EduGeek Journal

The Chronicle boldly proclaimed today that “Online Learning May Slightly Hurt Student Performance.” How do they know this? A “study found that students who watched lectures online instead of attending in-person classes performed slightly worse in the course over all.”

That sound you hear is the collective world of EduGeeks around the world firmly planting their palm to their fore head. Online lectures are ten times as boring as the face-to-face version, so no wonder they performed so bad.

(that last statement is based on the results of my scientific study of the volume of snores originating from a few online lecture video based courses I know of)

One of the authors even had this to say: “It’s limited evidence, but I think it’s the highest-quality evidence that’s available.”

Sorry, but it is not anywhere near as good as the other evidence out there.  The previous analysis of online learning by the U.S. Department of Education (that this article mentions) actually looked at many different actual forms of online learning. Not the wanna-be online learning beast called video lectures.

UPDATE: just as a note, The Chronicle did edit the original article and title to “more accurately characterize the research.”  The original title is in the link above. Also, the quote from the authors above was also removed, but it was originally there.

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Although there have been various tools out there to edit video and music online, this month we see two more added to the mix. The difference this time is that it is two big players in the tech world that are giving us these tools – two companies that you might already be using.

First up is this small company called Google you might have heard of. Last week they announced that you can edit videos online with YouTube Video Editor.  A few basic features are present – you can crop the beginning and/or end of a video, combine multiple videos together, and even add music from a free music library.  Well, not totally free – if you use the music there, the editor says ads will be displayed. I’m not seeing anything about the ability to download what you created.  Although, there are always ways of doing that with YouTube.

But that is about it for this service – still probably in Beta at best, and you can’t edit or mix audio.  That would be the next nice step. But the big deal is that it is also connected to the largest online video sharing site ever.

But what if you are wanting to create music of your own?  Not just mix a soundtrack, but create music like you would on a synthesizer… but online?  Aviary recently released Roc:

“Use Aviary’s music creator to simulate dozens of musical instruments including piano, guitars and drums. Create music loops and patterns for use in Aviary’s audio editor (Myna) or as ring tones.”

And you can add your own voice or music to the mix. I gave it a shot – it is surprisingly easy to use. you can listen here:

(oh, and all of the embed and share stuff you see above was part of the package deal with Aviary. Nice.)

For hardcore video mixers or musicians, this is probably not that great of a deal. For teachers and amateur creative types – this is huge.  Many different projects could be created online and easily shared with students around the world.

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We all know that the outlook for Higher Ed is pretty grim.  Students don’t see the value in a college degree any more. They all seem to think it is a waste of time. There is no money for people to be in college. Students have stopped going to school even because they all see it as pointless. The whole bubble is about to burst.

Oh, except people forgot to tell the students about this.

Seems that the U.S. saw its highest jump in college enrollment in 40 years.

If people are really feeling that college degrees are pointless, and that Web 2.0 and social networking are better ways to learn… why are we seeing these statistics?

I’m not denying that Higher Ed needs some major reforms. People have been calling for that for hundreds of years, and I tend to agree with most of it.  But all this talk about DIY U and students forcing change by abandoning Higher Ed for PLNs and all that… just isn’t happening.  Seems that many people still see great value in a college education.

So can we change the conversation from how colleges will fall apart and all that rubbish to maybe something more helpful like real, tangible reform?

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Much has been said recently about how the Web is making us more stupid. I blame Bing really – they said that humans are basically so dumb that we go on search overload if we can’t figure out a simple page of links.  I don’t feel “stupider” than I did before the Internet :)  Maybe I am just so ignorant that I don’t realize how dumb I am.

Finally, however, the New York Times brings some reality… and some actual science… into the debate with “The Defense of Computers, the Internet and Our Brains.”  My two favorite quotes:

“Critics of new media sometimes use science itself to press their case, citing research that shows how ‘experience can change the brain.’ But cognitive neuroscientists roll their eyes at such talk.”

…and…

“It could be argued that the Web, which is the ultimate library of words, video, images, interactivity, sharing and conversation, is the quintessential place to learn.”

And thousands of EduGeek around the world then said… “amen”…

Edit: made some changes, just in case people didn’t get my use of humor with the word “stupider.”

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I really don’t understand why Apple seems to hate Flash so much. Maybe Jobs is just tired of picking on Microsoft for now and decided to get a different target?  “Hello, I’m HTML5.” “And I’m Adobe Flash.”  Just doesn’t have the same comedy potential…

If you are in education, you could care less how your streaming video gets to you… as long as it just works when you  press play.  The big problem for education with this battle is that video is just a small portion of what Flash can do.  Most educators have found some educational game or utility (such as Aviary) that uses Flash extensively.  HTML5 is no where near able to replicate any of that. If Flash goes away, so does a huge chunk of good stuff on the web. Not good for education.

According to some… it doesn’t really ever have to be this way. As Remy Sharp points out in HTML5 vs. Flash:

“I personally don’t think HTML will replace Flash. I think HTML5 and the Open Web will replace Flash where Flash has been used as a stopgap…. The native video element will (eventually) allow us to drop using Flash for video. Flash has done an awesome job of pulling the braces up on browsers for the last decade, and we’ve needed it, but Flash is so much more than just video or font rendering…. I still think we’re a long way off HTML being able to able to natively replace applications such as Aviary and games like Bow Street Runner.”

