself, or 2) outsource.

    Photographs and prints are the easiest to do yourself. The most efficient route? Invest in the $600 Epson FastFoto FF-680W scanner. Put a stack of photos—even Polaroids—in the tray and it scans them in bulk, a photo as fast as every second, sending them to your computer via USB or Wi-Fi. Epson’s software helps with assigning years to each of the photo’s metadata and has simple color-restoration and editing tools. It’ll even scan the backs with the fronts, to preserve any writing or time stamps that are visible.

    While it’s pricey, the cost is worth it if you’re dealing with hundreds of photos. Plus, the scanner is something you can share with family members or friends who are daunted by their own photo troves.

    Don’t want to spend that much? iOS and Android apps like Google Photoscan or Photomyne’s Photo Scan App let you use your smartphone’s camera to capture the photos. Find a table with good light, and point and shoot—without getting your hand-puppet shadow in the way. The apps will automatically crop out the surface. Just set aside plenty of time and prioritize the most important images, since you have to go photo by photo with this option.

     

    If any of that sounds like a headache, just ship your photos to the pros at services like ScanMyPhotos.com and Memories Renewed. Gather your photos, organize them by year, get some bubble wrap and pop them in the mail. ScanMyPhoto will even send you a prepaid label and shipping box. The services will then digitize them, giving you options to get them on a DVD, USB drive or cloud download. The companies send back the originals. I used ScanMyPhotos a few years back and was quite satisfied with the turnaround time, the quality of the scanned images and the care taken with my original prints.

    Old Slides

    Those services will also take your old slides—35mm and other formats. But I recently discovered the thrill of scanning those myself. Inspired by my uncle, who scanned hundreds of 35mm slides during quarantine, I bought the $160 Kodak Scanza Digital Film Scanner.

    Just power up the coffee-tin-size device, pop your slide or negative into the appropriate tray and slide it into the machine. You can see the image on the built-in screen. Hit the camera button to save the photo to an SD card. Sadly, there’s no easy way to assign dates to the photos—you’ll have to do that afterward in your photo-editing program of choice.

    If you’re looking to do some quick and dirty slide scans, try the Photomyne’s SlideScan app for iOS and Android. Hold your slide up to a backlit surface (your computer’s web browser pointed to photomyne.com/backlight is great) then snap a photo. The app automatically crops and brightens the image. The quality wasn’t great, but it’s a nice way to figure out what’s hiding on those old negatives.

    ld Tapes

    Converting videotapes—be they VHS, Betamax, MiniDV, Video8 or some other ancient format—requires a device that can play them. Then you need another device to record the video, like this $170 ClearClick Video2Digital Converter 2.0. There are other ways to do this, too, including hooking the VCR or old video camera up to your computer via a converter like this

    It’s a lot. There are plenty of online services that do tape conversion, too, including ScanMyPhotos, Memories Renewed and Legacy Box. Also, Costco, CVS, Walmart and other retailers use a third-party service called YesVideo. Drop the tapes off at a local store and they’ll take care of the rest for you.

    Many of them will also handle your old audiocassettes. You can also try one of these cassette-to-MP3 converter gadgets.

    Old DVDs

    All those services will convert DVDs to digital files, too, although doing that on your own is simple.

    Continued in article


    RU THR? OMW ---The University of Florida Experiment With Text Messaging
    "Higher Ed Texting:  Campus text messaging for breaking news and events," by Jamie Devereaux, Converge Online, June 2007 --- http://www.convergemag.com/story.php?catid=231&storyid=105542

    Higher Ed Texting
    RU THR? OMW. Translation: Are you there yet? I'm on my way. At first glance that sentence is a NASA-worthy acronym. But really it is just text-speak for getting in touch with a friend. It is common in the world of text messaging to leave out vowels, abbreviate and shorten words. Texts, or text messages, are a blend of e-mail, instant messaging and cell phones. They are speedy, easy-to-use and are fast becoming the communication mode-of-choice on college campuses.

    A text is instantaneous and is keyed by way of the number pad on a cell phone. The message can reach one end-user in a chat or it can be sent to large groups. People can receive texts no matter if they are on the way to class, in their dorm room or at the café. Due to these real-time functions, texts could prove beneficial at colleges and universities. Administrators and faculty could use text messaging to alert students of adverse weather conditions, school lockdowns or other campus-wide issues.

    The University of Florida is one campus where text messaging has been put to use. The staff, faculty and students at UF can subscribe to a free cell phone messaging service and get in the network. The messaging system does not depend on a certain service provider (such as AT&T or Verizon) and has no related out-of-pocket cost to the university.

    Other campuses that utilize text messaging are the University of Texas, the University of Central Florida, Kent State University and Clemson.
    To read about the University of Florida's experience with campus-wide text messaging click
    here.

    Continued in article


    Statistical Survey Sampling and Analysis

    February 29, 2008 message from XXXXX

    Dear Dr. Jensen,

    I have accessed your web site and found it to be very helpful. I am working on a dissertation and need to find an instrument (survey) that has validity and reliability and that will measure student satisfaction with the use of iPODs in a course. With all of your knowledge and expertise, I thought I would take a chance and ask if you possibly could point me in a direction to find such a survey. I appreciate your time assistance.

    February 29, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi XXXXX,

    First you might read about what some other schools and people are saying about student hope and satisfaction in this area --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Laptops
    Second you might want to contact professors at places like Duke University that have quite a lot of experience with students use of Ipods. I think there was more hype than subsequent happiness with the results.

    The next thing that I recommend is that you carefully read the module at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_survey
    Also see http://www.answers.com/topic/statistical-survey

    I do not know of a similar survey where you can borrow the survey questions. I suspect that you will have to design your own, and this is a most difficult undertaking. Consider first the goals of using iPods in a course. Then design your questions with those goals in mind. Then test your questions first with survey experts (such as you might find in the Sociology or Marketing Departments) and then conduct a pilot study with students before administering the survey.

    Mike Kearl has some great helpers for survey research --- http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/methods.html#ms

    You can find some useful resources at http://www.auditnet.org/sampling.htm

    After reading the above basics, you might next consider online surveys. For this I strongly recommend the following publication:

    A 2001 RAND Corporation report, CONDUCTING RESEARCH SURVEYS VIA EMAIL AND THE WEB [ISBN: 0-8330-3110-4], discusses the pros and cons of using email and the Web to conduct research surveys. The authors (Matthias Schonlau, Ronald D. Fricker, Jr., and Marc N. Elliott) provide an overview of the various aspects of the research survey process, guidelines for choosing the type of Internet survey to use, and suggestions for designing and implementing Internet surveys. The report is available for purchase in paperback or online in PDF format, at no charge, at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1480/
    (the above document description loads very slowly)

    Internet-based surveys, although still in their infancy, are becoming increasingly popular because they are believed to be faster, better, cheaper, and easier to conduct than surveys using more-traditional telephone or mail methods. Based on evidence in the literature and real-life case studies, this book examines the validity of those claims. The authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using e-mail and the Web to conduct research surveys, and also offer practical suggestions for designing and implementing Internet surveys most effectively. Among other findings, the authors determined that Internet surveys may be preferable to mail or telephone surveys when a list of e-mail addresses for the target population is available, thus eliminating the need for mail or phone invitations to potential respondents. Internet surveys also are well-suited for larger survey efforts and for some target populations that are difficult to reach by traditional survey methods. Web surveys are conducted more quickly than mail or phone surveys when respondents are contacted initially by e-mail, as is often the case when a representative panel of respondents has been assembled in advance. And, although surveys incur virtually no coding or data-entry costs because the data are captured electronically, the labor costs for design and programming can be high.

    Note Chapter 4 in particular --- http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1480/MR1480.ch4.pdf

    Video Tutorial on Creating Surveys Using Google Forms ---
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZEjmxTvR4k&feature=youtu.be
    Thank you Richard Campbell for the heads up.

    Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics and statistics tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics


    Video Courses

    Probably the most successful use of video is the Adept program at Stanford University where engineering students can get an entire Masters of Engineering degree almost entirely from video courses http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/cnc9838/cnc9838.html


    Kitty Economics:  Teaching Economics Using Cat Videos ---
    https://kittyconomics.com/
    Jerry thwarted Tom in those old Tom (the cat) and Jerry (the mouse) Cartoons ---
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_and_Jerry

    My favorite example of video courses is at BYU where the entire two course introductory accounting sequence is taught with variable speed videos ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo
    BYU does not pussy foot around.

    Jensen Comment
    The bottom line is that video courses often work very well for highly motivated top students. BYU consistently has such students in accountancy courses. The BYU video course pedagogy won't work as well where students need more hand holding combined with kicks in the butt in the classroom and outside the classroom.

    BYU Flipped Variable-Speed Video Courses in Accounting
    BYU replaced live lectures in the on-campus two introductory courses in accounting with variable -speed video 15 years ago. I wrote about the pioneering efforts of adjunct professor Norman Nemrows who developed these CDs years ago ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo
    The variable speed videos enable students to navigate more efficiently through the video files and to slow down on parts they want to study.
    I think Norm supervised the courses and held office hours when students wanted some help. As I recall he did all this for $1 per term.

    This was a one of the early campus classroom replacements on online lectures with video. My contention then and now was that this would not work well on many campuses. It worked well at BYU because the accounting majors are nearly all highly motivated students who learn well on their own or in small groups. In a course having a high proportion of unmotivated students there is generally more need for live instructors to kick butt.

    Jensen Comment
    The paper below from BYU is important in the sense that BYU was one of the first, if not the first, prestigious university to teach the two basic accounting courses (across one academic year) via video DVD discs. Classes only met on rare occasion for inspirational sessions such as visiting experts on careers in accountancy.

    It should be noted that the video modules replaced live lecturing. There was still a textbook for each video course such that students could learn via whether reading or video watching. The BUY introductory accounting videos were interesting in that they were "variable speed videos" where students could pace themselves according to how fast they individually learned the material.

    You can read more about the BYU accounting video courses at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo
    The above site contains links to other sites on possible interest on this topic
     

    Study Choices by Introductory Accounting Students: Those Who Choose to Study By Reading Text Outperform Those Who Choose to Study by Watching Video Lectures
    SSRN, December 31, 2015
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2787478

    Authors

    Earl K. Stice Brigham Young University; Nazarbayev University

    James D Stice Brigham Young University

    Conan Albrecht Brigham Young University - School of Accountancy

    Abstract

    We use student-level online resource usage data for students in four different introductory accounting courses to explore students’ revealed preferences for reading text or watching video lectures. The online learning tool tracks student study choice (read text, watch video, or skip) on a paragraph-by-paragraph level. We match these usage data with student performance on course exams. Not surprisingly, we find that students who study more material earn higher exam scores than do students who study less material. We also find that students who self-select to do relatively more of their studying through reading text score higher on exams, on average, than do students who self-select to do relatively more of their studying through watching videos. Specifically, holding the overall amount of study constant, a student who chooses to spend the highest fraction of her or his study time watching video mini-lectures earns exam scores ten percentage points lower (six-tenths of a standard deviation) than a student who chooses to spend the lowest fraction of study time watching videos. Our evidence suggests that the highest-performing introductory accounting students choose to learn accounting proportionately more through reading than through watching. These results are a reminder that when we talk about using “technology” to help our students learn accounting, the written word is still an important technology.

    Jensen Comment
    It should be noted that BYU is one of the top schools of accountancy in the world. In particular accounting students have high admissions qualifications in terms of test scores, religious and cultural backgrounds, and motivation to learn. It's especially important to note that a typical BYU accounting student is so highly self-motivated that teaching becomes less important vis-a-vis lower motivated students who need more inspiration and technical help from a live teacher. The "learn on your own" pedagogy that provides video modules and textbook chapters with much less live interaction with a teacher probably works better at BYU than in most colleges and universities.

    Of course this does not mean that BYU students do not need and get more live interactions with professors as they proceed up the learning ladder toward more advanced accounting courses. The video courses at the introductory level free up resources to devote more time and attention to advanced majors. I seriously doubt that this pedagogy will work as well in colleges where introductory students a much, much less inclined to learn on their own from video modules and textbook chapters.

    The risk of replacing instructor interactions with accountancy videos and books is you may lose majors who might otherwise become more motivated to major in accountancy with more live interactions with professors. There seems to be so much demand to major in accounting at BYU this seems to be less of a problem than it would be at Cactus Gulch Community College.


    David Pogue:  Pogue’s Basics: How to speed up YouTube playback with a keystroke ---
    https://www.yahoo.com/tech/pogues-basics-speed-youtube-playback-keystroke-160348751.html


    2015 Update
    "When a Flipped-Classroom Pioneer Hands Off His Video Lectures, This Is What Happens," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 7, 2015 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/When-a-Flipped-Classroom/151031/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

    In a way, there are two Norman Nemrows. There’s the real-life professor who spent much of his career teaching accounting students at Brigham Young University. And there’s the one I'll call Video Norm, the instructor immortalized in lectures on accounting that he began recording nearly 15 years ago.

    For more than a decade, students at BYU learned from both Norms. About half of the class sessions for his introductory-accounting course were "software days," when students watched an hour or two of video lectures on their computers anywhere they wanted and then completed quizzes online. The other class periods were "enhancement lectures," in which students—as many as 800 at a time—gathered in a classroom and did group work led by the actual Mr. Nemrow.

    Back when it started, in 2000, this method of reducing in-person classes and replacing them with videos and tutorials was an innovation, but today it is a buzzword: the flipped classroom.

    A few years ago, the living, breathing Norman Nemrow retired from the university. And that’s when things got interesting, or at least more complicated, because students at BYU still learn from Video Norm.

    In fact, every student taking introductory accounting at the university watches the video lectures, some 3,000 students each year. And the in-person sessions? They’re now led by another accounting professor, Melissa Larson, who has been thrust into the novel role of doing everything a traditional professor does except the lecturing. The tough question—and one of the biggest for the future of the flipped model—is whether other professors will be willing or able to become sidekicks to slick video productions.

