TL Infobits - March, 2008
Issue 21
ISSN: 1931-3144
The Exploding Digital Universe
Emerging Technologies for Learning
Assessing Effectiveness of New Technologies
Do Students Prefer Intensive Courses?
Biological Research "YouTube"
WikiEducator
Recommended Reading
THE EXPLODING DIGITAL UNIVERSE
"Contemplating the digital universe is a little like contemplating Avogadro's number [the number of carbon atoms in 12 grams: 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000]. It's big. Bigger than anything we can touch, feel, or see, and thus impossible to understand in context. . . . In 2007, the number of 'atoms' in the digital universe -- the digital bits, or binary 1s and 0s created, captured, and replicated during the year -- was less than a hundredth of Avogadro's number. But the number of digital 'atoms' in the digital universe is already bigger than the number of stars in the universe. And, because the digital universe is expanding by a factor of 10 every five years, in 15 years it will surpass Avogadro's number."
-- "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011" (IDC White Paper, by John F. Gantz, et al., March 2008)
Updating last year's white paper forecast, this IDC report provides these numbers not only to astonish the reader, but also to underscore the future implications of living with, working with, and understanding vast amounts of data. While the main audience of the paper is information technologists in business and government, the educational field must also grapple with the issues related this data deluge: "information security, privacy protection, copyright protection, screening for obscenity, detecting fraud, reporting on and archiving the content, searching and retrieving, and disposal."
This paper and last year's report are available online at http://www.emc.com/digital_universe.
IDC is a provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. For more information, contact: IDC, 5 Speen St., Framingham, MA 01701 USA; tel: 508-872-8200; Web: http://www.idc.com/.
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES FOR LEARNING
Becta has released volume 3 (2008) in its "Emerging Technologies for Learning" research reports series. Building upon the two earlier reports, this collection of papers by educational technology leaders provides overviews and analyses to help educators understand and respond to the challenges of several emerging trends. Papers in this volume include:
"Growing up with Google: What It Means to Education" by Diana Oblinger
"Mobile, Wireless, Connected: Information Clouds and Learning" by Mark van't Hooft
"Location-Based and Context-Aware Education: Prospects And Perils" by Adam Greenfield
"Emerging Trends in Serious Games and Virtual Worlds" by Sara de Freitas
"'If It Quacks Like A Duck...' Developments in Search Technologies" by Emma Tonkin
"Interactive Displays and Next-Generation Interfaces" by Michael Haller
The report can be downloaded at no cost in PDF format at http://publications.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=35877&page=1835.
Volume 1 (2006) and Volume 2 (2007) are also available for downloading at http://www.becta.org.uk/research/reports/emergingtechnologies.
Becta, established in 1998, is the governmental lead agency in the United Kingdom for information and communications technology (ICT) in education. For more information, contact: Becta, Millburn Hill Rd., Science Park, Coventry CV4 7JJ UK; email: becta@becta.org.uk; Web: http://becta.org.uk/.
ASSESSING EFFECTIVENESS OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES
"From the perspective of instructional designers and instructors, the decision to adopt a new technology can be exceedingly difficult. On the one hand, we all want to create the best possible learning environment for our students. On the other, there is the persistent fear that integrating a new technology will be onerous in terms of integration and only marginal in terms of impact, or worse, it may have a negative impact."
In "How Do We Assess the Effectiveness of New Technologies and Learning Environments?" (Sloan-C View, vol. 7, issue 2, February 2008), Philip Ice suggests using the Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI): "a theoretical model that seeks to explain the online learning experience in terms of three overlapping presences: teaching, social and cognitive." He cites two studies that support the application of CoI for exploring the impact of new technologies in education. The article, including links to the cited studies, is available at http://www.aln.org/publications/view/v7n2/viewv7n2.htm. (Please note: registration is required to view some articles; registration is free.)
Sloan-C View: Perspectives in Quality Online Education [ISSN: 1541-2806] is published by the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C). Current and back issues are available at http://www.aln.org/publications/view/ For more information, contact: The Sloan Center at Olin and Babson Colleges, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Olin Way, Needham MA 02492-1200 USA; tel: 781-292-2523; fax: 781-292-2505; email: info@sloan-c.org; Web: http://www.sloan-c.org/.
Sloan-C is a consortium of institutions and organizations committed "to help learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs according to their own distinctive missions, so that education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines." Sloan-C is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
DO STUDENTS PREFER INTENSIVE COURSES?
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin conducted a study to determine which was preferred by students: "regular" courses (typical for traditional, residential institutions) or "intensive" courses -- "those taught on a tighter than normal schedule, with more class time each week, but fewer weeks" (typical of online courses taught at for-profit institutions). Students rated the intensive courses significantly higher, causing the researchers to suggest that residential colleges may want to consider offering more courses of this type.
Results of the study were presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. An article about the research (along with reader comments) is available:
"Students Prefer Intensive Courses"
Inside Higher Ed
March 28, 2008
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/28/intensive
BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH "YOUTUBE"
YouTube has nothing on the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). Founded in October 2006, the peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication was the first journal to present biological research in a video format. Research areas covered include: cellular biology, developmental biology, immunology, microbiology, neuroscience, and plant biology. Current and back issues are available at http://www.jove.com/.
JoVE [ISSN 1940-087X] is published monthly. For more information, contact: JoVE, 48 Grove St., Suite 303, Somerville MA 02144 USA; Web: http://www.jove.com/.
WIKIEDUCATOR
Launched and piloted by the Commonwealth of Learning, WikiEducator is a collaborative community involved in the
"planning of education projects linked with the development of free content; development of free content on WikiEducator for e-learning; work on building open education resources (OERs) on how to create OERs; networking on funding proposals developed as free content."
Following the model of Wikipedia, content on WikiEducator can be freely used and contributed. Instructional areas covered include: traditional secondary school subjects, technical and vocational education, and professional development. The site also offers opportunities to collaborate in a variety of educational projects and content development. WikiEducator accounts are free. Go to http://www.wikieducator.org/ for more information or to set up an account.
Commonwealth of Learning (COL) "promotes policies and systems to make innovation sustainable and works with international partners to build models, create materials, enhance organisational capacity, and nurture networks that facilitate learning in support of development goals." For more information, contact: Commonwealth of Learning, 1055 West Hastings St., Vancouver, BC V6E 2E9 Canada; tel: 604-775-8200; fax: 604-775-8210; email: info@col.org; Web: http://www.col.org/.
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 kotlas@email.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.