I get that Flash is a bit resource intensive and needs to evolve with the times.  I get that smart phones need to conserve as much energy as possible, but Flash needs as much as possible. But you can still run the current version of Flash on a 10 year-old PC with no problems.

I think Apple is just embarrassed to admit that there are still things that their mobile devices can’t do that ancient PCs can.

In theory, I like the idea of everything happening natively in code.  You won’t have to worry about which students won’t be able to do what with your course activities.

But I also like the idea of being able to get rich, robust, interactive Flash-based games and applications on mobile devices.  Since Flash can be used at times to bring the gap between browser content and desktop hardware (such as cameras and microphones), just think what it would be like to bridge the gap between website and smartphone features (such as cameras and microphones).  Augmented reality could take on a whole new dimension if you could have a Flash based interface embedded in a website that can access your device’s camera. Security issues would have to be dealt with – but think of the possibilities.  Students could lead themselves on a tour of an art exhibit, with Flash-designed question popping up on the screen as the walk up to a painting.  They could answer the question, or leave a comment, or anything right on the camera capture, because they are connected to a website that could store their answer. The website could also store their whole trip in many different ways (geotags, camera captures, videos, etc).

I think I might have stumbled on the answer to my original question.  With Flash on an iPhone, any website could create an app-like program that would never have to go through Apple’s approval process. That might make the whole App Store pointless.  App makers could just embed their app on a website… and even charge for using it.

The possibility exists for an App that resides on a web page, accessing the page content and database, while at the same time able to access all of the functions of a smart phone.  This is what Flash gives us. This is why we need Flash. And this is probably why Apple hates Flash.

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The new Google CloudCourse project hasn’t gotten that much chatter online.  At first glance around the project page, you can easily see why.  There are only a handful of functions that basically just do what Google employees have found helpful around the office (because apparently the whole thing started as an internal project).  This basically spells “yawn” for most educators. CloudCourse does have a few things going for it:

• Open-source: we may see more interesting functions arising… if the right people get involved.
• Part of the Google family: we might see connections to Google Docs, Wave, etc.
• It already connects to Google Calendars.

Right now, it really is a management system and not much more.  Add in a grade book and the ability to embed or import content from other sites and you pretty much have all you need for an Open Learning Environment.  Connect it with a Google Reader-like system for aggregating tags and RSS feeds, and you have the New Vision ideas we have been kicking around here at EGJ.  Sounds like just a few easy steps, but that will only happen if we have educators jump into the development of the project to wrestle it away from the business training mindsets that seem to rule it now.

Which could also pretty much describe other large LMS programs that shall remain nameless….

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Thanks in no small part to the iPhone 3GS, Augmented Reality is starting to grow in leaps and bounds.  Google and others are also helping this growth in many ways.  As I have blogged about in past posts (and many others around the web have also mentioned), the lines between the online world and the offline world are blurring.  Enter into this mix Gloe from HP.

Gloe is a new service that, among other things, allows you to connect any website to a particular location in real life.  When you are at a physical site, your mobile device can then pull up websites that were voted most relevant for that location.  Of course, all of the regular “social” buzz-functions are there – tagging, FaceBook connections, etc. Gloe is still pretty new in some areas, but as this article on ReadWriteWeb points out, even if some function doesn’t work that great – at least the idea behind the function is really interesting.

We may have to wait a good ten years before any educational site or LMS catches on to this, but I like the possibilities of using this for education. I am sure there are more than a few EduPunks that are already using this (if you know of some, please post in the comments).  I love thinking about how one could transfer learning from a desk at home to a mobile device in the real world.  Maybe you could send your students on a scavenger hunt for a place in your city that best relates to your topic, and then they use a mobile blog app to complete an assignment? Or maybe they have to search the tags in the city and find something that relates to the week’s topic? Art students could go paint somewhere, snap a photo of the picture, upload it to a blog, and then tag that blog post to the location.  Humanities students could interview people or take surveys, then post the results online, and then connect the results page to the location where they collected it.  Students could begin connecting research results to locations and maybe even map differences between neighborhoods.

Many possibilities… depending on where the technology takes us.

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As a disclaimer, I use Facebook. I don’t hate it in any way. But all of the problem FB is having over privacy make me ponder where the Internet is heading. The more I think about it, the more I am concerned that Facebook might be making the web less social.

When we started this site, the goal was to keep an eye on emerging stuff that could be used in education.  In recent years, there have been very few new sites to rave about, and thus many contributors have run out of ideas for posts.  Now it is just me (although I am open to others joining me if they wish). And I am running out of new sites and ideas to post about.

The problem is that everyone is trying to be the next Facebook.  You used to have all of these sites trying new ideas and angles on many things, and then Facebook took off so fact that everyone just decided they wanted to be the next Facebook.  And I don’t mean the next interactive social site that brings people together in a new way… I mean the next Facebook clone.