    Ms. Larson gets high marks on student evaluations for leading group work in the large classroom sessions and answering questions by email. But Video Norm remains the star.

    That was clear when Mr. Nemrow showed up, in person, at the end of the fall semester to give a guest lecture for the introductory course. You’d think a Hollywood actor had come to campus. Students showed up early to take selfies with the professor they had spent so many hours watching on video.

    "We got front-row seats," said Celeste Harris, a junior in the course. "We said, we have to see what this guy is like in real life."

    How did Mr. Nemrow compare with the digital version? "He’s a little older than when he recorded the videos," Ms. Harris noted, "but it was actually one of the best lectures I’ve heard." It was inspirational, she said, because Mr. Nemrow recounted the story of this unusual accounting course, which has become a kind of legend on the campus.

    From Business to Teaching

    Mr. Nemrow started out as a businessman. He worked at a consulting firm in California, then helped start a real-estate-investment firm. But he was drawn to the classroom. For years he taught accounting on the side, first as an adjunct at California State University at Fullerton, then full time at Pepperdine University.

    Around the time he turned 30, he sold his business and decided to retire early. He didn’t want to do nothing, but he no longer had to work for money, he says, even with a wife and five small children.

    "I didn’t really have a burning desire to create another business," he says. He took some art classes. He played a lot of golf. "For a couple of years I was trying to kind of find myself," he recalls. "I decided what I really wanted to do is probably teach."

    So he called up the dean of the business school at his alma mater, Brigham Young, and asked if there was a teaching spot for him. He had a master’s degree but not a Ph.D., and at first the answer was no. "When I told him I was willing to do it as a volunteer, his attitude changed," Mr. Nemrow recounts, with a laugh. "He let me teach the intro course for a year."

    BYU hired Mr. Nemrow as a full-time professor. He donated his salary to the university, he says. A devout Mormon, he saw the work as a way to give back to the church. In his mind, that left his teaching in the category of volunteer work. "I wanted to have complete and total freedom, and I didn’t want to make a commitment to how long I’d be there."

    After several years of teaching the introductory course, he says, he began to get tired of repeating himself and answering the same questions. He considered writing a textbook and even drafted a couple of chapters. "But I thought to myself, this isn’t as effective as when I’m explaining it in person."

    So, in 1998, he approached the university’s fledgling instructional-technology group and pitched his idea to reformat his course around a series of videos and computerized homework assignments. "They were worried about getting funding, so I just put up the money myself," about $50,000, he says.

    After two years of development and some lobbying to persuade the accounting faculty to let him try his flipped experiment, Video Norm was born.

    Mr. Nemrow says the software increased the number of students he could teach at one time, while reducing the time it took him to do it. And he says his surveys showed that 93 percent of his students reported learning more effectively from the flipped format than from a traditional one. Both his inner businessman and his inner philanthropist thought: This is going to be big.

    Hitting the Road

    Mr. Nemrow believed that his system was simply better than the old way, and he thought that once other accounting professors saw it, they’d immediately adopt his videos and software rather than the textbook-and-lecture method.

    He started a company, Business Learning Software Inc., to manage and update the videos and the delivery technology. True to his desire to keep his teaching like volunteer work, he says, he donates any profits to charities. Because the software and videos were developed at BYU, the university owns them and gets a portion of any revenue from their sale. And he made all of the videos for his intro course available free online.

    Mr. Nemrow traveled to accounting departments and academic conferences around the country, evangelizing his teaching approach and his software. But, to his surprise, he found few takers.

    Continued in article

     

     


    Learning Basic Financial Accounting at Brigham Young University (BYU) From Homegrown Videos
    Developer and Instructor:  Norman Nemrow [nemrow@byu.edu
    Title of Package of Eight CDs:  Introduction to Accounting:  The Language of Business
    Textbook:  I think this package can be used along with virtually any basic accounting textbook
    Pedagogy:  Students learn from video lesson modules before each class.  The video lessons display 
                      the course instructor in video as well as accompanying PowerPoint displays that are auto-
                      matically sequenced with the video.  Students have nifty options to both replay the previous
                      five minutes and to play the videos a double (2x) speed that is an outstanding option
                      for reviewing previously-learned material.
    Classes:  Classes are more inspirational than perspirational (e.g., frequent use of visiting speakers)
    Outcomes:  Purportedly students perform better vis-ŕ-vis previous lecture pedagogy without video. 
                       See the following evaluation of learning:

     "Variable Speed Playback of Digitally Recorded Lectures: Evaluating Learner Feedback," by Joel D. Galbraith
    (joel_galbraith@byu.edu ) and Steven G. Spencer --- http://www.enounce.com/docs/BYUPaper020319.pdf 

    Basic accounting students At BYU have great success learning accounting from special videos --- http://www.accountingcds.com/index.html

    Contact Information: 
    Cameron Earl 801-836-5649 cameronearl@byu.edu
    Norm Nemrow 801-422-3029 nemrow@byu.edu 

    Update message on November 3, 2005

    Bob has posted our new website in an earlier post, but the new URL to our new website describing our accounting tools is www.accountingcds.com

    We have a demo of VSP (the technology that speeds up the video and audio) technology here: http://www.accountingcds.com/learn/links/vspdemo.htm 

    Cameron Earl

    BYU

    Also see David Cottrell's approach at BYU --- http://www.business.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/AAA-CPE/AAA2003Cottrell.pdf 

    Master Educators Who Deliver Exceptional Courses or Entire Programs
    But Have Little Contact With Individual Students

    Before reading this section, you should be familiar with the document at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching

    Master educators can also be outstanding researchers, although research is certainly not a requisite to being a master educator. Many master educators are administrators of exceptional accounting education programs. They're administrative duties typically leave little time for research, although they may write about education and learning. Some master educators are not even tenure track faculty.

    What I've noticed in recent years is how technology can make a huge difference. Nearly every college these days has some courses in selected disciplines because they are utilizing some type exciting technology. Today I returned from a trip to Jackson, Mississippi where I conduced a day-long CPE session on education technology for accounting educators in Mississippi (what great southern hospitality by the way). So the audience would not have to listen to me the entire day, I invited Cameron Earl from Brigham Young University to make a presentation that ran for about 90 minutes. I learned some things about top educators at BYU, which by the way is one of the most respected universities in the world. If you factor out a required religion course on the Book of Mormon, the most popular courses on the BYU campus are the two basic accounting courses. By popular I mean in terms of thousands of students who elect to take these courses even if they have no intention of majoring in business or economics where these two courses are required. Nearly all humanities and science students on campus try to sign up for these two accounting courses.

    After students take these two courses, capacity constraints restrict the numbers of successful students in these courses who are then allowed to become accounting majors at BYU. I mean I'm talking about a very, very small percentage who are allowed to become accounting students. Students admitted to the accounting program generally have over 3.7 minimum campus-wide grade averages.

    This begs the question of what makes the two basic accounting courses so exceptionally popular in such a large and prestigious university?

    Trivia Question
    At BYU most students on campus elect to take Norman Nemrow's two basic accounting courses. In the distant past, what exceptional accounting professor managed to get his basic accounting courses required at a renowned university while he was teaching these courses?

    Trivia Answer
    Bill Paton is one of the all-time great accounting professors in history. His home campus was the University of Michigan, and for a period of time virtually all students at his university had to take basic accounting (or at least so I was told by several of Paton's former doctoral students). Bill Paton was one of the first to be inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame.

    As an aside, I might mention that I favor requiring two basic accounting courses for every student admitted to a college or university, including colleges who do not even have business education programs.

    But the "required accounting courses" would not, in my viewpoint, be a traditional basic accounting courses. About two thirds or more of these courses should be devoted to personal finance, investing, business law, tax planning. The remainder of the courses should touch on accounting basics for keeping score of business firms and budgeting for every organization in society.

    At the moment, the majority of college graduates do not have a clue about the time value of money and the basics of finance and accounting that they will face the rest of their lives.

     

    There are other ways of being "mastery educators" without being master teachers in a traditional sense. Three professors of accounting at the University of Virginia developed and taught a year-long intermediate accounting case where students virtually had to teach themselves in a manner that they found painful and frustrating. But there are metacognitive reasons where the end result made this year-long active learning task one of the most meaningful and memorable experiences in their entire education --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
    They often painfully grumbled with such comments as "everything I'm learned in this course I'm having to learn by myself."

    You can read about mastery learning and all its frustrations at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching 


     


    Question
    How do you come up with a lesson plan for 20 or more students for an entire week when all your students are learning at a different pace?

    "The evolving classroom: Lessons go virtual," by Rick Bastien, CNN, June 27, 2012 ---
    http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/27/the-evolving-classroom-lessons-go-virtual/

    On any given Sunday night, your child’s teacher might face this problem: How do you come up with a lesson plan for 20 or more students for an entire week when all your students are learning at a different pace?

    Mike is great at reading but needs help in math. Katie excels in science but struggles with writing. They both need to pass the same state tests. And with states picking up new high standards for education, there isn’t always a precedent of how to teach. Even with textbooks and years of experience, the best teachers can struggle to find new ways of teaching complex subjects, especially when each student learns differently.

    This is a problem that Eric Westendorf and Alix Guerrier are determined to solve. The two former teachers co-founded LearnZillion.com, a social venture that provides free lessons for students, all in organized YouTube-style videos.

    The formula is simple: Videos have to be about five minutes long, illustrated by hand and voiced by a real teacher. The product simulates a real-classroom effect —it’s like your favorite teacher drawing the math lesson on the chalkboard, except that you can play it over and over if you don’t quite understand it. At the end, you take a brief quiz. But as it turns out, this resource is mostly utilized by teachers looking for new ways to teach the topics with which their students are struggling .

    In other words, teachers need help from other teachers. Jonathan Krasnov, Learnzillion’s publicist notes, “Even great teachers don’t teach everything great.”

    Westendorf was the principal of E.L. Haynes, a charter school in Washington, D.C., when he came up with the idea.

    He told CNN, “We started using it because we came across the Khan Academy site.  We liked this idea of instruction being captured and delivered to students. Then we said, ‘What if it could be based on the Common Core Standards,  [which most U.S.states have now adopted] , so that it is aligned with what students need? … It was out of these ‘what ifs’ that I came up with a prototype.”

    Westendorf plans for LearnZillion to eventually make profit by selling services to school districts, such as lessons tailored to the needs of the school. But he says that the lessons posted online will always be free.
     

    CNN attended LearnZillion’s first TeachFest , recently held in Atlanta. Westendorf and Guerrier recruited more than 100 “Dream Team” teachers to help build up their database of lessons. The teachers get paid $100 for each lesson created. But the chance to reach more students is the biggest reward for many teachers to whom CNN talked.

    Mike Lewis, a fifth-grade teacher from Cohasset, Massachusetts, says his interest in the “ability to replicate yourself and your lessons using video” is what led him to LearnZillion. The slogan for TeachFest was “scale your impact.”

    The idea is not new. KhanAcademy.org has thousands of lessons, and unlike LearnZillion, Khan Academy is a nonprofit. Both receive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation donated $300,000 just for TeachFest.

    Even Bill Gates acknowledges that the idea of the virtual classroom hasn’t quite gone viral yet. During last month’s Innovation in Education summit, the Microsoft CEO noted the example of Edx, a  partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University that provides free online courses.

     

    Jensen Comment
    This is why I created Camtasia modules for nearly every technical phase of both my AIS and Accounting Theory courses and then served them up on either my LAN drive or my Web server. When the video module contained copyrighted material I used the LAN drive. For example, if I showed students how to solve an end-of-chapter problem I used the LAN drive.

    The Camtasia videos had several great learning advantages:

    1. Students could repeat, repeat, and repeat again until they finally mastered some complicated task such as writing a database query or booking fair value adjustments of an interest rate swap.
       
    2. Students could skip over parts of the module that they fully understood and then focus on the parts of a task that they had not yet mastered.
       
    3. Usually I encouraged students to work in partnerships such that they appreciated how teamwork aids learning. But they were on their own when I gave a quiz in every class to test whether they truly understood the technical process they were supposed to learn before coming to class.
       
    4. This allowed me to focus on such things as theory and concepts in class rather than having to solve problems that some students understood fully and other students had their heads in the clouds.

    There is a risk that this works so efficiently that it's tempting to add more and more technical material to the course. My students generally let me know when my courses were demanding too much of their time relative to the other courses they were taking in the same semester.

    This video module approach may be less successful for students who are not well above average. Students at the lower end of the spectrum may need more direct supervision and face-to-butt kicking.

    At BYU, where basic accounting students are probably above the national norm for these two courses in terms of aptitude and motivation, each basic course is taught via variable speed video in courses that rarely meet face-to-face ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

    There is no magic bullet for students who are overly exhausted from off-campus work, parenting, or partying. Learning requires lots and lots of sweat. And if the sweat arises from things other than course content, not a whole lot of learning of course content will take place under any pedagogy. Students in these poor learning circumstances generally discover that accounting, mathematics, engineering, and science courses should be avoided whenever possible.

     

     


    Question
    What types of students benefit most versus least from video lectures?

    "Video Lectures May Slightly Hurt Student Performance," by Sophia Li, Inside Higher Ed, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 21, 2010 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Video-Lectures-May-Slightly/24963/

    No clear winner emerges in the contest between video and live instruction, according to the findings of a recent study led by David N. Figlio, a professor of education and social policy at Northwestern University. The study found that students who watched lectures online instead of attending in-person classes performed slightly worse in the course over all.

    A previous analysis by the U.S. Department of Education that examined existing research comparing online and live instruction favored online learning over purely in-person instruction, according to the working paper by Mr. Figlio and his colleagues, which was released this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

    But Mr. Figlio's study contradicted those results, showing that live instruction benefits Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students in particular.

    Colleges and universities that are turning to video lectures because of their institutions' tight budgets may be doing those students a disservice, said Mark Rush, a professor of economics at the University of Florida and one of the working paper's authors.

