Shrink-O-Matic: Another Free Tool

A couple of week ago, we introduced Shrink-O-Matic at a JCCC Ed Tech Center’s Web 2.0 Wednesday session. It’s an Adobe AIR application that easily resizes (shrinks) one or more images (such as JPGs, GIFs and PNGs). If you need to quickly reduce the size of images, you can simply drag and drop the images into Shrink-O-Matic and they'll be resized as you specify! The web 2.0 app offers options so you can choose the output sizes, names and formats of the graphic files. Check it out at http://toki-woki.net/p/Shrink-O-Matic/. It’s a very simple application to use.

Just be aware, this tool is supported by the online developer. If you get stuck, review the Shrink-O-Matic blog at http://toki-woki.net/blog/p157-shrink-o-matic.

Innovation Corner: Will the 20 Pound Textbook Still EXist in 5 Years?

Some interesting developments are occurring in the eBook/publishing arena. The recent O'Reilly Tools of Change (TOC) Conference in New York (February 22-24, 2010) covered many topics including eBooks. As recorded on the Smashwords blog (Smashwords is an eBook publisher and distributor), Raymond Kurzweil, the man behind the new Blio ebook platform, spoke of “how most forward-thinking people consider technology progression as linear (steady predictable progress), when in fact some of the most important technical progressions are exponential (progress accelerates over time, catching everyone by surprise). Ebooks are likely an exponential phenomena. They're not a fad, and they may reshape the book market faster than any of us believe.”

The posting on Smashwords (http://blog.smashwords.com/2010/02/tools-of-change-conference-notes.html) includes some interesting stats (see the section on “Stats, Stats, Stats”) such as “Ebook customers would be willing to pay more for ebooks if they come with social-media-enabled tools that help them discuss and share the books with others.”

The posting continues, “[What are the] most popular devices for reading ebooks: This is interesting. You might guess, as I did, the Amazon Kindle. Wrong. The most popular device for 47% of customers is their computer screen. Kindle comes in at a close and impressive second place at 32%, followed by 11% for the iPhone, 10% for iPod Touch (note this adds up to 22%, pre-iPad), 9% each for the Blackberry and netbooks, and 8% each for the Barnes & Noble nook and the Sony Reader.”

The most interesting section of the post (“The Future of Digital Textbooks”) states “Whenever publishers create content for which there is great demand (such as textbooks), yet they make that content prohibitively expensive and inaccessible (textbooks), it causes customers to seek out alternative content options (piracy, used textbooks, etc.), all of which provide the publisher no economic benefit.”

“Digital textbooks offer potential relief to students and their parents. The challenge for college textbook publishers is to make the transition to lower cost digital products without putting themselves out of business. I think Flat World (see http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/) is well-positioned for the future of textbook publishing….”

If you want to know more about Flat World Knowledge, which offers “remixable textbooks by expert authors” check out the site (above) or the blog posting at http://blog.smashwords.com/2009/08/flat-world-offers-smarter-fairer-model.html.

Another potential eBook/textbook tool is Scribd (http://www.scribd.com/), “a place for writers to sell books they can't afford to publish and for people to discover others with similar reading interests” (see http://bit.ly/c8p5aW) which has a new send-to-mobile-devices feature that enables readers to select books on the Scribd site and send them to the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s The Nook, the iPhone or a mobile device using the Android operating system (such as the Motorola Droid, Samsung Beam, Nexus One, and HTC Hero). Scribd currently hosts over 10 million documents (growing by 10% each month) and unlike Amazon and Barnes & Noble, their emphasis in on the small self-published author. What does that mean? College instructors can author textbooks or chapters or papers and distribute to the student’s existing mobile device via Scribd.

So when textbooks skyrocket in price, faculty members can author or remix digital versions, and ebook readers, mobile devices and the computer screen are common and popular ways to access content…what do you think is the future of the hardcover or softcover textbook?