So, in many ways, Facebook seems to have killed innovation online.  Of course, that happens in most industries – people see one company make it big, so they decide to follow blindly.

But this whole privacy thing is another issue.  People are really up in arms about it, and I can’t say I blame them.  At one time we were all looking for the next site to integrate Facebook so we could share music likes, restaurant discoveries, new yoga poses, whatever.  Then everyone realized that Facebook had quietly turned in to a big corporation over night and they were using all of this stuff we were sharing to make money off of us.

Educators are starting to notice this also, and wondering if they are crossing ethical lines by attaching student information to advertising dollars.

Less than a year ago, I thought the people leaving Facebook were just alarmists who probably also stocked up for Y2K.  Now I am seriously considering joining their ranks.  Without the impenetrable underground bunker, of course.

What if people stop sharing stuff online because they are tired of being exploited by big business?  That would pretty much kill Web 2.0, open education, Open Learning Networks, Personal learning Networks… you name it.  I have already noticed a slight decline in the amount of info I can glean from my PLN.  Is that a slight temporary dip, or a sign of what is to come?

Or, could this be a chance for something better to come about? Maybe less centralized social networks, more personalized, more secure?  Take note of these New York University students that are creating a new social network with a focus on privacy.  Interesting development…

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I was pondering future trends last week while watching the evening weather forecast.  Forecasting while watching a forecast?  Anyways… We were in for a possible round of severe weather that week. The news anchor put up a map of “storm spotters” – a network of people that would call in from their homes and tell what is happening in their area.

In other words, forecasting the weather is starting to incorporate crowd sourcing.

We have seen a giant push to get websites to work intuitively… and to even start thinking for us.  So on one hand – the Internet is starting to look more like the real world.  But I think even more often we are starting to see the world around us looking more and more like the Internet.  The powers that be are starting to see that there is power in crowd sourcing and social networking.  I wonder what real-life social networks we will see spring up next?

The real question for us is – can we use these ideas in education?  What if we took this weather stations ideas and applied them to a class? What if, instead of one large class, we broke that class down into smaller units based on geographic location.  Each smaller group forms a study group of sorts that watches issues related to the class subject in their area.  The small groups are loosely tied to one another in a way to share what they are learning about the subject.  The small groups would study local events or places. In this situation, the LMS would become more like the newscast – aggregating all of the input in one spot for everyone to benefit.

What if time and location became irrelevant for synchronous classes? What if you were grouped with a small group of people that lived near you when you sign up for a class, and then that group decided what day and time to meet for class?  The instructor would then send out assignments each week or maybe record a video for the group to work through. Maybe the instructor even met with each group.  then the groups send in their work to the class and the instructor aggregates all of the information coming in from each group and summarizes them for the entire class (which would essentially include all small groups no matter where they meet in the world).

Potentially, you could ave hundreds of students all meeting in a synchronous fashion, but all still in a way that fits their schedule.  This is, of course, another area where there is technology to do this… but we need one that is more specifically geared for educators.

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Part of my day job involves following trends and predicting what might happen in the future of online education.  Pretty risky business – I remember ten years ago when one article predicted that all colleges would one day have at least one class delivered online through AOL.  A-O-Who? Do they still exist?

But despite the potential for immense embarrassment, I still find looking to possible futures fascinating (can you guess what my favorite genre of entertainment is?).  I enjoy it so much that I wrote an article on what education could look like in 10 years, based on predictions of where technology is heading. The article is called “When the Future Finally Arrives: Web 2.0 Becomes Web 3.0″ and it will be a chapter in a book called Web 2.0-based E-learning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching

The great news is that chapter will be published next month. The bad news is that it took two years to get published, so a lot of what I say about Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 sounds pretty dated.  This situation in itself exposes the weakness of publishing in traditional media. All of your cool, hip terms will become over-used cliches before your article gets printed.

I wish that I could just post the whole article here – I just proof-read it and I got pretty excited thinking about what the future could be like.  Some of the topics covered are:

• Affordable media centers that have wide-screen, high definition, holographic, three-dimensional, multi-touch screen monitors, with cameras that can follow your movement to manipulate the display (like Minority Report) or respond to voice commands
• Classes that easily transfer back and forth from synchronous to asynchronous.
• Integrated systems – virtual worlds integrated with the web and each other, smart-phones integrated with desktops, etc.
• Greater use of tags to organize information with more accuracy.
• Better interaction between students and between the student and instructors.
• And finally, of course, really cool technology like three dimensional printers and scanners.

Much of what I wrote on is technology-focused.  I realize that good pedagogy needs to come first in all educational situations… but if you think enough when you read it, you will see how I snuck a bunch of good pedagogy in there. If you do get to read it, I would recommend just skipping down to the section called “An Example of Online Learning 10 Years in the Future.” The rest of the stuff before that was just my attempt to sound scholarly and all that :)

That is to say – if you get to read it.  This is the other problem with traditional media: this booked is pretty darn expensive.  And I had to sign all my rights away to get it published, so I can put it on my blogs.  I can always let people that live near me read the “draft” version that I printed up for proof-reading.

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