    More research will be necessary, however, before any definite conclusions can be drawn about the effectiveness of video lectures, said Lu Yin, a graduate student at the University of Florida who worked on the project. Future research could study the effectiveness of watching lectures online for topics other than microeconomics, which was the subject of the course evaluated in the study, Ms. Yin said.

    Jensen Comment
    Studies like this just do not extrapolate well into the real world, because so very, very much depends upon both how instructors use videos and how students use videos. My students had to take my live classes, but my Camtasia video allowed them to keep going over and over, at their own learning pace, technical modules (PQQ Possible Quiz Questions) until they got technical things down pat ---
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/
    Students who did not use the videos as intended usually paid a price.

    However, some outcomes in the above study conform to my priors. For example, Brigham Young University (BYU) has very successfully replaced live lectures with variable-speed video lectures in the first two basic accounting courses ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

    However, BYU students most likely have mostly high achieving students to begin with, especially in accounting. It would be interesting to formally study the use such variable-speed video in colleges having a higher proportion of lower-achieving students. My guess is that the variable-speed video lectures would be less effective with lower-achieving students who are not motivated to keep replaying videos until they get the technical material down pat. The may be lower achieving in great measure because they are less motivated learners or learners who have too many distractions (like supportingchildren) to have as much quality study time.

    And live lecturing/mentoring is hard to put in a single category because there are so many types of live lecturing/mentoring ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching

    In conclusion, I think much depends upon the quality of the video versus lecture, class size, and student motivation. Videos offer the tremendous advantage of instant replay and being able to adjust to the best learning pace of the student. Live lectures can, and often do, lead to more human interactive factors that can be good (if they motivate) and bad (if they distract or instill dysfunctional fear).

    The best video lectures are probably those that are accompanied with instant messaging with an instructor or tutor that can provide answers or clues to answers not on the video.

     


    Question
    Should you share your knowledge on YouTube?

    "Thanks to YouTube, Professors Are Finding New Audiences," Jeffrey R. Young, Inside Higher Ed, January 9, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/free/2008/01/1159n.htm

    One Web site that opened this week, Big Think,  hopes to be "a YouTube for ideas." The site offers interviews with academics, authors, politicians, and other thinkers. Most of the subjects are filmed in front of a plain white background, and the interviews are chopped into bite-sized pieces of just a few minutes each. The short clips could have been served up as text quotes, but Victoria R. M. Brown, co-founder of Big Think, says video is more engaging. "People like to learn and be informed of things by looking and watching and learning," she says.

    YouTube itself wants to be a venue for academe. In the past few months, several colleges have signed agreements with the site to set up official "channels." The University of California at Berkeley was the first, and the University of Southern California, the University of New South Wales, in Australia, and Vanderbilt University soon followed.

    It remains an open question just how large the audience for talking eggheads is, though. After all, in the early days of television, many academics hoped to use the medium to beam courses to living rooms, with series like CBS's Sunrise Semester. which began in 1957. Those efforts are now a distant memory.

    Things may be different now, though, since the Internet offers a chance to connect people with the professors and topics that most interest them.

    Even YouTube was surprised by how popular the colleges' content has been, according to Adam Hochman, a product manager at Berkeley's Learning Systems Group. Lectures are long, after all, while most popular YouTube videos run just a few minutes. (Lonelygirl, the diary of a teenage girl, had episodes that finished in well under a minute. Many other popular shorts involve cute animals or juvenile stunts). Yet some lectures on Berkeley's channel scored 100,000 viewers each, and people were sitting through the whole talks. "Professors in a sense are rock stars," Mr. Hochman concludes. "We're getting as many hits as you would find with some of the big media players."

    YouTube officials insist that they weren't surprised by the buzz, and they say that more colleges are coming forward. "We expect that education will be a vibrant category on YouTube," said Obadiah Greenberg, strategic partner manager at YouTube, in an e-mail interview. "Everybody loves to learn."

    To set up an official channel on YouTube, colleges must sign an agreement with the company, though no money changes hands. That allows the colleges to brand their section of the site, by including a logo or school colors, and to upload longer videos than typical users are allowed.

    The company hasn't exactly made it easy to find the academic offerings, though. Clicking on the education category shows a mix of videos, including ones with babes posing in lingerie and others on the lectures of Socrates. But that could change if the company begins to sign up more colleges and pay more attention to whether videos are appearing in the correct subject areas, says Dan Colman, director and associate dean of Stanford University's continuing-studies program, who runs a blog tracking podcasts and videos made by colleges and professors.

    In many cases, the colleges were already offering the videos they are putting on YouTube on their own Web sites, or on Apple's iTunes U, an educational section of the iTunes Store. But college officials say that teaming up with YouTube is greatly expanding their audiences because so many people are poking around the service already.

    Continued in article

    UC Berkeley and other major universities now offer hundreds of courses on YouTube --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Question
    If you want to go on YouTube, how should you make your videos?

    Jensen Answer
    I recommend featuring computer screens that you narrate using Camtasia --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

    However, you can also get a digital video camera. I suggest that professors consult their media departments on campus.


    Question
    What is the new YouTube for Intellectuals?

    "'YouTube for Intellectuals' Goes Live," by Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 8, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2646/youtube-for-intellectuals-goes-live?at

    'YouTube for Intellectuals' Goes Live Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, talks about the importance of racial, socioeconomic, and religious diversity at colleges in a video on bigthink, a new Web site that is meant to be a YouTube for intellectuals. In addition to featuring academics, the site includes one- to two-minute videos from politicians, artists, and business people.

    According to an article in Monday’s New York Times, the site was started by Peter Hopkins, a 2004 graduate of Harvard University. He said he hopes bigthink becomes popular among college students. David Frankel, a venture capitalist, put up most of the money for the enterprise. Lawrence H. Summers, a former president of Harvard, has invested tens of thousands of dollars as well.

    Bob Jensen's video search helpers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Video


    "Critical Thinking:  Why It's So Hard to Teach," by Daniel T. Willingham ---
    http://www.readingrockets.org/article/critical-thinking-why-it-so-hard-teach

    Also see Simorleon Sense --- http://www.simoleonsense.com/critical-thinking-why-is-it-so-hard-to-teach/

    “Critical thinking is not a set of skills that can be deployed at any time, in any context. It is a type of thought that even 3-year-olds can engage in—and even trained scientists can fail in.”

    “Knowing that one should think critically is not the same as being able to do so. That requires domain knowledge and practice.”

    So,  Why Is Thinking Critically So Hard?
    Educators have long noted that school attendance and even academic success are no guarantee that a student will graduate an effective thinker in all situations. There is an odd tendency for rigorous thinking to cling to particular examples or types of problems. Thus, a student may have learned to estimate the answer to a math problem before beginning calculations as a way of checking the accuracy of his answer, but in the chemistry lab, the same student calculates the components of a compound without noticing that his estimates sum to more than 100 percent. And a student who has learned to thoughtfully discuss the causes of the American Revolution from both the British and American perspectives doesn’t even think to question how the Germans viewed World War II. Why are students able to think critically in one situation, but not in another? The brief answer is: Thought processes are intertwined with what is being thought about. Let’s explore this in depth by looking at a particular kind of critical thinking that has been studied extensively: problem solving.

    Imagine a seventh-grade math class immersed in word problems. How is it that students will be able to answer one problem, but not the next, even though mathematically both word problems are the same, that is, they rely on the same mathematical knowledge? Typically, the students are focusing on the scenario that the word problem describes (its surface structure) instead of on the mathematics required to solve it (its deep structure). So even though students have been taught how to solve a particular type of word problem, when the teacher or textbook changes the scenario, students still struggle to apply the solution because they don’t recognize that the problems are mathematically the same.

    Thinking Tends to Focus on a Problem’s “Surface Structure”
    To understand why the surface structure of a problem is so distracting and, as a result, why it’s so hard to apply familiar solutions to problems that appear new, let’s first consider how you understand what’s being asked when you are given a problem. Anything you hear or read is automatically interpreted in light of what you already know about similar subjects. For example, suppose you read these two sentences: “After years of pressure from the film and television industry, the President has filed a formal complaint with China over what U.S. firms say is copyright infringement. These firms assert that the Chinese government sets stringent trade restrictions for U.S. entertainment products, even as it turns a blind eye to Chinese companies that copy American movies and television shows and sell them on the black market.”

    With Deep Knowledge, Thinking Can Penetrate Beyond Surface Structure
    If knowledge of how to solve a problem never transferred to problems with new surface structures, schooling would be inefficient or even futile—but of course, such transfer does occur. When and why is complex,5 but two factors are especially relevant for educators: familiarity with a problem’s deep structure and the knowledge that one should look for a deep structure. I’ll address each in turn. When one is very familiar with a problem’s deep-structure, knowledge about how to solve it transfers well. That familiarity can come from long-term, repeated experience with one problem, or with various manifestations of one type of problem (i.e., many problems that have different surface structures, but the same deep structure). After repeated exposure to either or both, the subject simply perceives the deep structure as part of the problem description.

    "Critical Thinking: Distinguishing Between Inferences and Assumptions," The Critical Thinking Community ---
    http://www.criticalthinking.org/articles/ct-distinguishing-inferencs.cfm 

    To be skilled in critical thinking is to be able to take one’s thinking apart systematically, to analyze each part, assess it for quality and then improve it. The first step in this process is understanding the parts of thinking, or elements of reasoning.

    These elements are: purpose, question, information, inference, assumption, point of view, concepts, and implications. They are present in the mind whenever we reason. To take command of our thinking, we need to formulate both our purpose and the question at issue clearly. We need to use information in our thinking that is both relevant to the question we are dealing with, and accurate. We need to make logical inferences based on sound assumptions. We need to understand our own point of view and fully consider other relevant viewpoints. We need to use concepts justifiably and follow out the implications of decisions we are considering. (For an elaboration of the Elements of Reasoning, see a Miniature Guide to the Foundations of Analytic Thinking.)

    In this article we focus on two of the elements of reasoning: inferences and assumptions. Learning to distinguish inferences from assumptions is an important intellectual skill. Many confuse the two elements. Let us begin with a review of the basic meanings:

    1. Inference: An inference is a step of the mind, an intellectual act by which one concludes that something is true in light of something else’s being true, or seeming to be true. If you come at me with a knife in your hand, I probably would infer that you mean to do me harm. Inferences can be accurate or inaccurate, logical or illogical, justified or unjustified.

       
    2. Assumption: An assumption is something we take for granted or presuppose. Usually it is something we previously learned and do not question. It is part of our system of beliefs. We assume our beliefs to be true and use them to interpret the world about us. If we believe that it is dangerous to walk late at night in big cities and we are staying in Chicago, we will infer that it is dangerous to go for a walk late at night. We take for granted our belief that it is dangerous to walk late at night in big cities. If our belief is a sound one, our assumption is sound. If our belief is not sound, our assumption is not sound. Beliefs, and hence assumptions, can be unjustified or justified, depending upon whether we do or do not have good reasons for them. Consider this example: “I heard a scratch at the door. I got up to let the cat in.” My inference was based on the assumption (my prior belief) that only the cat makes that noise, and that he makes it only when he wants to be let in.

    We humans naturally and regularly use our beliefs as assumptions and make inferences based on those assumptions. We must do so to make sense of where we are, what we are about, and what is happening. Assumptions and inferences permeate our lives precisely because we cannot act without them. We make judgments, form interpretations, and come to conclusions based on the beliefs we have formed.

    If you put humans in any situation, they start to give it some meaning or other. People automatically make inferences to gain a basis for understanding and action. So quickly and automatically do we make inferences that we do not, without training, notice them as inferences. We see dark clouds and infer rain. We hear the door slam and infer that someone has arrived. We see a frowning face and infer that the person is upset. If our friend is late, we infer that she is being inconsiderate. We meet a tall guy and infer that he is good at basketball, an Asian and infer that she will be good at math. We read a book, and interpret what the various sentences and paragraphs — indeed what the whole book — is saying. We listen to what people say and make a series of inferences as to what they mean.

    As we write, we make inferences as to what readers will make of what we are writing. We make inferences as to the clarity of what we are saying, what requires further explanation, what has to be exemplified or illustrated, and what does not. Many of our inferences are justified and reasonable, but some are not.

    As always, an important part of critical thinking is the art of bringing what is subconscious in our thought to the level of conscious realization. This includes the recognition that our experiences are shaped by the inferences we make during those experiences. It enables us to separate our experiences into two categories: the raw data of our experience in contrast with our interpretations of those data, or the inferences we are making about them. Eventually we need to realize that the inferences we make are heavily influenced by our point of view and the assumptions we have made about people and situations. This puts us in the position of being able to broaden the scope of our outlook, to see situations from more than one point of view, and hence to become more open-minded.

    Often different people make different inferences because they bring to situations different viewpoints. They see the data differently. To put it another way, they make different assumptions about what they see. For example, if two people see a man lying in a gutter, one might infer, “There’s a drunken bum.” The other might infer, “There’s a man in need of help.” These inferences are based on different assumptions about the conditions under which people end up in gutters. Moreover, these assumptions are connected to each person’s viewpoint about people. The first person assumes, “Only drunks are to be found in gutters.” The second person assumes, “People lying in the gutter are in need of help.”

    The first person may have developed the point of view that people are fundamentally responsible for what happens to them and ought to be able to care for themselves. The second may have developed the point of view that the problems people have are often caused by forces and events beyond their control. The reasoning of these two people, in terms of their inferences and assumptions, could be characterized in the following way:

     

    Person One
     
    Person Two
     
    Situation: A man is lying in the gutter. Situation: A man is lying in the gutter.
    Inference: That man’s a bum. Inference: That man is in need of help.
    Assumption: Only bums lie in gutters. Assumption: Anyone lying in the gutter is in need of help.

    Critical thinkers notice the inferences they are making, the assumptions upon which they are basing those inferences, and the point of view about the world they are developing. To develop these skills, students need practice in noticing their inferences and then figuring the assumptions that lead to them.
     