Class Videos and Copyright

The University of California at Los Angeles has stopped allowing faculty members to post copyrighted videos on their course Web sites after the Association for Information and Media Equipment (AIME), a group that protects the copyrights of education media companies, charged the university with violating copyright laws by posting the videos to the password-protected course Web pages without the proper permissions. For additional details, check out the Inside Higher Ed article at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/26/copyright (be sure to check the very intriquing comments to the article at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/26/copyright#Comments ).

A follow-up article is also available at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/02/04/copyrightredux .

What does this mean? In overly simplistic terms:

• Fair use only allows a portion of a work (video or otherwise) to be used by a not-for-profit educational institution in the classroom.
• The TEACH Act extends the classroom to include any online, password protected course space with access only by currently enrolled students, and access enabled only for a time period appropriate to presentation and discussion of the work.
• The use of the video must be related to specific course objectives (i.e., not just as a time filler).
• As a "general rule", the TEACH Act would only authorize portions of, not entire works. The exception might include showing an entire film in a media studies program, but other criteria must also be met.
• The work (including video) must be legally obtained (e.g., not a pirated copy).
• The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal (even if fair use might otherwise apply) to bypass the encryption on digital media (e.g., CSS encryption codes on region-encoded DVDs) in order to create a streaming media version. For example, if you digitize and bypass the encryption on a DVD to create a streaming video clip, the issue of fair use is moot.
• The TEACH Act does not extend fair use to works primarily produced or marketed for in-class use in the digital distance education market.

JCCC has licenses with several companies to provide video access for instructional purposes, including Ambrosia Video, Journal of Chemical Education (ACS) demonstrations, American History in Video (streaming video collection includes newsreels from 1929 through the 1960s plus hours of documentaries from the History Channel and more), Counseling and Therapy in Video, Dallas TeleLearning Digital Resource Repository, and the INTELECOM Online Resources Network.

Members of AIME, the group that has threatened UCLA with a copyright infringement suit) are listed online ( http://www.aime.org/corporate-directory.php ).

As background for this increasingly important area of media usage, check out “Video Use and Higher Education: Options for the Future” at http://library.nyu.edu/about/Video_Use_in_Higher_Education.pdf .

Word Tip: Converting a Graphic to Free-Floating

Have you ever added a graphic to a paragraph in Microsoft Word 2007 and found it locked to a specific paragraph when you wanted it to be a "Free-Floating" graphic? To change it from locked to free-floating, simply click the graphic to select it. A new tab labeled Picture Tools appears above the right-most tab. Click the new tab and in the Arrange group, near the right-side of the ribbon, click the down-arrow next to the right of the Text Wrapping text. From the drop-down menu, choose "Through". This releases the graphic from its paragraph anchor, and you can drag the picture anywhere in the document. If you need to have extra vertical space to position the graphic, simply press the Enter key until enough space is reached, and drag the picture to the new location.

Thanks to John R. Nicholson for this tip.

Free eBook Reader Coming?

Everyone’s releasing eBooks, from Apple’s iPad to Amazon’s Kindle to the Sony eBook Reader to Barnes & Noble’s The Nook. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Ray Kurzweil, creator of Kurzweil Educational Systems (technology pioneer and developer of a range of assistive technology products) announced the February release of Blio, a free eBook reader. According to eSchool News (see http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/01/31/blio-free-ereader-makes-impression/ ), “Perhaps the software’s most impressive feature is that it can support the original layout, font, and graphics of any book in full color, its creators say. It also can support embedded multimedia such as video and audio, and readers have the ability to highlight, annotate, and share information.”

“Blio isn’t yet available, but already it’s backed by Baker & Taylor, one of the world’s largest publishers, as well as Elsevier, Hachette, HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley. Blio users will have access to more than 1 million books altogether, its makers say—including a large selection of current bestselling titles.”

If interested in Blio, go to their web site ( http://www.blioreader.com/ ) and signup for an email alert when the app is available. Also check out http://www.blioreader.com/about.html for a feature comparison chart (bottom of the page) with other eBook readers.

