Thursday, July 23, 2009

revised statement

In traditional, face to face higher education there are effective methods of distributing media to learners. At present, there are challenges and possibilities to utilizing mobile devices in higher education.

Through a review of the literature I will attempt to find the overlap of effective media distribution, and mobile access, where we can work today to distribute media and identify potential areas to expand this distribution "space".

Thursday, July 16, 2009

todays blog post is brought you by the makers of face to face communication;)

Thank you Jean and Belina for helping me process the very engaging presentation from today! At the end of our audio blog you will hear the questions we are hoping you will help us with... I hope you can respond to those questions.

As embedded video:


or download the audio: our audio post for today

my attempt to visually represent the scope of potential research in my area of interest

my working statement READY for feedback, questions and disection


In traditional, face to face, post secondary education, there have been successful means of distributing media to learners. At present, there are limitations to utilizing mobile devices in post secondary education. Through a review of the literature I will define a space with which we can currently work with mobile devices to distribute media effectively and identify potential areas to expand this space.


An example of some response questions:

taking my place in the field

So Dr. Jacobsen described deciding on our worldview as taking a stand in the field... believe x and stand feet firmly planted here x.

This concerned me for many reasons. I am accommodating for a living. You need a postpositivist for this project I'm your gall. You need your PM on this project to be advocate/participatory in their worldview.. I'm all over it. I am an accommodator.. as much as I can be without crossing a line on my personal belief systems. As it turns out I am standing firmly now in the pragmatism wordview. It is one that does not seperate beliefs, from conduct or disposition. It requires, as I understand it today, a mixed method approach to research according to the text.

Is a pragmatic wordview a holistic lens for a researcher or do I just want to read that into the text because I don't see the value in separating my "subjects" from the world that they so obviously live in?

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

test audio blog

i am dong a pole.. please assist... post a comment of what your definition of a mashup is please and thank you.

dana driscoll page

Dana Driscoll page (with graphic)

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

farther from my research proposal than ever

Earlier today I types this letter to myself unsure of where to put it (if any place at all). I only chose to share the first section in our discussion forums but will post the whole letter here.

I was attempting to untangle some of what brought me to the U of C. I see that I am farther from my proposal than I was a month ago and I guess that is ok. What Dr. Jacobsen said today as she differentiated research methods helps me see that I have some tough decisions to make betwen focusing on utilization OR managment.

My earlier letter to self:

When asked what i'm researching "Effectively Mobilize ed media” is easy to say.. to people who don’t ask for more information; no follow-up questions please;)

The challenges I see with of this roll-off-the tongue summary are varied based on my experiences over the past two years. On one side there are only certain types of media that learners will proactively seek out when trying to augment lecture and text. The access points to distribute these particular types of media are abundant so which ones are the easiest for both learners to get to (device independent with little to no training) and for Faculty to upload to (device independent with little to no training). Faculty need to be able to develop the media (the types that learners value) with ease for these types (and their distribution methods) to be institutionalized.

Sitting on the side of the above is to do outreach so that faculty 1) know what the learners will value and this will, hopefully, motivate them to produce this type of media seeing that their time and effort will be well spent and 2) are provided the tools and support services that will allow this process to become institutionalized.

With all of the above said the challenge (in attempting to do all of this in the past) has been that once you have institutionalized the process and the tools based on student value… the frustration I have found and am desperate to correct in an effective way… is to stop faculty from making assumptions. No laughing please.

Faculty make assumptions about the level of support provided by their institution. They receive support from peers and from within their program/school but I have found that regardless of the amount or quality of support provided at the institution level, when asked if they are provided support by their institution they state that little to none exists. They are unaware of not only what technologies have been institutionalized but that there is mentoring/training/self support etc at the ready (hen done correctly). This is an issue of, as I say, making assumptions and not taking the next step (validate or dispelling assumptions). It is good to share your experiences with your peers and to ask for assistance from your program/department but, at times, this does not serve to move faculty along their learning curve. In fact, at times, it only ends with frustration or ineffective use of technology. So if we as technologists cannot expect faculty to be proactive and motivated to find and utilize the services provided by their institution what methods can we as technologists effectively employ to push everything out to them in a way that will not desensitize them to outreach?