    As students become aware of the inferences they make and the assumptions that underlie those inferences, they begin to gain command over their thinking. Because all human thinking is inferential in nature, command of thinking depends on command of the inferences embedded in it and thus of the assumptions that underlie it. Consider the way in which we plan and think our way through everyday events. We think of ourselves as preparing for breakfast, eating our breakfast, getting ready for class, arriving on time, leading class discussions, grading student papers, making plans for lunch, paying bills, engaging in an intellectual discussion, and so on. We can do none of these things without interpreting our actions, giving them meanings, making inferences about what is happening.

    This is to say that we must choose among a variety of possible meanings. For example, am I “relaxing” or “wasting time?” Am I being “determined” or “stubborn?” Am I “joining” a conversation or “butting in?” Is someone “laughing with me” or “laughing at me?” Am I “helping a friend” or “being taken advantage of?” Every time we interpret our actions, every time we give them a meaning, we are making one or more inferences on the basis of one or more assumptions.

    As humans, we continually make assumptions about ourselves, our jobs, our mates, our students, our children, the world in general. We take some things for granted simply because we can’t question everything. Sometimes we take the wrong things for granted. For example, I run off to the store (assuming that I have enough money with me) and arrive to find that I have left my money at home. I assume that I have enough gas in the car only to find that I have run out of gas. I assume that an item marked down in price is a good buy only to find that it was marked up before it was marked down. I assume that it will not, or that it will, rain. I assume that my car will start when I turn the key and press the gas pedal. I assume that I mean well in my dealings with others.

    Humans make hundreds of assumptions without knowing it---without thinking about it. Many assumptions are sound and justifiable. Many, however, are not. The question then becomes: “How can students begin to recognize the inferences they are making, the assumptions on which they are basing those inferences, and the point of view, the perspective on the world that they are forming?”

    There are many ways to foster student awareness of inferences and assumptions. For one thing, all disciplined subject-matter thinking requires that students learn to make accurate assumptions about the content they are studying and become practiced in making justifiable inferences within that content. As examples: In doing math, students make mathematical inferences based on their mathematical assumptions. In doing science, they make scientific inferences based on their scientific assumptions. In constructing historical accounts, they make historical inferences based on their historical assumptions. In each case, the assumptions students make depend on their understanding of fundamental concepts and principles.

    As a matter of daily practice, then, we can help students begin to notice the inferences they are making within the content we teach. We can help them identify inferences made by authors of a textbook, or of an article we give them. Once they have identified these inferences, we can ask them to figure out the assumptions that led to those inferences. When we give them routine practice in identifying inferences and assumptions, they begin to see that inferences will be illogical when the assumptions that lead to them are not justifiable. They begin to see that whenever they make an inference, there are other (perhaps more logical) inferences they could have made. They begin to see high quality inferences as coming from good reasoning.

    We can also help students think about the inferences they make in daily situations, and the assumptions that lead to those inferences. As they become skilled in identifying their inferences and assumptions, they are in a better position to question the extent to which any of their assumptions is justified. They can begin to ask questions, for example, like: Am I justified in assuming that everyone eats lunch at 12:00 noon? Am I justified in assuming that it usually rains when there are black clouds in the sky? Am I justified in assuming that bumps on the head are only caused by blows?

    The point is that we all make many assumptions as we go about our daily life and we ought to be able to recognize and question them. As students develop these critical intuitions, they increasingly notice their inferences and those of others. They increasingly notice what they and others are taking for granted. They increasingly notice how their point of view shapes their experiences.

    This article was adapted from the book, Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life, by Richard Paul and Linda Elder.

     

    The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning --- Click Here

    The Miniature Guide To Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools --- Click Here


    From The Wall Street Journal Weekly Accounting Review on April 13, 2012

    Wealth or Waste? Rethinking the Value of a Business Major
    by: Melissa Korn
    Apr 05, 2012
    Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com
    Click here to view the video on WSJ.com WSJ Video
     

    TOPICS: Ethics

    SUMMARY: The author cites statistics from the National Center for Education Studies that 21.7% of bachelor's degrees awarded in 2008-2009 were for business majors and that the percentage has held quite steady for about 30 years. She reports on a conference at George Washington University in February 2012 that was attended by more than 20 U.S. and European business schools. The author writes that recruiters have some concerns about business graduates having sufficient critical thinking, writing, and other skills typically thought to be developed from liberal arts courses. A finishing quote from a human resource executive in the banking industry, however, says that "application from the liberal arts often need to 'undertake extra due diligence on the industry.'"

    CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The article is useful in any business class to discuss the need for "soft skills" and ethical decision-making in business professionals.

    QUESTIONS: 
    1. (Introductory) At what meeting did this WSJ reporter develop her ideas for this article and make contacts with whom she discussed these educational issues? What information in the article do you think she obtained from presentations or discussions at the meeting? Provide a specific list.

    2. (Introductory) Why does the author say that it is important for business majors to have liberal arts components to their degree programs? Summarize the issues in the article.

    3. (Advanced) Do you think your overall college education experience is helping you to develop critical thinking and writing skills? Explain how.

    4. (Advanced) View the related video for this article. Do you think that the author's own biases could be introduced into the discussion in this article? Explain.

    5. (Advanced) Consider the quote in the last paragraph from Tara Udut, head of campus recruitment for the Americas at Barclays. What does she say about the experience of hiring business majors versus liberal arts? In your answer, define the term "due diligence."
     

    Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island

     

    "Wealth or Waste? Rethinking the Value of a Business Major," by Melissa Korn, The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2012 ---
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304072004577323754019227394.html?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid

    Undergraduate business majors are a dime a dozen on many college campuses. But according to some, they may be worth even less.

    More than 20% of U.S. undergraduates are business majors, nearly double the next most common major, social sciences and history.

    The proportion has held relatively steady for the past 30 years, but now faculty members, school administrators and corporate recruiters are questioning the value of a business degree at the undergraduate level.

    The biggest complaint: The undergraduate degrees focus too much on the nuts and bolts of finance and accounting and don't develop enough critical thinking and problem-solving skills through long essays, in-class debates and other hallmarks of liberal-arts courses.

    Companies say they need flexible thinkers with innovative ideas and a broad knowledge base derived from exposure to multiple disciplines. And while most recruiters don't outright avoid business majors, companies in consulting, technology and even finance say they're looking for candidates with a broader academic background.

    William Sullivan, co-author of "Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession," says the divide between business and liberal-arts offerings, however unintentional, has hurt students, who see their business instruction as "isolated" from other disciplines.

    Schools are taking the hint. The business schools at George Washington University, Georgetown University, Santa Clara University and others are tweaking their undergraduate business curricula in an attempt to better integrate lessons on history, ethics and writing into courses about finance and marketing.

    Along with more than 20 other U.S. and European business schools, those institutions met last month at George Washington for a conference to discuss ways to better integrate a liberal-arts education into the business curriculum. It was organized by the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit group with an arm that studies management education and society. Other participants included Franklin & Marshall College, Babson College and Esade, a business and law school at Barcelona's Ramon Llull University.

    Doug Guthrie, dean of the George Washington University School of Business, is planning to draw on expertise in the university's psychology and philosophy departments to teach business ethics and he'll seek help from the engineering program to address sustainability. He expects to introduce the new curriculum, which will also include a core course on business and society, in the fall.

    Such changes should appease recruiters, who have been seeking well-rounded candidates from other disciplines, such as English, economics and engineering. Even financial companies say those students often have sharp critical-thinking skills and problem-solving techniques that business majors sometimes lack.

    "Firms are looking for talent. They're not looking for content knowledge, per se," says Scott Rostan, founder of Training the Street Inc., which provides financial training courses for new hires at a number of investment banks. "They're not hiring someone just because they took an M&A class."

    Business degrees have been offered since at least the 1800s, but they were often considered vocational programs. Some experts argue that the programs belong at trade schools and that students should use their undergraduate years to learn something about the world before heading to business school for an M.B.A.

    Next fall, the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business will provide a required course to teach first-year students how to view business issues in a global context. The class, being piloted this spring, will have instruction in business history, ethics, social responsibility, sustainability and other subjects.

    Introducing such concepts early in students' academic careers should help them "connect the dots," says Daniel Connolly, associate dean for undergraduate programs at the business school.

    Continued in article

    "Stanford Remakes Curriculum, Following Trend to Focus on Critical Thinking vs. Disciplinary Content," by Dan Berrett, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 2012 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Curriculum-Proposals-at/130461/

    Jensen Comment
    One way to make students think more critically is to make them make presentations or write papers on multiple sides of an issue rather than just the side they favor. Sadly, our major media reporters and commentators are increasingly prone to being one-sided on controversial issues.

    Attorneys develop critical thinking skills since when must make convincing cases in causes they do not wholeheartedly support such as getting defendants set free that they know are guilty of heinous crimes. In accounting, one critical thinking challenge would be to have students defend as well as attack historical costs or lower capital gains tax rates.

    Bob Jensen's threads on Critical Thinking and Why It's So Hard to Teach ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#CriticalThinking

     


    A study says smooth-talking professors can lull students into thinking they've learned more than they actually have -- potentially at the expense of active learning.---
    https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/09/09/study-how-smooth-talking-professors-can-lull-students-thinking-theyve-learned-more?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=f6c035d588-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-f6c035d588-197565045&mc_cid=f6c035d588&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

    Active Learning Works But Student’s Don’t Like It ---
    https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/09/03/1821936116

    Jensen's Helpers for Case Writers

    Research should be problem driven rather than methodologically driven," said Lisa Garcia Bedolla, a member of the task force who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley.
    Scott Jascik --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/04/polisci 


    IMA Educational Case Journal -- http://www.imanet.org/educators/ima-educational-case-journal/iecj-index


    Case Teaching at the Harvard Business School: C. Roland Christensen Center for Teaching & Learning: Case Method in Practice --- 
    http://www.hbs.edu/teaching/case-method-in-practice/index.html


    In 1837, the Massachusetts Board of Education devoted part of its first annual report to praising a recent classroom innovation called the blackboard. This “invaluable and indispensible” innovation...
    On March 4, 2013 the Financial Education Daily Linked this Quotation to the Harvard Gazette, but I could not find the source of the quote.

    "From Law School to Business School — evolution of the case method," Harvard Gazette, April 3, 2008
    http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/04/from-law-school-to-business-school-%E2%80%94-evolution-of-the-case-method/

    On a recent Wednesday morning, 90 high achievers from around the world prepared to get down to cases.

    Their professor buzzed through the classroom like a worker bee. Armed with large, multicolored pieces of chalk, he organized his notes, copied pastel-coded facts and figures on the blackboard, and set up a film screen. Soon his students would be equally hard at work, but in a strictly cerebral way.

    This day the instructor was inclined to be kind, giving the young man who would open the class discussion an early heads-up, allowing some time to prepare. Often in this setting, classes start with the heart-pounding “cold call,” where a student is put to the test without warning. The deceptively simple “start us off” translates into “as quickly and coherently and convincingly as possible, tell us everything known about this situation and give us your best insight.”

    As well as being busy and congenial, Jan Rivkin, a professor in the strategy unit at Harvard Business School (HBS), was clearly engaging, his enthusiasm infectious, his sense of humor unmistakable.

    He started with a brief refresher video, one he’d secured from a colleague on holiday in the Bahamas. The class watched their vacationing instructor drop to his knees on the beach as the tape rolled. With a straight face, he reviewed the finer points of his recent technology-operations-management discussion with the class, drawing a series of overlapping diagrams in the sand. When done, he promptly jumped into the ocean.

    The crowd loved it, but it was the last light moment. For the next hour-and-a-half the class examined whether the Spanish clothing company Zara should update its retailers’ IT infrastructure.

    During the ensuing discussion and debate, Jan Rivkin, deftly prodded, questioned, and encouraged his deeply engaged class.

    It was just another day at HBS — and one of its standard case-classes. The case method is the primary mode of teaching and learning at the institution, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. In honor of its centennial, the School will host a series of events on Tuesday (April 8) that will include a number of panels, a birthday celebration, and a case discussion on the future of HBS.

    While it didn’t begin with the School’s inception, the revolutionary instructional approach followed shortly thereafter. But it wasn’t an entirely novel concept. The model was actually borrowed from the Harvard Law School and Christopher Columbus Langdell HLS Class of 1853 and dean of the Law School in 1870, who pioneered the technique for the examination of Harvard Law School cases.

    Later, at HBS, it was Dean Wallace P. Donham, a Law School grad familiar with the technique, who pushed for the full inclusion of the case method at the Business School, where it was altered and adapted to a business perspective. Since 1921, it has been a core part of the curriculum.

    The method of teaching differs greatly from the traditional lecture format, in which students take notes as the professor speaks. Instead, students are engaged in a dynamic back-and-forth with one another and their professor, discussing a topic typically pulled from a relevant, real-life business scenario and featuring a dilemma or challenge. Sometimes, once the class has examined and discussed the case, the actual CEO or president of the company in question will appear in person to explain how the situation ultimately unfolded.

    The case topics are wide-ranging and include everything from the world of finance to semiconductors to sweeteners to satellite television.

    Some cases offer historic reflections, employing the lessons tragedy imparts. Cases have been written, for example, about the space shuttle Columbia’s final mission in 2003 and the management decisions made prior to its fatal re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, Abraham Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War, and the management of national intelligence prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    Students are given an overview of the case’s material to read ahead of time. The packets, roughly 20 to 25 pages long, include a list of facts, an outline of the challenge at hand, and a history of the company or situation in text, charts, and graphs, all compiled into a neat brief.

    More than 80 percent of HBS classes are built on the case method. Each week students prepare approximately 14 cases both alone and with the help of study groups. But in the end they are on their own. In class, it is up to the individual to articulate his or her argument and persuade others of its merits. A hefty 50 percent of a student’s grade is determined by class participation, so taking part in the conversation is crucial. Students raise their hands energetically, trying to get quality “air time,” as they call it. Two important unwritten rules, self-enforced by the students themselves: Never speak unless you have something valuable to contribute, and keep it brief.