Eyes on the Earth 3D

Instructors: What if you could enable your students to view Global Climate Change satellite data from NASA in 3D (based on over a dozen key satellites orbiting the Earth; such as AQUA, CloudSAT, OSTM, and so on)? Check out http://climate.nasa.gov/Eyes/ and be sure to watch the demonstration video first. It’ll explain the controls you have to selectively view data from one or more satellites. The site does require you to install the Unity Web Browser, but it’s pretty straight-forward to do.

Be sure to check out the planet’s vital signs on the right, including the long term summer average of Arctic Sea ice, parts per million of Carbon Dioxide, the rise or fall of the sea level since 1992, and the increase or decrease in the global temperature and the size of the ozone hole.

Gadgets I Didn't Get for Christmas

Just before the holiday break, we held a Technology Brown Bag session on "Electronic Gifts for the Season" (see video at http://video.jccc.edu/academicvid/BrownBags/Brownbag12-02-09.asx). I invited several staff at JCCC to participate and Keith Krieger (Technology Training Coordinator) was one of the invitees. Keith was unable to attend but sent me a list of interesting gadgets...none of which I received for Christmas. :-(

We ran out of time to share his information, so the least I can do is share these great gadgets with you. Here's Keith's note:

"Since I can’t be there, I thought I would share a few items I’ve seen.

I’ve done this for the Center for Business for 4 Christmas seasons, and I like to have a bit of fun with the items. Please feel free to pass these along for anyone to review or point out."

Space Food Sampler from ThinkGeek:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/b264/ $20

For aging boomers who bought every Beatle album (not that I would know anything about that):

The Beatles: Rock Band

http://www.thebeatlesrockband.com/

For Trekkies (more aging boomers):

An entire set of iPhone applications devoted to Klingon: dictionary, conversational Klingon (“The engines are overheating, Captain!”), and phrasebook. $11.99 for the suite.

http://www.simonandschuster.com/w/klingonApps/content.html#klingon_language_suite

For WoW fans, you can now buy an in-game pet to accompany you:

http://us.blizzard.com/store/browse.xml?f=c:5,c:33

7 Cool and Easy Robot Projects (book):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0072226404/davejohnsonswebsA/

Free virtual robot software to use with the book, or buy expensive Lego Mindstorms kits for real robots!

Simplify charging your gadgets with PowerMat:

http://www.powermat.com/us/home/

Poor man’s network using a plug-in Ethernet crossover adaptor, from ThinkGeek:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/7470/

Tools of Innovation

In an earlier posting, we talked about the Technology Innovation Grant at JCCC and where ideas come from, see http://bit.ly/3vcJkp. The TIG funds are still available for JCCC faculty…and additionally, since innovation often just requires elbow grease (and no funds), we thought we’d share some resources with you.

JCCC is a member of the New Media Consortium (NMC) and they host a cool technologies site at http://www.nmc.org/cool. Check it out (and contribute, if you wish).

Tracy Newman, Ed Tech Center Sr. Analyst, brought to my attention an article about a 3D Video Projector. As the blurb states: “The automobile, moving pictures, personal computers, cell phones, and social networks—all of these technologies, once considered frivolous, have made such a huge impact on our culture that our daily lives would change dramatically without them. Could 3-D video be next?” Check out the article at http://tinyurl.com/yldyqn7. From page 3 of the report: “Sound Video Systems, maker of the AVRover brand of portable audio-visual systems, has partnered with BenQ to release the AVRover 3DSVS24, which the company says is the "first fully integrated 3-D Stereoscopic Educational System." The product is a portable and rugged 3-D AV system with all components securely mounted inside. It features a powder-coated, scratch-resistant steel console, as well as a 3-D projector from BenQ and sequentially numbered active-shutter glasses, storage, and sanitation for an entire class. It lists for $7,895.” Who at JCCC (or elsewhere) will be the first to find an important instructional use for a 3D video projector?

Also from Tracy, who would have thought $148 would buy students a chance to snap pictures of Earth from space? Check out http://tinyurl.com/mz54zs. Images are shown at http://space.1337arts.com/flight and at http://tinyurl.com/m5rrzs.