Getting faculty to validate assumptions about technology use and support stands in the way of institutionalizing educational technology. My interest is in educational technology; my experience is that human nature is getting me frustrated. I can build the best system and best practices with the best interest of learners in mind but a large portion of faculty don’t know it exists since they just never took the most important next steps.

Step one: open institute website

Step two: click curser in search field

Step three: type technology/term into search field

Step four: click enter

Faculty are not the only ones that get frustrated with technology (or lack of use in this case;). Faculty don’t want to use technology just for technology sake since it consumes time and may never be appreciated by their learners or effect the outcomes of the course in a meaningful way. I feel for them but I can’t institutionalize technology without them."

my first mobile post

i have set up this blog from my cell phone and will, going forward, be posting from any and all locations. How is this going to effect my ability to express myself via this platform? lets see shall we!

"looking for elusive truth"

Is "it" under a rock or am I under a rock? Knowledge... it is something that I can assess level of or is is something that I need not attempt to quantify (to sleep soundly)? Do I really need to define it to take my place in the world?

starting the day with questions...

If my business card said Instructional Technologist instead of Education technologist would the learner still end up with the same assessment scores? If I had to tweet instead of blog would the requirement to be succinct force me to think less about defining my interest area and get more sleep?

Monday, July 13, 2009

To complete what I thought was a train of thought...

Well reading chapter ten has cause a level of frustration I would normally save for my nothing-on-tv viewing of reality tv show "stars".

The terms educational technology and instructional technology have been used interchangeable on more than few occasions. The text has only eluded to educational technology being the evolutionary end product of what was once referred to as instructional technology... completely contradicting the texts own attempt at creating a distinction. I prefer to take away this end message even if it was not intended

Why? I can wrap my head around it as frustrating as it was to read! I associate this attempt (was this intended or accidental by the author?) to the trades person once called graphic artist being changed to computerized graphic artist and then to desktop publisher before going back to graphic artist. We changed our processes to incorporate computer hardware and multiple pieces of software. We were forced to become applications specialists as well as being artists. The name changed over the years as we attempted to incorporate, in a simple job title, the technological aspect of graphic arts. We learned our lesson long ago that it is what you do and not what you call it. We quickly realized, through this evolution (as we replaced motor skill with computer processing), that the quality spectrum was in jeopardy. It was jeopardized by taking a 2D visual artist and adding the application specialist skill set. Everything comes full circle it seems.

Today the industry uses the term "desktop publishing" for those individuals for whom quality is less important than quantity. We resurrected graphic artist as a means of identifying the highest caliper of artist. We know that the hardware and software is implied and don't need it to be explicit to be recognized. For many people they don't know any other way.

where is my readme.txt file?

I think back to how I learned how to swim. My brothers friend pushed me off the pier back home. I realized that if my brain did not make my limbs move just a certain way I would not make it back to shore... we were having mussels that night... no way I wasn't getting in on that! Maybe I should have saved my post until the chapter had completed its thought before I posted mine.

I read the conclusion and it was stated there that educational technology is larger that instructional technology in the same way that education is more general than instruction. These, I am told, are discreet elements of performance technology. I suppose if we take our proverbial microscope to the process of facilitating learner success I guess I can accept the focusing of the lens to define the levels at which we utilize technology to enhance the experience in this way.

A rose by any other name still smells as sweet.

educational technology is a subset of HPT?!?

Make me think of the tangled web we have woven. I thought that HPT was about improving performance.. this presumes base knowledge and Educational Technology is a tool to suport the construction of knowledge.

Educational Technology does not presume (to me) a functional skill set. It can be used to build knowledge at any level. HPT (to me) applies technology to "improve" performance of a particular skill set or process. It bridges a gap but does not necessarily do so effectively without base knowledge.

Good thing I payed my tuition.. I am going to have to dig deeper on this one!