    The teaching technique most effectively prepares the CEOs of tomorrow for what they will inevitably face in the real world, say the professors who employ it.

    “Getting a piece of material, having to sift through it, figure out what’s important, … come to a point of view, [then] come to class both prepared to argue that point of view … [and] prepared to listen and be open to others’ viewpoints — those are the skills that the business world demands, and via the case method they get to practice those in the classroom,” said Michael J. Roberts, senior lecturer of business administration and executive director of the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.

    Continued in article


    "HealthSouth, Inc.: An Instructional Case Examining Auditors' Legal Liability (for fraud detection)," by Ronald J. Daigle, Timothy J. Louwers, and Jan Taylor Morris, Issues in Accounting Education, November 2013 ---
    http://aaajournals.org/doi/abs/10.2308/iace-50530

    This instructional case explores auditors' legal liability under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by asking students to assume the role of either the plaintiffs' (investors') or defendants' (Ernst & Young's) legal counsel. By using publicly available documents and testimony (provided on a dedicated website for this instructional case) in their arguments, students not only explore in depth one of the more egregious accounting scandals of the new millennium, but also are exposed to the plaintiff's burden of proof and the defendant's defenses in a Rule 10b-5 action. Additionally, by understanding the root causes of the fraud and why it took so long to uncover, students can better understand a number of the provisions set forth by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Results of a student survey after completion of the case indicate that case objectives were met. Students also report enjoying the case materials and welcoming other cases using similar types of materials.

    Difficult times for auditors to claim financial statement audits should not uncover massive fraud
    HealthSouth Corp. has filed suit accusing its former outside auditor, Ernst & Young, of intentionally or negligently failing to uncover a massive accounting fraud at the medical services chain.
    "HealthSouth Sues Ernst & Young for Fraud," SmartPros, April 6, 2005 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x47712.xml
    Bob Jensen's threads on E&Y's legal woes are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Ernst

    Bob Jensen's threads on HealthSouth
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm
    Conduct a word search for "HealthSouth" in the above link.

    Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


    Socratic Method --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

    How should teaching change when assuming some students in class, but not all students, have access to prior semester course notes and class discussion solutions?

    One way teachers should adjust their teaching is to be aware that student notes from prior terms are selectively available to current students in a class. To some extent this has always been true for students in fraternities and sororities that kept files on course notes and examinations. But now this is increasingly a problem for teachers trying to keep courses fair for all enrolled students whether or not they have access to notes and examinations from prior terms of a course.
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#Testbanks

    This is now an increasing problem since students may be able to buy course notes, textbook solutions manuals, and publisher test banks online. For exampel, course notes may now be purchased from
    https://studysoup.com/
    Thank you David Perkins for the heads up.

    I find zero results thus far for smaller colleges and universities, but the mega universities are covered such as the University of Texas, but to date UT only has 30 courses with notes for sale. Hence, this site is not yet such a big deal, but it could grow quickly.

    At the moment free files for selected students on a particular campus are more of a problem such as fraternity files. Think of how this can affect student performance grading. Many instructors use the Socratic Method in a way where classroom performances of students can affect grades. If the instructor pretty much teaches the Socratic Method course the same way each semester students having access to course notes from prior semesters can take competitive advantage over students in the class who did not see course notes of prior semester.

    This is especially problematic when teaching cases like Harvard Business School cases. Harvard's instructors pretty much limit the use of a case to one semester or take great pains to disguise cases used in prior semesters.

    In addition, instructors should probably assume that some students in a class have purchased and possibly shared textbook end-of-chapter solutions manuals and test banks that are now frequently available from eBay and other online vendors.

    Teaching a course each semester on automatic pilot with the same course content can be a disaster in terms of fairness to all students in a class.

    Bob Jensen's threads on cheating ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm

     


    Teaching Case
    "The Gatekeepers: A Case on Allocations and Justifications," by David Hurtt, Bradley E. Lail, Michael A. Robinson, and Martin T. Stuebs, SSRN, August 18, 2014 ---
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2482610

    Abstract
    This case provides an opportunity for you to make accounting allocation choices, justify those choices, and subsequently consider the ramifications of those choices. Two different scenarios – one in the academic setting and one in the business setting – examine the incentives and reporting issues faced by managers and accountants – the gatekeepers in these reporting environments. For each scenario, you will read the case materials, related tables, and then answer the Questions for Analysis. Each scenario presents you with an allocation task. In the first scenario, you will need to assess group members’ contributions to a project and allocate points across the group. These point allocations contribute to the determination of individual group members’ grades. The second scenario is also an allocation task but in a business setting, specifically the segment reporting environment. Here the task is to allocate common costs across reporting segments. For advanced reading, you will want to consider Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) topic 820 which addresses segment reporting, as this can help guide you in the degree of flexibility, if any, allowed in determining how to allocate costs.

    Arbitrary Allocation and Accounting for Vegetable Nutrition ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

    Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm

     


    "How Virtual Teams Can Outperform Traditional Teams," by Jason Sylva, Harvard Business Review Blog, October 9, 2012 --- Click Here
    http://blogs.hbr.org/events/2012/10/how-virtual-teams-can-outperfo.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

    People can easily list problems they believe are associated with virtual teams: They haven't met and don't really know other team members; it is hard to monitor the work of others; and dispersions can lead to big inefficiencies and degraded performance.

    In this HBR webinar, Keith Ferrazzi, a foremost expert on professional relationship development and author of Never Eat Alone and Who's Got Your Back?, shares a strategy for managing virtual teams that can change how your company operates - and how you manage for years to come.

    Continued in article

     

    Jensen Comment
    This theory should be tested in a variety of ways with respect to case analysis by teams. I've always argued that case learning is best in live classrooms, but I'm beginning to doubt myself on this one. Even Harvard and Darden should experiment with onsite versus online team assignments. One advantage of online team assignments is grading if instructors carefully track team member contributions, possibly by monitoring online performance as silent or active (avatar) trackers.

    Bob Jensen's threads on case teaching and research ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases


    Zoom.us -- An Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing Posting the AAA Commons by Rick Lillie

    Zoom.us -- An Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing...
    blog entry posted September 1, 2012 by Rick Lillie, last edited Yesterday , tagged research, teaching, technology, technology tools
    103 Views, 3 Comments
    title:
    Zoom.us -- An Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing Service (It's free!)
    intro text:
    Recently, I read about Zoom.us a new free, cloud-based, video-conferencing service.  Yesterday, three of us used zoom.us to work on a research project.  We are located throughout the U.S.  We logged into the video conference call and worked for more than an hour.  The audio and video were crystal clear.  We shared desktops to work on documents together.  Wow!  The virtual work session was very productive and enjoyable.

    I use Skype to work with colleagues and to offer virtual office hours for my students.  Skype offers a free 1:1 video-conference call with desktop sharing.  To include more than two people in a Skype video call, you need to subscribe to Skype's premium service.  Skype's fee is very reasonable; however, it's difficult to beat "free."

    Both Zoom.us and Skype have features that meet specific needs.  Therefore, both services are valuable to the teaching-learning experience.  The quality of the zoom.us video-conference call was exceptional.  Zoom.us versus Skype is not an either/or situation.  Using one service or the other is a judgment call regarding features that best fit the need as hand.

    Getting started with zoom.us is quick and easy to do.  Their support page explanations are easy to follow.  The service works with Google and Facebook, iPad, iPhone, Windows and Mac.  When I set up zoom.us, I had to download a small file to my computer that includes the zoom.us interface.  The download was quick.  No problem.

    Below is a screenshot from the support page indicating key features of the zoom.us interface screen.  Individual members participating in a video call are shown at the top of the screen.  When a member speaks, the border of the member's screen turns "green."  The speaker's screen displays in the "big screen" section of the interface window.  This process works as the conversation switches among participants.  Wow!  This is amazing and allows each speaker to be the center of attention.

    Check out zoom.us.  I think you'll like this new video-conference service.

    Best wishes,

    Rick Lillie (
    CSU San Bernardino)


    Question
    Most of us have an awareness of the upside of story telling and cases in teaching, research, and communications in general.
    What's the downside of a storytelling (that extends to cases) pedagogy in higher education?

    "A Good Story's Not the Whole Story," Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Social Innovation, November 9, 2010 ---
    http://csi.gsb.stanford.edu/a-good-story-is-not-the-whole-story

    Using stories to raise awareness and inspire action seems to be all the rage. The New York Times bestselling book Made to Stick, by Stanford GSB professor Chip Heath and his brother Dan, has been at the forefront of uncovering and advocating the use of stories to get an audience to remember your ideas, programs, or products. And now presentations from the likes of TED, PopTech, and almost every cause, nonprofit presentation, and brochure I can remember in the past few years is all about stories, stories, stories ...

    On the one hand, research clearly supports the notion that we can get our messages to "stick" using stories. So isn't this an improvement to plying our audiences with boring facts and figures that they'll only forget — along with the point we're trying to make? Aren't we more likely to move people to action because stories connect us on an emotional level and motivate us to care, donate, or volunteer?

    This all sounds nice but, unfortunately, there's a downside to great storytelling.

    We live in a world in which time, money, and talent are limited resources. This leads to competition for ideas, funding, people, and partnerships. In most cases, stories can't adequately convey whether we're using our resources wisely or not. And that's a serious thing. We must remember that resources get applied to ideas and organizations that have proven their effectiveness at solving big social and environmental problems through good old-fashioned metrics.

    So we must not be lured into providing our constituencies with great stories alone. We have to offer solid information to support the tale about that intriguing person who has overcome immense obstacles to help save the world. A good example of this weave happened at the recent Poptech Conference.

    Ned Breslin, CEO of Water for People, gave a great presentation that started with a compelling story of a child losing his life to a failed water pump — driving home the massive failure of the majority of water relief efforts around the world. While putting into perspective the fundraising water stories we've heard for years, it still was just a story. But Breslin followed it with hard facts, data, and examples that showed listeners why we need to think about and invest differently in access to water programs in the developing world.

    In closing remember, a story is "a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader; tale" (Wikipedia). We want to do more than amuse. We want to inform. And we want to make sure that we're fully conveying what our organizations are about so that we're sure to get the resources we need.

    Bob Jensen's threads on theory and research are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on case methodology are at
    See Below


    An Enormous Amount of  Free Open Sharing Accounting Course Material from Jim Peters
    Auditing, Managerial Accounting, Financial Statement Analysis, Cases

    January 8, 2012 message from Jim Peters

    A year of so ago, I make the texts that I write for my classes and the in-class exercises I use available to the public and notified this list.  I have just completed revising those materials and bringing them up to date.  If you are interested, the URL is  http://petersfamily.us/Courses.htm.  Feel free to use anything you want and to contact me if you have questions or want more materials.  For example, I am a heavy user of cases and have developed a lot of cases for each class.  I did not post all those supporting materials to the website.  Just not enough time in the day to do everything.  The four classes involved are Auditing, Accounting Information Systems, Financial Statement Analysis, and Managerial Accounting for MBAs.

    I have my own approach to education, which is why I do stupid things like maintaining my own texts for the these classes.  But, I starting doing this over 20 years ago when my students found my materials more accessible than published texts.  For example, as apposed to published texts, my texts are informally worded (e.g., lots of first person pronouns), but I have found students identify with the material more effectively if I write as if I am have a conversation with the reader.

    OK, enough defending my approach.  The materials are there for anyone who wants to review and/or use them.

    Jim


    Creative Commons Case Studies --- http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies

    Case Method in Science

    The Accounting Review no longer considers case method research to be suitable for publication in TAR and discourages both submissions of field studies and cases ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

    Case method in considered very relevant to teaching accounting and well-suited for publication in Issues in Accounting Education.(IAE).

    Case method also has a central place in both teaching and research in science.

    National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science ---
    http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/

    Case Method Learning:  A Simple Plan: E.L. Trudeau, the Rabbit Island Experiment, and Tuberculosis Treatment ---
    http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/collection/detail.asp?case_id=669&id=669

    A Case Study of Memory Loss in Mice (a teaching case) ---
    http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/collection/detail.asp?case_id=194&id=194

    Bob Jensen's threads on case method research and teaching ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases

     

    The Higher Education Academy: Case studies: Bioscience learning and teaching --- http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/cslandt.aspx


    Judging the Relevance of Fair Values for Financial Statements

    Since fair value accounting is arguably the hottest accounting theory/practice topic among accounting standard setters and financial analysts these days, I was naturally attracted to the following accountics science research article:
    "Judging the Relevance of Fair Values for Financial Statements," by Lisa Koonce, Karen K. Nelson, and Catherine M. Shakespeare, The Accounting Review, Volume 86, 2075-2098.November 2011, pp. 2075-2098

    ABSTRACT: 

    We conduct three experiments to test if investors' views about fair value are contingent on whether the financial instrument in question is an asset or liability, whether fair values produce gains or losses, and whether the item will or will not be sold/settled soon. We draw on counterfactual reasoning theory from psychology, which suggests that these factors are likely to influence whether investors consider fair value as providing information about forgone opportunities. The latter, in turn, is predicted to influence investors' fair value relevance judgments. Results are generally supportive of the notion that judgments about the relevance of fair value are contingent. Attempts to influence investors' fair value relevance judgments by providing them with information about forgone opportunities are met with mixed success. In particular, our results are sensitive to the type of information provided and indicate the difficulty of overcoming investors' (apparent) strong beliefs about fair value.

    . . .

    Fair value proponents maintain that, no matter the circumstance, fair value provides information about forgone opportunities that affect the economics of the firm (Hague and Willis 1999). That is, proponents of fair value would argue that such information is always relevant to evaluating a firm.