One of the current innovations currently offered by Google is the new Google Wave tool. From the NMC, comes word that a visitor to their web site shared a research paper on "A Study and Analysis of Google Wave and its Potential Impact on Education and Collaboration." The paper was written by Johanna Hane (johanna.hane@gmail.com) who gave permission to share with NMC Members. A PDF format copy is available at http://web.nmc.org/files/google-wave-revolutionary-tool.pdf

And while we’re talking about innovation, what will the classroom of the future (Classroom 3.0) look like. Check out the “Classroom 3.0: the brave new world of high-tech teaching” blog posting at http://tinyurl.com/yl25crx. As the article’s subhead indicates “iPhone apps, teachers on Twitter, downloadable lectures: Will a university education ever be the same?” What are you doing to include relevant technology in your courses?

Finally, Marziah Karch attended the Web 2.0 Expo in New York recently. The Expo keynote addresses are all available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A0D433518BDA7856. Got a few minutes? Check out topics ranging from “Radical Abundance: How We Get Past "Free" to “The O’Reilly Radar” to “There’s a #Hashtag for That” to “Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media” and more.

Do you have innovative tools or sites you’d like to share? E-mail me at jbacon@jccc.edu.

NEED VIDEO RESOURCES FOR SPRING 2010?

Are you looking for a short video clip to supplement your instruction or reinforce a concept? Are you looking for ways to reinforce in-class or online class lectures?

Ambrose Video has over 1000 Educational DVDs in their collection including science and history topics. New releases include "21st Century Turning Points in U.S. History (2000-2009)", "America's National Monuments: The Geologic West", "A History of Chinese American Achievement", "When the Water Tap Runs Dry" (a look at the challenges faced in a climate changed world) and new Ancient History DVDs. Ambrose’s video collection is designed to provide clips for educators to deliver digitally in the classroom (face-to-face or online). That means they’re available for download or in a streaming format.

JCCC will license 50 hours of video from Ambrose that can be used in the classroom or online. The same 50 hours of video will be available to students via the JCCC Library’s web site (requires use of a proxy server).

If you're interested in seeing the variety of video clips available, visit Ambrose Video. Here are some helpful steps you:

1. Go to http://www.ambrosevideo.com
2. You will find the tutorial helpful (see the link on the right of Ambrose Video’s home page or at http://www.ambrosedigital.com/content/view/102/160/).
3. When done watching the tutorial, click the Home tab to return to the Ambrose Video home page.
4. Type a key word in the search box (after the magnifying glass icon on upper right side of the page) that represents the video you seek; such as, “history” or “astronomy” or “law” and press the Enter key.
5. A list of videos that match the keyword will appear on the screen.
6. Click the title and the next screen will show “Programs and individual clips.” You’ll see a sample clip at the top of the screen.
7. While you cannot view each clip, you can mouse over the “I” or Information icon (that precedes each title) to see more information on the clip.
8. When you find clips that you might be able to use, make a note of the clip (such as “1754 - The Albany Plan of Union”) or the name of the entire program (such as “18th Century Turning Points in U.S. History”).

The Seed of an Idea: Education, Technology & Innovation

For several years JCCC has set aside 1% of its Information Technology Plan (ITP) budget to fund the Technology Innovation Grant (TIG) program. Faculty members may apply for a grant which is “designed to assist JCCC faculty with the acquisition of technical hardware and software, which fosters innovation in instruction. This process has been created to help make possible and expedite technological innovations that improve learning at JCCC.” Not all of the grant applications have been funded and some proposals have been funded wholly or partially out of other college resources besides TIG funds. One benefit of the program is that it brings to light instructional needs that while not funded through TIG, need to be funded within the institutional budget.

Some of the funded projects have included the acquisition of an iTouch mobile device for a faculty member teaching in the Interactive Media program, several Kindles for faculty in the Reading program, Camtasia Studio, handheld camcorders and wireless Wacom tablets for 35 faculty in a pilot project to develop tutorials for classroom/online use, PDAs for Nursing faculty to try out software for their curriculum, assembling equipment for an Archaeological Field School, the addition of three “Cones of Silence” for use by students viewing media in the Library and a 3D printer for the Drafting Department to enable students to visually create a 3D model from CADD drawings. The last two projects are detailed in a recent Technology Brown Bag session (see http://tinyurl.com/tigtbb or http://video.jccc.edu/academicvid/BrownBags/Brownbag10-14-09.asx ).