    To be concrete, consider the following example. Company X issues bonds payable at par in the amount of $1,000,000. Two years after issuing the bonds, interest rates fall and so the fair value of the bonds is $1,200,000. From a discounted cash flow perspective, although the cash outflows have not changed, the discount rate has decreased. This denominator change leads to a greater negative present value associated with Company X having debt with fixed cash outflows—that is, it leads to a fair value loss. A fair value advocate would argue that the $200,000 loss is always relevant to the evaluation of the firm as it represents a forgone opportunity—that is, the present value of the additional interest cost (i.e., above current market rates) that Company X will pay over the remaining term of the bond, essentially because Company X did not refinance before rates changed (Hague and Willis 1999). Accordingly, fair value advocates would maintain that Company X's valuation should decrease as its cash flows are higher than an otherwise identical company (say, Company Y) that financed after the rate decrease. Stated differently, at the end of the financing period, Company X's cash balance will be lower than Company Y's (because X is paying a higher interest rate) and, thus, each firm's valuation should reflect this real economic difference.4

    If investors follow the logic of the fair value advocate and consider fair value gains and losses as representing forgone opportunities, they are essentially engaging in a process that psychologists call counterfactual reasoning (Roese 1997). In this type of reasoning, individuals “undo” outcomes by changing (or mutating) the cause that led to them. For example, if only the driver had not taken an unusual route home late at night, he would not have gotten into an accident. In the fair value domain, the calculation of fair value is based on the same type of simulation as counterfactual reasoning—“undoing” the actual contractual interest rate and replacing it with the current market rate of interest that the company would be paying if management had undertaken an alternative set of actions (i.e., the forgone opportunity). As the above numerical example illustrates, determining the amount of the fair value gain or loss is fairly mechanical once an interest (or discount) rate change occurs. The more subtle effect is whether the investor considers the fair value gain or loss as a forgone opportunity and thus relevant to evaluating the firm. If investors do (do not) follow a process similar to counterfactual reasoning, they are more (are less) likely to judge fair value measurements as relevant.

    Thinking about fair value in terms of counterfactual reasoning is helpful, as this theory suggests when investors' fair value judgments are likely to depend on context. Prior research in psychology indicates that counterfactual thinking is more likely when events are seen as abnormal versus normal, when negative rather than positive events occur, when the outcome or antecedent is mutable or changeable, or when the outcome is close versus more distant in time (Roese and Olson 1995). Drawing on this research, we identify three fair value contexts for financial instruments—namely, assets versus liabilities, gains versus losses, and held to maturity versus sold/settled soon—that we posit will cause investors to change their fair value relevance judgments.5 That is, we predict that investors' views about the relevance of fair value will not be unwavering, as proponents of fair value would maintain, but rather will be contingent on context. Relevance of Fair Value Depending on Context

    Fair value accounting is currently being used for financial instruments that are either assets or liabilities (but not for equity items). In addition, fair value accounting produces both gains and losses. Accordingly, a natural question is whether investors reason differently about the relevance of fair value for assets versus liabilities and for gains versus losses. Counterfactual reasoning theory suggests that investors treat these situations differently.

    Turning first to gains and losses, prior literature (e.g., Roese 1997) indicates that counterfactual reasoning is more likely when undesirable outcomes occur. Here, individuals tend to evaluate the undesirable outcome by determining how easy it is to mentally undo it. In the fair value context, this would entail reasoning about how the fair value loss could have been avoided. In contrast, counterfactual reasoning is less likely with desirable outcomes like fair value gains. In the case of such desirable outcomes, individuals have less need to understand the cause of the gain and are unlikely to mentally undo the outcome (Roese 1997). Accordingly, we hypothesize: H1: 

    Individuals will judge fair value losses as more relevant than fair value gains.

    In the context of assets versus liabilities, counterfactual reasoning theory suggests that the more mutable an item is (i.e., the easier an outcome can be undone), the more likely an individual will engage in counterfactual reasoning (McGill and Tenbrunsel 2000). For example, if a parachuter falls to his death, individuals are more likely to consider mutable factors in considering how he could have avoided death. That is, “if only he had rechecked the safety cord before jumping” is more likely to be considered (i.e., it is more mutable) than “if only gravity were not at work.”

    We predict that, in the eyes of investors, financial assets are perceived to be more mutable than financial liabilities. In other words, it is easier to consider an alternative set of actions for assets than for liabilities. This idea comes from the line of reasoning that individuals generally think they can more easily sell, for example, a bond investment than they can settle a home loan. That is, it is easier for them to simulate an alternative set of actions for (i.e., counterfactually reason about) assets than liabilities.6 Accordingly, we hypothesize: H2: 

    Individuals will judge the fair value of financial assets as more relevant than the fair value of financial liabilities.

    Finally, we posit that management's intent likely influences investors' judgments about fair value relevance. Research shows that perceived closeness to an outcome affects whether individuals engage in counterfactual reasoning (Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran 1992). For example, a traveler who misses his/her flight by five minutes is more likely to engage in counterfactual reasoning (i.e., “if only I had run the yellow stop light, I'd have made it to the gate on time”) than a traveler who misses the flight by one hour. Drawing on this idea, we maintain that individuals will be more inclined to think about “if only” when the financial instrument is to be sold/settled soon as compared to when it is to be held to maturity. Counterfactual reasoning seems particularly likely here, particularly in the case of loss outcomes. Individuals will likely think, for example, “if only the company had sold the investment before the fair value decreased, they would not be in this position today.” Accordingly, we hypothesize: H3: 

    Individuals will judge the fair value of financial instruments that are to be sold/settled soon as more relevant than those that are to be held to maturity. Changing Investor Judgments about Fair Value Relevance

    Because we conjecture that investors' judgments about fair value relevance will depend on the context, we believe it is possible to desensitize their judgments to context (Arkes 1991). In particular, we surmise that providing information about forgone opportunities should influence investors' understanding of the fair value change and, ultimately, will influence their fair value relevance judgments. This approach of providing individuals with a summary of the information that they may not normally consider is frequently employed as a “fix” in various decision settings (Arkes 1991). We summarize our expectations in the following hypothesis. H4: 

    Individuals will judge the relevance of fair value for financial instruments as greater when they are given information about forgone alternatives.

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    I like this paper in terms of it's originality and clever ideas in terms of accounting theory, especially the concept of counterfactual reasoning.

    But like nearly all accountics behavioral experiments reported over the past four decades, I'm disappointed in how the hypotheses were actually tested. I'm also disappointed in the virtual lack of validity testing and replication of behavioral accounting studies, but it's too early to speculate on future replication studies of this particular November 2011 article.

    To their credit, Professors Koonce, Nelson, and Shakespeare conducted three experiments rather than just one experiment, although from a picky point of view these would not constitute independent replications in science ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

    Also to their credit the sample sizes are large enough to almost make statistical inference testing superfluous.

    But I just cannot get excited about extrapolating research findings form students as surrogates for investors and analysts in the real world. This is a typical example of where accountics researchers tried to do their research without having to set foot off campus.

    Even if these researchers had stepped off campus to conduct their experiments on real-world investors and analysts, I have difficulty with assigning the research subjects artificial/hypothetical tasks even though my own doctoral thesis entailed submitting hypothetical proxy reports to real-world security analysts. My favorite criticism is an anecdotal experience with one banker who was an extremely close friend when I lived in Bangor, Maine while on the faculty of the University of Maine. I played poker or bridge with this banker at least once a week. With relatively small stakes in a card game he was a reckless fool in his betting and nearly always came up a money loser at the end of the night. But in real life he was a Yankee banker who was known in the area for his tight-fisted conservatism.

    And thus I have a dilemma. Even if there are ten replications of these experiments using real world investors and analysts I cannot get excited about the accountics science outcomes. I would place much more faith in a protocol analysis of one randomly selected CFA, but protocol researchers are not allowed to publish their small sample studies in TAR, JAR, or JAE. They can, however, find publishing outlets in social science research journals.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_analysis

    The best known protocol analysis in accounting and finance was the award-winning doctoral thesis research of Geoffrey Clarkson at Carnegie-Mellon, although the integrity of his research was later challenged.

    Protocol Analysis

    "Can thinking aloud make you smarter?" Barking Up the Wrong Tree, August 12, 2010 ---
    http://www.bakadesuyo.com/can-thinking-aloud-make-you-smarter

    Few studies have examined the impact of age on reactivity to concurrent think-aloud (TA) verbal reports. An initial study with 30 younger and 31 older adults revealed that thinking aloud improves older adult performance on a short form of the Raven's Matrices (Bors & Stokes, 1998, Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, p. 382) but did not affect other tasks. In the replication experiment, 30 older adults (mean age = 73.0) performed the Raven's Matrices and three other tasks to replicate and extend the findings of the initial study. Once again older adults performed significantly better only on the Raven's Matrices while thinking aloud. Performance gains on this task were substantial (d = 0.73 and 0.92 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively), corresponding to a fluid intelligence increase of nearly one standard deviation.

    Source: "How to Gain Eleven IQ Points in Ten Minutes: Thinking Aloud Improves Raven's Matrices Performance in Older Adults" from Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, Volume 17, Issue 2 March 2010 , pages 191 - 204

    Here's an explanation of what Raven's Matrices are.

    Speaking of smarts and genius, if you haven't read it, Dave Eggers' book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is a lot of fun. I highly recommend the introduction, oddly enough.

    Jensen Comment
    Protocol Analysis --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_analysis

    This takes me back to long ago to "Protocol Analysis" when having subjects think aloud was documented in an effort to examine what information was used and how it was used in decision making. One of the first Protocol Analysis studies that I can recall was at Carnegie-Mellon when Geoffrey Clarkson wrote a doctoral thesis on a bank's portfolio manager thinking aloud while making portfolio investment decisions for clients. Although there were belated questions about the integrity of Jeff's study, one thing that stuck out in my mind is how accounting choices (LIFO vs. FIFO, straight-line vs. accelerated depreciation) were ignored entirely when the decision maker analyzed financial statements. This is one of those now rare books that I still have in some pile in my studio:
    Geoffrey Clarkson, Portfolio Selection-A Simulation of. Trust Investment (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall,. Inc., 1962)
    Clarkson reached a controversial conclusion that his model could choose the same portfolios as the live decision maker. That was the part that was later questioned by researchers.

    Another application of Protocol Analysis was the doctoral thesis of Stan Biggs.
    As cited in The Accounting Review in January, 1988 ---  http://www.jstor.org/pss/247685
    By the way, this one one of those former years when TAR had a section for "Small Sample Studies" (those fell by the board in later years)

    Also see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bdm.3960060303/abstract

    Bob Jensen's threads on fair value accounting and other bases of accounting measurement are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory02.htm#FairValue

    Added Jensen Comment
    An early precursor of the concept of "counterfactual reasoning" is "functional fixation"

    Accounting History Trivia
    What accounting professors coined the phrase "functional fixation" in 1966 and in what particular accounting context?

    Hint 1
    One of the professors was also one of my professors, a former Dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and the last Chairman of Enron's Audit Committee.

    Hint 2
    Bob Ashton did some cognitive experimentation of functional fixation that was published in the Journal of Accounting Research a decade later in 1976.


    Tribute to Bob Anthony from Jake Birnberg and Bob Jensen and Others

    Bob Anthony is probably best known as an extremely successful accounting textbook author ---
    http://www.amazon.com/Robert-N.-Anthony/e/B001IGJT5W
    But there were many other career highlights of the great professor and my personal friend.

    "Robert N. Anthony: A Pioneering Thinker in Management Accounting," by Jacob G. Birnberg, Accounting Horizons, 2011, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 593–602 ---
    http://aaapubs.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=ACHXXX000025000003000593000001&idtype=cvips&prog=normal
    (not a free article to non-subscribers)

    By any measure, Robert Newton Anthony (1916–2006) was a giant among 20th century academic accountants. After obtaining a Bachelor’s degree from Colby College, he matriculated to the Harvard Business School (HBS), where he earned his M.B.A. and D.B.A. degrees. Bob spent his entire academic career at HBS, retiring in 1983. He is best known as a prolific writer of articles, textbooks, and research reports. He was inducted as a member of the Accounting Hall of Fame (1986), was a recipient of the American Accounting Association’s (AAA) Outstanding Accounting Educator Award (1989), and then was the second recipient of the AAA Management Accounting Section’s Lifetime Contribution to Management Accounting Award (2003), as well as serving as President of the American Accounting Association (1973–1974). In addition, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Management (1970). These honors indicate that he was, indeed, a significant contributor to the development of his chosen field of management accounting for over 50 years, and highly respected by his peers. They do not indicate why. My intention is to answer that question.

    Bob Anthony was the ideal person to be a leader in the post-World War II movement that changed cost accounting into management accounting. He possessed broad interests and not only was an academic, but also was interested in solving problems found in the real world. He was equally comfortable working as an academic and as a manager. He served as Under Secretary (Comptroller) in the Department of Defense for his old friend and fellow Harvard Business School graduate, Robert S. McNamara, from 1965 to 1968. While at the Department, Anthony earned the Defense Department Award for Public Service for developing a system of cost management and control for the Department (Harvard University Gazette 2006)...

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    The takeover of the academic accounting research by accountics scientists was fought off in the 1920s but commenced again in earnest in the 1960s as documented by Heck and Jensen along a timeline at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm

    "We fervently hope that the research pendulum will soon swing back from the narrow lines of inquiry that dominate today's leading journals to a rediscovery of the richness of what accounting research can be. For that to occur, deans and the current generation of academic accountants must give it a push."
    "Research on Accounting Should Learn From the Past," by Michael H. Granof and Stephen A. Zeff , Chronicle of Higher Education, March 21, 2008
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm#Appendix01

     

    Although it's common among various recent Presidents of the American Accounting Association (e.g., Judy Rayburn and Greg Waymire) and AAA Presidential Address Scholars, e.g., Tony Hopwood ("Whither Accounting Research?" The Accounting Review 82(5), 2007, pp.1365-1374  )and Bob Kaplan (Accounting Scholarship that Advances Professional Knowledge and Practice," The Accounting Review, March 2011, Volume 86, Issue 2) , perhaps the earliest and most scathing lament accountics scientist takeover of AACSB doctoral programs and the top tier academic accounting research journals came from former AAA President Bob Anthony in his1989  AAA membership as that years Outstanding Educator Award recipient. This was an oral address, and I don't think there is any record of Bob's scathing lament in front of the AAA membership. Nor is there a record to my knowledge of the subsequent lament on the same matters by AAA's 1990 President Al Arens year later.

    In some ways I was a guinea pig for Bob Anthony. In the late 1960s and into the 1990s, Bob lacked the mathematical background to understand the exploding interest by accounting researchers in accountics, particularly mathematical programming, management science, decision science, and operations research in the years that Herb Simon were achieving worldwide fame at Carnegie-Mellon University that in some ways was leaving venerable old Harvard in the dust. Bob Anthony followed my career as an accounting PhD graduate from Stanford who had been teaching mathematical programming at Michigan State University and the University of Maine. Bill Kinney and Bob May and other accounting doctoral candidates at MSU in the late 1960s probably recall my mathematical programming doctoral seminars.

    Bob Anthony invited me to make accountics science presentations at the Harvard Business School and at an alumni-day programs that he organized for his Colby College alma mater following my seven TAR publications 1967-1979 --- http://maaw.info/TheAccountingReview2.htm

    I remember that he was particularly skeptical of my praise of shadow pricing in linear programming, which was also at the core of a doctoral thesis by Joel Demski in those days. I was always careful to point out the limitations of mathematical programming when solutions spaces were not convex. But Bob Anthony had a deeper suspicion, which he had trouble articulating in those days, that accounting information played a vital role in systems that were too complex and too non-stationary to model in the real world, especially model to a point where we could declare solutions "optimal" for the real and ever-changing world of complicated human beings and their organizations. Anthony Hopwood built upon this same theme when he founded a successful journal called Accounting, Organizations, and Society (AOS).

    It's not that Bob Anthony opposed our accountics science research. What he opposed is accountics science (read that positivism)  takeover of the doctoral programs and academic research journals. What he felt down deep that accountics science was just too easy. We could build our analytical models and devise "optimal" solutions without having to set foot from the campus into a real world. We could build ever-increasingly sophisticated data analysis models using the CRSP and Compustat database without having to sweat buckets collecting financial data first-hand in the real world. We could conduct accounting behavioral research models pretending that student subjects were adequate surrogates making pretend that they were real-world managers and accountants.

    I suspect that Bob Anthony followed Bob Kaplan's career with great interest. In those early years, Bob Kaplan was an accountics faculty member and eventually Dean at Carnie-Mellon in the years that Professor and Dean Kaplan was heavy into mathematics and decision science. Then Bob Kaplan became more interested in the real world and eventually traveled between Harvard and Carnegie as a joint accounting professor. I suspect Bob Anthony influenced Bob Kaplan into taking up more and more case-method research and the eventual decision of Kaplan to become a full-time accounting professor at Harvard (the case method school in those days) in place of Carnegie-Mellon (the quantitative-methods school in those days). Of course in recent years the difference between the Harvard versus Carnegie schools is not demarked so clearly as it was in the 1970s.

    In any case Bob Anthony and I corresponded intermittently throughout most of my career. He was particularly pleased when I became more and more skeptical of the accountics science takeover of accounting doctoral programs and top-tier academic accounting research journals. Once again, however, I stress that it was not so much that we were disappointed in accountics science that was becoming increasingly sophisticated and respectable. Rather Bob Anthony, Bob Kaplan, and Bob Jensen along with Bob Sterling, Paul Williams, Anthony Hopwood, and others became increasingly disturbed about the takeover by Zimmerman and Watts and their positivism disciples. In those same years Demski and Feltham were rewriting the quantitative information economics standards of what constitutes scholarly research in accounting.

    On January 3, 2007  I wrote a Tidbit that reads as follows:
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070103.htm

    We will greatly miss Bob Anthony

    December 20, 2006 message from Bill McCarthy [mccarthy@bus.msu.edu]

    The following appeared on Boston.com:
    Headline: Robert Anthony; reshaped Pentagon budget process

    Date: December 20, 2006

    "At the behest of Robert S. McNamara, his longtime friend, Robert N.Anthony set aside scholarly pursuits at Harvard Business School in the mid-1960s to take a key role reshaping the budget process for the Defense Department."

    ____________________________________________________________

    To see this recommendation, click on the link below or cut and paste it into a Web browser:

    http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2006/12/20/robert_anthony_reshaped_pentagon_budget_process?p1=email_to_a_friend

    December 20, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Bill,

    Thank you! Bob has been a longtime great friend. His obituary is at http://www.hbs.edu/news/120506_anthonyobit.html
    What is really amazing is the wide range of long-time service to at very high levels, including serving on the FASB as well as being Defense Department's Assistant Secretary (Comptroller) during the Viet Nam War. He also received the Defense Department's Medal for Distinguished Public Service. The FASB requested that Bob focus on accounting for nonprofit organizations. He also served as President of the American Accounting Association.

    Bob was one of the most distinguished professors of the Harvard Business School It saddens me greatly to see him pass on. His Hall of Fame link is at
    http://fisher.osu.edu/Departments/Accounting-and-MIS/Hall-of-Fame/Membership-in-Hall/Robert-Newton-Anthony/ 

    Or Click Here

     I don't know if you were present when Bob Anthony gave his 1989 Outstanding Educator Award Address to the American Accounting Association. It was one of the harshest indictments I've ever heard concerning the sad state of academic research in serving the accounting profession. Bob never held back on his punches.

    Bob Jensen

    December 20, 2006 reply from Denny Beresford [DBeresfo@TERRY.UGA.EDU]
    (Denny was Chairman of the FASB when Bob was a special consultant to the FASB)

    Bob,

    Yesterday's New York Times also included an obituary for Bob Anthony . . .  Bob wasn't the easiest person to get along with, but I considered him to be one of the very brightest people I ever associated with. He was a wonderful writer and I always enjoyed the letters and other things he sent me at the FASB and later - even when I disagreed completely with his ideas. His work with the government made him one of the most generally influential accountants of the 20th century, I believe.

    Denny

    His accounting concepts ranged from the global to the provincial. In a 1970 letter to The New York Times, he proposed that the United States create a tax surcharge to cover damages to the Soviet Union in the event of an accidental American nuclear strike. The tax burden would be “the smallest consequence of maintaining a nuclear arsenal,” he wrote. “An all-out nuclear exchange would probably mean the end of civilization.” In the late 1980s, Professor Anthony moved to Waterville Valley, N.H., where for 10 years he was the town’s elected auditor. “I got 24 votes last year; that’s all there were,” he once said.
    <http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/index.html

    Added Jensen Comment
    I often suspected that Bob Anthony's 1980s move to New Hampshire (that created an extremely long commute to Cambridge, Taxachusetts) was motivated in large part by the huge financial successes of his book royalties. I would not blame him for this move since there's nothing criminal or immoral about taking advantage of tax law opportunities. Then again he may simply wanted to be closer to our mountains and forests ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

     

     


    From Deloitte (over many years)  
    Trueblood Cases at the AAA Annual Meetings in Denver
    The following is an excerpt from the AAA Announcements message, August 2. 2011

    "Mini" Trueblood Case Study Seminar
    One of the concurrent sessions offered at this year's Annual Meeting will be a session entitled "Effective Learning through Cases:  Examples from the Trueblood Case Study Series." Three financial accounting cases from the current series of approximately fifty cases on the Deloitte Foundation's website will be used to demonstrate how these cases can be used effectively in the classroom. Participants will be encouraged to actively participate in discussions and will benefit from exposure to situations dealt with in public practice. All session participants will receive the cases & solutions as takeaways. This concurrent session will be led by James Fuehrmeyer, retired Deloitte & Touche LLP audit partner (and current faculty member at the University of Notre Dame), who will discuss three cases from our Trueblood Accounting & Auditing Case Study Series. The session will be held on Monday, August 8, from 10:15 - 11:45 am. Please refer to your Annual Meeting program when you arrive in Denver for further details.

    The Trueblood Case Materials --- Click Here
    http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/About/university-relations/Deloitte-Foundation/0ac1264f0b0fb110VgnVCM100000ba42f00aRCRD.htm

    Jim Fuehrmeyer is now a full-time PQ auditing professor at Notre Dame.---
    http://business.nd.edu/jamesfuehrmeyer/

    Jensen Comment
    One of the most important initiatives ever undertaken in academic accountancy history is the Deloitte (and Touche) initiative and funding to join accounting professors and practitioners in the writing of case studies. For many years the format has been to bring professors and practitioners together face-to-face in resorts for the purpose of working intensely (night and day) in writing cases and case solutions. These were then published in volumes available from the Deloitte Foundation and  in accounting history centers such as the Accounting Libraries at the University if Mississippi ---
    http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
    See
    http://umiss.lib.olemiss.edu/search/?searchtype=X&SORT=D&searcharg=Trueblood

    I suspect that many university libraries and faculty offices have shelved these case studies over the years.

    Professors can obtain copies of cases and case solutions from the Deloitte Foundation ---
    http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/press/Press-Releases/0ac1264f0b0fb110VgnVCM100000ba42f00aRCRD.htm

    Of course for teaching purposes many of these cases are now dated because they were based on standards that have been replaced and amended. One possible student project would be have students update selected cases and case solutions in light of changed standards.

    August 3, 2011 reply from Jim Fuehrmeyer

    Bob

    While cases from prior years are certainly outdated in many respects, the "live" cases on the Foundation website are updated every summer. All the professor's solutions are tied to the Codification and include discussion of pending pronouncements. A lot of the cases are also set up to be worked with both US GAAP and IFRS. Normally five cases get replaced with new cases every year.

    Jim

     


    "Teaching Students to Write a Case Study," by James M. Lang, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 5, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/article/Teaching-Students-to-Write-a/128097/

    In the late 1990s, when Ray McCandless was asked to create a public-administration concentration in the M.B.A. program at the University of Findlay, he wanted to include a memorable capstone experience. Instead of a standard academic thesis, he hoped to find an alternative that would still give the students a written project to mention in their graduate-school applications and interviews.

    A longtime user of case studies—standard pedagogical fare in business-school courses—McCandless hit upon a unique solution: Instead of simply asking students to learn from a case study, he would ask students to write an original one of their own.

    A dozen years later, McCandless is still having students write their own case studies, and still finds the exercise as productive and fascinating. He is now director of Findlay's Center for Teaching Excellence, chair of the university's department of justice sciences, and a professor of political science and public administration. I met him on a spring visit to the university and had the chance to learn how he developed the assignment, and what benefits and challenges it has provided both to him and to his students.

    Case-study teaching has been around since the early part of the 20th-century, when faculty members at Harvard Business School responded to a lack of textbooks in the field by writing up descriptions of real business scenarios for their students to explore. Typically, case studies present students with real-life scenarios that they might face in their chosen fields, and then ask them to use what they have learned in their coursework to analyze the problem and recommend solutions.

    Case studies also now frequently appear in the curricula of law, medical, and education schools. With a little creative thinking, the approach can be adapted to almost any discipline. I have used a modified case-study method in a postcolonial literature course: Students play the role of Western explorers who "discover" a prehistoric culture that condones infanticide of twins. The explorers have to decide whether to walk away or prevent the killing by using their more sophisticated weaponry to impose western standards of justice—or find some other alternative.

    Having confronted a case like that, students come to their subsequent reading of texts like Heart of Darkness or Things Fall Apart better prepared to understand the complexity of the themes.

    McCandless said his interest in case studies comes from his conviction that, as future managers, students will be faced with unique problems every day. The ability to solve such problems depends not only on an awareness of the theories and practices of the field but also on creativity and innovative thinking. He felt he could best help develop those skills by asking students first to engage with established case studies and then to write up their own.

    "I wanted to tap into a different part of their thinking and skill set," McCandless said. "I wanted them to write a story ... maybe wake up or reinvigorate those creative juices that may have been killed by too many research papers."

    Continued in article


    Bob Jensen's September 11, 2010 response to an inquiry about data sources and helpers for small business research:

    Hi Saeed,

     Bob Jensen’s Small Business Helpers ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#SmallBusiness

    Germain Boer is the Director of the Owen Entrepreneurship Center at Vanderbilt University ---
    http://www.owen.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbilt/About/faculty-research/f_profile.cfm?id=85
    He’s very experienced in small business research. I suggest that you contact Germain when you’ve narrowed down your questions.

    Jerry Trites up in Canada maintains an eBusiness blog and has conducted considerable research on eBusiness. He might have some useful suggesting, although he may be more familiar with databases in Canada ---
    gtrites@ZORBA.CA

    Some Small Business Data Centers
    SBA --- http://www.sba.gov/
    (note the SBA tabs to Local Resources, Tools, Services, and Planner)
    Hoovers --- http://www.hoovers.com/

    Dunn & Bradstreet --- http://trial.selectory.com/msn/mtw_small_business_database2.html?