Sometimes there’s a scarcity of faculty proposals for TIG funds. I suspect that one reason is that technological innovation doesn’t always require funds, hardware or software. With faculty creativity and access to a wide range of free web 2.0 or rich internet applications (RIAs), sometimes no institutional funding is required.

When funding is required, where does the seed of an idea come from? We’ve encouraged brainstorming of ideas during Technology Brown Bag sessions and JCCC faculty members are always invited to visit with a staff member in the Educational Technology Center (ETC) to discuss possible instructional technology projects (and not just for TIG proposals).

As an additional brainstorming opportunity, TechNews shares information about webinars, Web 2.0 tools and ideas that could provide the seed of an idea for a TIG proposal.

Recently I asked colleagues on the New Media Consortium subscribers list (JCCC is a NMC member) for classroom innovations from their institutions. Here are a few of the responses.
Edward Lee Lamoureux (Associate Professor in the Interactive Media Program and Department of Communication at Bradley University) teaches a course entirely (100%) in Second Life (see http://im.bradley.edu/ell/slstuff.html ). His initial motivation was to find a distance learning environment that would support audio interaction with his students. Edward teaches “Introduction to Field Research in Virtual Worlds” in second life, a three-week intersession course at Bradley U. You can hear an audio interview about his experiences teaching in SL at http://sl.nmc.org/2006/08/08/professor-beliveau/ .

Pamela Gades (Instructional Technology Specialist, University of Minnesota, Morris) reported that an organic chemistry professor is using Camtasia Relay to record “pre-lab lectures” for her students and posting them on her course web site and on iTunes U. Students are required to view the pre-lab lectures before attending the weekly organic chemistry labs. The instructor creates the videos in her office using an iMac. Camtasia Relay is available at JCCC too and can be run on either a Macintosh or Windows PC. More information on JCCC’s Camtasia Relay pilot will be available by late-November. The instructor at UM-Morris uses humor and stories while infusing her sessions with lots of encouragement and real-life application of the topics.

Damon E. Betlow (Academic Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology) reported that RIT has created a Teaching & Learning Technology Studio (similar to JCCC’s Learning Studio) which allows instructors to try out new technologies in a safe, supported environment. The classroom features:

• 25 student tablet PCs
• An instructor tablet PC and stylus-enabled monitor
• Collaboration and Faculty Monitoring System for the tablets (DyKnow Vision and Monitor)
• Student Response System (iClicker)
• Multiple Digital Projection Systems (3 screens that allow for widescreen content or 3 separate sources)
• Flexible Seating Design
• Remote Pan/Tilt Video capture capability
• Audio conferencing capability through room’s sound system (remote microphones and ceiling speakers)

RIT is looking into adding an interactive whiteboard, instructor-controlled lecture capture and/or live streaming, as well as videoconferencing capability. For more information, visit http://tltstudio.rit.edu/ .

So, if you have an idea for a TIG, stop by the ETC and talk with the Center’s staff about your idea. Maybe we can help you flesh it out.

Embedding a YouTube Video in a PowerPoint Slideshow

The following steps walk you through embedding a YouTube video in a PowerPoint slideshow. Note that this approach only works when you have access to the internet (both during creation of the slideshow and playback). You can watch a YouTube video that demonstrates this process at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hChq5drjQl4. The steps listed below draw heavily on the video by Laura Bergells of www.Maniactive.com.

1. Be sure you have an active Internet connection.
2. Open PowerPoint and be sure the Developer tab is visible.
3. If Developer tab is not visible, go to the Office button (upper left corner), click on it and then select PowerPoint options (lower right of menu box that appears).
4. Select Popular (left margin of menu box) and select the Show Developer tab in the Ribbon check box.
5. Select OK button.
6. Add a new slide (can be any type or blank).
7. Now that the Developer tab is visible, select it and select More Controls icon (looks like a crossed hammer and wrench).
8. Scroll all the way down until you find the Shockwave Flash Object (the list is alphabetical), select it and click OK.
9. Now draw with your cursor/mouse the rectangular area within which you want the video to appear.
10. You can use the handles on the rectangle to resize the image size.
11. Now go to YouTube and locate the video you want to include.
12. When you find the video, go to the box that includes the URL and Embed tag.
13. Select the entire URL and press Ctrl+C to copy the URL to the clipboard.
14. Go back to PowerPoint and right click on the rectangle target area that you created in which to play the video.
15. Select Properties from the menu that appears when you right click.
16. In the Properties box that appears, click on box behind the Movie label and press Ctrl+V to paste the URL into that Properties field.
17. Now you must edit the URL. Wherever you see “watch?” delete it.
18. Wherever you see the equal sign (=) replace it with a slash (/).
19. Still in the Properties box, if you don’t want the movie to loop, change the Loop setting to False.
20. If you don’t want the movie to start playing automatically, change the Playing setting to False.
21. When finished, close the Properties box.
22. If you need to reposition the video, do so using the handles on the rectangle.
23. Press F5 to preview.
24. Click the play button (center of the screen image).
25. Notice that you have access to the regular video controls to pause and restart the video as well as to adjust the volume.
26. When the movie finishes, if you have additional slides, you can click to forward to the new slide.

Recovering Deleted Photo Files

Periodically, we receive inquiries about how to recover lost files, specifically from camera cards. There are many programs that recover deleted files but PhotoRec is specifically designed for recovery of data from hard disks, CDRom and various camera cards. See http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec , it’s free. Thanks to Nick Greenup for this information.

Google Tricks

Did you know that you can enter specific keywords in any Google search box to quickly obtain information you need? For instance, if you want to know the weather in a specific city, you can enter:

weather: [followed by the city name]

To find the weather in Boston today, type in:

weather: boston

If you don’t get the information you need (some city names are not one-of-a-kind), add the state abbreviation after a comma, such as:

weather: Kansas City, KS

Other examples (that generate a list of links to the information you need) include the following.

To find flights to a specific city:

flight: Durango, CO

To find the current time in another city:

time: Flint, MI

Find a definition:

define: haggadah

To find a current stock quote:

stock: KFT

To identify a file type, try entering:

filetype: amr

And, if you want to know movie show times for your area, type the following (substitute the movie name you want to see and your zip code):

movie: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince 66210

Thanks to Marziah Karch for her research on Google and her SIDLIT presentation titled “100 Things You Can Do with Google (Besides Searching),” see http://scholarspace.jccc.edu/sidlit/17/.

Top 24 Sites for Teaching & Learning

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) recently announced a new resource for school library media specialists and their teacher colleagues. The Best Websites for Teaching and Learning, a list honoring the top 25 Internet sites for enhancing learning and curriculum development, is considered the "best of the best" by AASL.

The Top 25 Web sites for Teaching and Learning foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation and collaboration. The Web sites honored include: Animoto; Classroom 2.0; Curriki; Diigo; Edublogs; Facebook; Good Reads; Google Reader; Mindmeister; Ning; Our Story; Partnership for 21st Century Skills; Polleverywhere; Primary Access; RezED; Second Life; Simply Box; Skype; SOS for Information Literacy; Teacher Tube; Twitter; VoiceThread; Wikispaces; Wordle; and Zoho.

"The task force worked very hard to target websites that support learner-centered, inquiry-based curriculum. In the hands of knowledgeable educators, these innovative and versatile Web 2.0 tools and resources can be used to engage and motivate students in the learning process and to develop 21st century skills," said AASL Best List Task Force Chair, Pam Berger.

All sites are free, Web-based sites that are user-friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. They also provide a foundation to support AASL's “Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.” Valuable information on each site, including tips for effective classroom use, are available at www.ala.org/aasl/bestlist.