    MNI Store --- http://www.mnistore.com/index.asp?source=HKM&keyword=General

    eBusiness Data --- http://mediakit.internet.com/mediakit/

    Internet Data --- http://www.webreference.com/internet/statistics.html

    FreeBytes Guide --- http://www.freebyte.com/programming/database/

     

    Some Other Helpers and Guides
    AMA Resources Center --- http://marketingresourcedirectory.marketingpower.com/index.php

    Business.gov --- http://www.business.gov/

    SEC Helper Site --- http://www.accountingweb.com/item/59363

    KnowThis --- http://www.knowthis.com/

    Advertising World at http://advertising.utexas.edu/world/    
    Advertising Age at http://www.adage.com/
    Mousetracks Marketing List of Lists http://www.nsns.com/MouseTracks/tloml.html
    American Marketing Association
    http://www.ama.org/http://cwis.kub.nl/~few/few/be/marketin/links.htm

    You might consider searching for some relevant small business case research studies:

    Helpful Links

    Organizations

    CASE Association (Eastern Case Writers)N

    NACRA North American Case Research Association

    Society for Case Research & Annual Case Writer's Workshop

    Western Casewriters Association (WCA)

    Southwest Case Research Association

    World Association for Case Method Research & Application

    ASAC (Administrative Sciences Association of Canada) Case Division

     

     

    Suppliers and Publishers of Case Resources:

     

    XanEdu - Publisher of Case Research Journal

    CasePlace.org

    CaseNet: SouthWestern Publishing

    Darden (UVa) Case Collection

    Electronic Hallway: Cases in Public, Non-Profit, & Health Administration

    European Case Clearing House

    Global View Interactive Cases

    HBS (Harvard) Case Collection

    IESE Publishing

    Ivey (Western Ontario) Case Collection

    School of Business & Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

    Primis Case Database: McGraw-Hill/Irwin Publishing

    Pearson Custom Publishing

     Bob Jensen’s Small Business Helpers ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#SmallBusiness

     

     

    Some ideas for case method research ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession

    Why must all accounting doctoral programs be social
    science (particularly econometrics) "accountics" doctoral programs?

    Why accountancy doctoral programs are drying up and
    why accountancy is no longer required for admission or
    graduation in an accountancy doctoral program
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
     

    I think leading academic researchers avoid applied research for the profession because making seminal and creative discoveries that practitioners have not already discovered is enormously difficult. Accounting academe is threatened by the twin dangers of fossilization and scholasticism (of three types: tedium, high tech, and radical chic)
    From http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm
     

    “Knowledge and competence increasingly developed out of the internal dynamics of esoteric disciplines rather than within the context of shared perceptions of public needs,” writes Bender. “This is not to say that professionalized disciplines or the modern service professions that imitated them became socially irresponsible. But their contributions to society began to flow from their own self-definitions rather than from a reciprocal engagement with general public discourse.”

     

    Now, there is a definite note of sadness in Bender’s narrative – as there always tends to be in accounts of the shift from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft. Yet it is also clear that the transformation from civic to disciplinary professionalism was necessary.

     

    “The new disciplines offered relatively precise subject matter and procedures,” Bender concedes, “at a time when both were greatly confused. The new professionalism also promised guarantees of competence — certification — in an era when criteria of intellectual authority were vague and professional performance was unreliable.”

    But in the epilogue to Intellect and Public Life, Bender suggests that the process eventually went too far. “The risk now is precisely the opposite,” he writes. “Academe is threatened by the twin dangers of fossilization and scholasticism (of three types: tedium, high tech, and radical chic). The agenda for the next decade, at least as I see it, ought to be the opening up of the disciplines, the ventilating of professional communities that have come to share too much and that have become too self-referential.”

     

    What went wrong in accounting/accountics research? 
    How did academic accounting research become a pseudo science?
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

    Discouragement of case method research by leading journals (TAR, JAR, JAE, etc.) by turning back most submitted cases --- See Below

    August 28, 2009 message from Patricia Walters [patricia@DISCLOSUREANALYTICS.COM]

    Here's an apropos question given recent threads.

    What do you believe are the best resources available for learning how to write a good accounting case?

    Are there any online resources?

    (I should have checked Bob's website first!)

    Pat

    August 28, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Pat,

    Becoming a case writer might entail a career shift in your “case.”

    The number one thing that leads to great cases is access to information inside a corporation or not-for-profit organization. It’s here where the most prestigious universities with powerful alumni (e.g., Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, etc. have a valuable edge). The rest of us have to do the best we can.

    Of course the prestigious schools also have professional case writing experts who work alongside faculty, such that professors who really want to write successful cases also have an edge when being on the faculty of prestigious universities like Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford.

    Having said this, there are countless cases that emerge from Cactus Gulch Colleges of this world. Much depends upon the dedication to case writing and case writing organizations ECCH --- http://www.ecch.com/
    Also see case choices at  http://www.ebookee.com/search.php?q=Management+Cases&sa=Search

    My hero in this regard in Marilyn Taylor who got me involved in a number of NACRA teaching workshops (my job was only to make presentations on education technology). Marilyn is a management professor (University of Missouri in Kansas City) who has been very active in the North American Case Research Association. Among other things NACRA meets to critique each others’ cases, and critique they do. This can lead to much better case writing if you’ve got a tough skin for constructive criticism.
    The NACRA home page is at http://www.nacra.net/nacra/

    Most really active faculty in NACRA have made a career choice to concentrate writing efforts on cases. As a result they are great writers who seldom appear in TAR, JAR, or JAE. But they do get their case published and enjoy each others’ company.

    NACRA reminds me of the annual poet critiquing conference that meets for a couple of weeks every summer down the road from where I live --- in the Robert Frost farmhouse museum. See my photograph and commentary on this way of learning to write poetry --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070905.htm

    The top case writers from Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton are not likely to be active in NACRA, Active people in NACRA are more apt to come from Babson, Bentley, Northeastern, and state universities like South Carolina.

    Over the last four years in my capacity as the Associate Editor of the Case Research Journal I have reviewed numerous cases. Many of them had considerable potential but were poorly developed. This is unfortunate because even though there is no standard formula for writing effective cases there are certain guidelines which I believe consistently lead to better cases. Therefore, at the request of the North American Case Research Association, the purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the guidelines I use when reviewing cases. I will organize my discussion around the four criteria the Case Research Journal uses for evaluating cases: (1) case focus, (2) case data, (3) case organization, and (4) writing style.
    "WRITING A PUBLISHABLE CASE: SOME GUIDELINES," by  James J. Chrisman ---
     http://www.wacra.org/Writing%20a%20Publishable%20Case%20-%20Some%20Guidelines.pdf

    Some ideas for case method research ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession

    Forensic Accounting Course Materials

    November 3, 2009 message from Eileen Taylor [eileen_taylor@NCSU.EDU]

    Need advice on choosing a textbook for an MBA class on fraud (to be taken mostly by Master of Accounting students).

    I am deciding between Albrecht's Fraud Examination and Hopwood's Forensic Accounting. I also plan to have students read Cynthia Cooper's book, Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower.

    I will be teaching a three-week version of the course this summer as a study abroad, but also will be converting it into a 16 week semester-long 3 hour course.

    Any suggestions would be helpful -

    Thank you,
    Eileen

    November 3, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Eileen,

    I'm really not able to give you an opinion on either choice for a textbook. But before making a decision I always compared the end-of-chapter material and the solutions manual to accompany that material. If the publisher did not pay for good end-of-chapter material I always view the textbook to be a cheap shot. The end-of-chapter material is much harder to write than the chapter material itself.

    I also look for real world cases and illustrations.

    Don't forget the wealth of material, some free, at the site of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners --- http://www.acfe.com/
    I would most certainly consider using some of this material on homework and examinations.

    Instead of a textbook you might use the ACFE online self-study materials ($79)  ---
    Click Here

    There is a wonderful range of topics covered ---
    http://snipurl.com/acleselfstudy      [eweb_acfe_com]

    Accounting and Auditing

    Computers and Technology

    Criminology and Ethics

    Fraud Investigation

    Fraud Schemes

    Interviewing and Reporting

    Legal Elements of Fraud

    Spanish Titles

    Bob Jensen

    "A Model Curriculum for Education in Fraud and Forensic Accounting," by Mary-Jo Kranacher, Bonnie W. Morris, Timothy A. Pearson, and Richard A. Riley, Jr., Issues in Accounting Education, November 2008. pp. 505-518  (Not Free) --- Click Here

    There are other articles on fraud and forensic accounting in this November edition of IAE:

    Incorporating Forensic Accounting and Litigation Advisory Services Into the Classroom Lester E. Heitger and Dan L. Heitger, Issues in Accounting Education 23(4), 561 (2008) (12 pages)]

    West Virginia University: Forensic Accounting and Fraud Investigation (FAFI) A. Scott Fleming, Timothy A. Pearson, and Richard A. Riley, Jr., Issues in Accounting Education 23(4), 573 (2008) (8 pages)

    The Model Curriculum in Fraud and Forensic Accounting and Economic Crime Programs at Utica College George E. Curtis, Issues in Accounting Education 23(4), 581 (2008) (12 pages)

    Forensic Accounting and FAU: An Executive Graduate Program George R. Young, Issues in Accounting Education 23(4), 593 (2008) (7 pages)

    The Saint Xavier University Graduate Program in Financial Fraud Examination and Management William J. Kresse, Issues in Accounting Education 23(4), 601 (2008) (8 pages)

    Also see
    "Strain, Differential Association, and Coercion: Insights from the Criminology Literature on Causes of Accountant's Misconduct," by James J. Donegan and Michele W. Ganon, Accounting and the Public Interest 8(1), 1 (2008) (20 pages)

    Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
    Bob Jensen's threads on fraud --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm

    FBI Corporate Fraud Chart in August 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/aug2008/ataglance.htm#Chart1.htm

    A great blog on securities and accounting fraud --- http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/securities/

    November 3, 2009 reply from Jagdish Gangolly [gangolly@GMAIL.COM]

    Eileen,

    I have used the following book as text in a graduate course. It was excellent.

    A Guide to Forensic Accounting Investigation, Thomas Golden, Steven L. Skalak, and Mona M. Clayton. (Wiley, 2006)

    Jagdish S. Gangolly Department of Informatics College of Computing & Information State University of New York at Albany Harriman Campus, Building 7A, Suite 220 Albany, NY 12222
    Phone: 518-956-8251, Fax: 518-956-8247

    Bob Jensen's threads on fraud and forensic accounting ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm


    Potentially a Great Case for Managerial Accounting CoursesL  How can Harry Potter movies be financial losers?
    "'Hollywood Accounting' Losing In The Courts:  From the math-is-hard dept," TechDirt ---
    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml

    If you follow the entertainment business at all, you're probably well aware of "Hollywood accounting," whereby very, very, very few entertainment products are technically "profitable," even as they earn studios millions of dollars. A couple months ago, the Planet Money folks did a great episode explaining how this works in very simple terms. The really, really, really simplified version is that Hollywood sets up a separate corporation for each movie with the intent that this corporation will take on losses. The studio then charges the "film corporation" a huge fee (which creates a large part of the "expense" that leads to the loss). The end result is that the studio still rakes in the cash, but for accounting purposes the film is a money "loser" -- which matters quite a bit for anyone who is supposed to get a cut of any profits.

    For example, a bunch of you sent in the example of how Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, under "Hollywood accounting," ended up with a $167 million "loss," despite taking in $938 million in revenue. This isn't new or surprising, but it's getting attention because the income statement for the movie was leaked online, showing just how Warner Bros. pulled off the accounting trick:

    In that statement, you'll notice the "distribution fee" of $212 million dollars. That's basically Warner Bros. paying itself to make sure the movie "loses money." There are some other fun tidbits in there as well. The $130 million in "advertising and publicity"? Again, much of that is actually Warner Bros. paying itself (or paying its own "properties"). $57 million in "interest"? Also to itself for "financing" the film. Even if we assume that only half of the "advertising and publicity" money is Warner Bros. paying itself, we're still talking about $350 million that Warner Bros. shifts around, which get taken out of the "bottom line" in the movie accounting.

    Now, that's all fascinating from a general business perspective, but now it appears that Hollywood Accounting is coming under attack in the courtroom... and losing. Not surprisingly, your average juror is having trouble coming to grips with the idea that a movie or television show can bring in hundreds of millions and still "lose" money. This week, the big case involved a TV show, rather than a movie, with the famed gameshow Who Wants To Be A Millionaire suddenly becoming "Who Wants To Hide Millions In Profits." A jury found the whole "Hollywood Accounting" discussion preposterous and awarded Celador $270 million in damages from Disney, after the jury believed that Disney used these kinds of tricks to cook the books and avoid having to pay Celador over the gameshow, as per their agreement.

    On the same day, actor Don Johnson won a similar lawsuit in a battle over profits from the TV show Nash Bridges, and a jury awarded him $23 million from the show's producer. Once again, the jury was not at all impressed by Hollywood Accounting.

    With these lawsuits exposing Hollywood's sneakier accounting tricks, and finding them not very convincing, a number of Hollywood studios may face a glut of upcoming lawsuits over similar deals on properties that "lost" money while making millions. It's why many of the studios are pretty worried about the rulings. Of course, these recent rulings will be appealed, and a jury ruling might not really mean much in the long run. Still, for now, it's a fun glimpse into yet another way that Hollywood lies with numbers to avoid paying people what they owe (while at the same sanctimoniously insisting in the press and to politicians that they're all about getting content creators paid what they're due).

    Bob Jensen's threads on case learning are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases

    Bob Jensen's threads on return on investment
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on management accounting
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#ManagementAccounting

    Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

     


    Bob Jensen's advice to new faculty can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 


    Links to Bob Jensen's Workshop Documents on Education and Learning

    The Shocking Future of Education 

    First File

    Second File

    Bob Jensen's Threads on Cross-Border (Transnational) Training and Education
    (Includes helpers for finding online training and education courses, certificate programs, and degree Programs)
    Detail File

    Alternatives and Tricks/Tools of the Trade

    First File

    Second File

    The Dark Side of the 21st Century: Concerns About Technologies in Education

     Detail File

    Assessment Issues, Case Studies, and Research Detail File
    History and Future of Course Authoring Technologies Detail File
    Knowledge Portals and Vortals Detail File
    Bob Jensen's Advice to New Faculty (and Resources) Detail File
    Threads of Online Program Costs and Faculty Compensation Detail File
    Bob Jensen's Helper Videos and Tutorials Detail File
    Jensen and Sandlin Book entitled Electronic Teaching and Learning: Trends in Adapting to Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Networks in Higher Education
    (both the 1994 and 1997 Updated Versions)
    Old Book
    Additional Links and Threads Threads

    Education Technology Links --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    Bob Jensen's Homepage is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/