Web 2.0 Apps such as Twitter, Facebook, ePortfolios and More

This past Wednesday, Tracy Newman and I presented a Technology Brown Bag session on “Twitter, Tumblr, Yammer, Huh? – How to Navigate Massive Information Streams and Have a Life.” A video archive of the session is available from the “Video Archive” link on the Tech Brown Bag schedule page ( http://web.jccc.edu/edtech/brownbag/ ). I was a last minute substitute presenter for Marziah Karch, who presented the same topic at the Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology (SIDLIT) in late July. Marziah’s paper and others from the conference are available in the JCCC Library’s ScholarSpace archive (see http://scholarspace.jccc.edu/sidlit/ ).

Future Sessions
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be focusing on a variety of Web 2.0 tools and considering how they can be used for educational purposes. The Twitter session was the first in the series, followed this coming week (Wednesday, September 16) with “Struttin Your Stuff – Exploring ePortfolios for Everyone (Faculty, Staff and Students) presented by Bob Epp and “Going Where They Are–Using Facebook in Class” presented by Keith Krieger and Jonathan Bacon. Details are available on the Tech Brown Bag schedule page ( http://web.jccc.edu/edtech/brownbag/ ).

Defining Web 2.0
If you’re still unsure what Web 2.0 includes, check out a couple of earlier blog posts at http://technotipster.blogspot.com/2008/08/web-20-and-what-it-really-means.html and http://technotipster.blogspot.com/2008/07/your-digital-toolkit-lesser-known-web.html .

Regarding Twitter
Back to Twitter, a July 2009 survey by Faculty Focus (see http://www.facultyfocus.com/ ) found that almost 80% of faculty are familiar with Twitter compared to 30+% who use Twitter. The report discussed reasons why faculty use Twitter as well as the leading reasons they do not. Page 9 of the report (released in September 2009) summarizes the findings. Faculty survey responses fell in three categories. Faculty use twitter primarily to:

• “Stay current on news/trends”
• “Network with colleagues”
• “Participate in conference backchannel”

If you have an opportunity to review the survey findings, spend some time reading the revealing comments of active tweeters and their current plus planned uses of the tool. You’ll find some potentially useful applications of Twitter.

The report is available online at the http://www.facultyfocus.com/ site.

New Media Consortium Summer Archives Online

JCCC is a member of the New Media Consortium (NMC) which holds an annual Summer Conference. A collection of videos from the 2009 NMC Summer Conference in Monterey are available, including:

• Keynote presentations by Kathy Sierra and Marco Torres
• Point Lobos Photo Shoot- a slide show of the best photos from the pre-conference digital photography workshop
• The Five Minutes of Fame session (10 great presentations in less than an hour! with a gong!)
• And more.

You can watch all of these packaged together in a single Flash Player (there is a scrolling menu below the video area): http://www.nmc.org/2009-summer-conference/videos
or browse them individually, where we have reference links as well as QuickTime versions: http://www.nmc.org/2009-summer-conference/media

Summer Institute on Distance Learning & Instructional Technology (SIDLIT)

It’s been a while since I posted a tip and my only valid excuse is that the Ed Tech Center (including this writer) have been feverishly preparing for SIDLIT (Summer Institute on Distance Learning & Instructional Technology). The conference ran Thursday and Friday, July 30-31, 2009 and now it is history.

It's always a period of readjustment when SIDLIT is over. We spend so much time planning and building toward the event, followed by a sigh of relief (and an emotional letdown) when it’s over. Can you believe that we’ve been doing this for 10 years and we’ve grown from 50 attendees the first year to around 400 this year?

For those who attended, if you can’t quite let go yet and want to relive some of SIDLIT through a history of tweets, check out http://tinyurl.com/mdtgk9 (visibletweets of SIDLIT postings and those with the #sidlit hash tag).

If interested in a sampling of the sessions, you can visit Rob Gibson’s “Integrating Social Networking & Web 2.0 Applications into eLearning” slideshow at http://www.slideshare.net/rgibson/social-elearning-sidlit or Paul Decelles’ session on “Science Simulations for Students in Second Life” at http://tinyurl.com/lxsdmp or Aaron Sumner’s presentation on “Quick Application Development with Web Frameworks” at http://tinyurl.com/mfrau5. More presentations will be available shortly on JCCC’s ScholarSpace site (I'll alert you when they're ready).

For now, we can start planning for SIDLIT 2010. Thanks to all presenters, committee volunteers and sponsors for supporting year 10 of this endeavor.

Twitter for Education?

Launched in July 2006 (see http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting/) as a little communications service (originally called Twttr and created by Odeo), Twitter has become the latest fade and fastest growing Web 2.0 tool on the planet. Twitter (www.twitter.com) was described early in its history as “a social network around text messaging” (see above link). Early subscribers (twitterers) would send messages (“tweets”) on such mundane things as “totally could use a vacation now!!!” to “This girl can play some funky songs on her ukulele.”

While those types of tweets are still very common, the tool is also being used to offer customer support (http://twitter.com/trackthis, UPS), sell products (http://twitter.com/GMblogs), inform about current events (http://twitter.com/iranelection) and more.

Of special interest to educators are the suggestions offered by Jim Vanides in his Digital Learning Environments blog back in early June 2009 (http://tinyurl.com/oh9mgk). He suggests using Twitter:

• To create “a backchannel…for student participation (posting questions/comments) during a large group presentation – sort of like giving the audience permission to pass notes, because you can give the note-passing a metacognitive purpose.” Jim has seen this technique used at education conferences and we’ll give this a try at SIDLIT (the Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology scheduled for July 30-31, 2009; see www.sidlit.org).
• For “real-time collaboration” among students, such as when on a field trips.
• To enhance audience participation at athletic events.
• To communicate with a specific audience such as “students’ parents” or alumni or campus clubs (instead of “always creating lengthy newsletters or wading through lots of email”).
• To handle conference planning or to provide “non-attendees” a sense of “being there”. Check out www.twitter.com/sidlit.
  

If you’re interested in learning more about how twitter works, check out Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milsten’s The Twitter Book, from O’Reilly Press, $19.99. It’s a fast read.

VideoGuys Guides

Grassroots video is all the rage and even identified as one of the higher education trends “on the horizon” by the EDUCAUSE/New Media Consortium Horizons 2009 report. If you’re interested in serious (or even hobby) videography, the following information on storage for video capture and editing will be useful.

http://www.videoguys.com/techstorage.htm

While we’re talking about video, check out the new JCCC YouTube video channel at http://www.youtube.com/jcccvideo . You’ll find Board reports, Kansas Tour video, Athletics, interviews and more.

If you want more information on YouTube EDU ("a gateway to educational video content") check out the article at http://tinyurl.com/mlgo5e.

Summer Institute on Distance Learning & Instructional Technology

For the tenth year in a row, Johnson County Community College will co-sponsor a 2-day free conference (the Summer Institute on Distance Learning & Instructional Technology or SIDLIT, pronounced sidelight) to be held in the Regnier Center on campus on July 30-31, 2009. The regional conference draws 250-300 participants primarily from KS and MO, but is open to anyone (in the past we’ve had a smattering of attendees from the coasts and a number of states in-between). The two-day institute includes presentations, topic-oriented special interest discussion groups, hands-on workshops, and demonstrations.

For more detail, check out www.sidlit.org . Registration is now open and available at http://www.sidlit.org/user/register .

A sample of SIDLIT 2009 sessions includes: "Choosing an ePortfolio Tool" by Benito Berardo, "Relax and Enjoy a Taste of MERLOT" (the Learning Object Repository) by Heather Seitz, "Delivering High Stakes Assessments in a Computerized Testing Center" by Philip Wilhauk, "Spanish: Reality Online" by Nellie Modaress, "The Open Education Resource Phenomenon: Free Educational Resources for All" by Gloria Creed-Dikeogu, "Digital Storytelling: How to Bring Your Stories to Life" by Tracy Newman and "Effective Video Storytelling" by Bob Epp.

For a listing of all sessions visit http://sidlit.org/sessions/all or to see a tentative schedule of sessions, visit http://sidlit.org/sessions/matrix .