internet resources Bryan Alexander Using technology in teaching and learning Resources to help you navigate a digital world
umans have been teaching and learn Several factors combine to make exploring Hing by technology since Socrates fi rst this technopedagogical record diffi cult. One complained about it in the 4th century BCE is the tradition of classroom privacy, which Phaedrus. Now that we are into the second can cloak projects and discussion. Another decade of the Web and the Internet’s second is the difficulty of sharing information across generation, we have seen a wide range of campus populations. Public anxieties about practices emerge for teaching and learn technology, fueled by media stories and, oc ing with technology. As technologies have casionally, politicians, play a role in sapping proliferated and developed, teachers have discourse. More recently, the tendency to developed and shared techniques and proj publish course content to venues closed to ects through networks and institutions. In the public further clouds the fi eld. Neverthe this cyberspatial milieu, students have been less, enough work has surfaced and been guinea pigs and innovators, taking classes, discussed that a set of teaching principles or experiencing projects, helping teachers and themes can be identified, thanks largely to the staff support instructors teach, graduating as collaborative ethos of the educational tech alumni, and sometimes returning as staff. nology profession. We can also distinguish Learning and teaching practices have drawn practices, projects, and services by types of on larger cultural transformations and affor computermediated communication. dances enabled by cyberculture. For example, the enormous explosion in popularly generated Themes Web content from personal home pages to Learning materials published to the Web, or Amazon book reviews has demonstrated the some network, have supplemented other viability of Sir Tim BernersLee’s invention for class materials. Lectures in transcription or creative expression, leading to millions of pages sound files, video clips of chemical processes, created by students and instructors. molecular animations, flybys through his The decadeslong successes of discussion torical structures all have in common several groups (Usenet through Google Groups) and features. By being accessible outside of class email have shown the utility of asynchronous time, they can be experienced on a student’s conversation, which was rapidly incorporated schedule. That experience can partake of into class discussions. The ease of creating many digital features that differ from some presentations in PowerPoint, combined with of the analogue world, such as repeatability their vast popularity in the business and (replaying a video), scrubbing (rerunning a governmental worlds, has led to vast num bers of multimedia slideshows in the hands of teachers and students. The sheer size and accessibility of cyberculture has transformed Bryan Alexander is research director for the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, e-mail: teaching and doing research at every educa [email protected] tional level. © 2007 Bryan Alexander
C&RL News February 2007 96 difficult passage in a new language), segmen both. For example, a discussion thread may tation (focusing on one page from a site), and begin with a reference to an online reading, transferability (a phrase copied from CDROM or constitute responses to a Flickr image. The text into email to instructor). Instructors can continuum may map onto nondigital materials partake of the digital medium’s fl uidity, reiter and venues, as when a digital object sparks a ating and tweaking objects over time. classroom facetoface discussion, or watching The social nature of this media experience a play provokes blog posts followed by com has been underappreciated until recently. We ments. Moreover, projects may scale up from inherit many assumptions that individuals individual cases along this continuum, into experience items in isolation, derived from hybrid learning classes, virtual departments other media (film, TV, games), linguistic (NITLE’s Sunoikisis, for example), and discus habits (“You are talking on the phone!” rather sion between classes in time and space. than “You are talking with your friend”), and schools of technological criticism arguing Discussion boards that machines separate, rather than connect, Discussion fora date back to the 1970s. In people. Networked computing has proven, current teaching practice, they appear either in fact, to be quite the opposite—a social within enterpriselevel systems or indepen enabler. The Internet has linked people from dently. the beginning, to the extent that the relatively • Blackboard. A course management recent term “social software” purports to re system, Blackboard includes several forms store some of the Internet’s original intention. of discussion boards. Other CMSes include Even more recently, the rise of massively WebCT, Moodle, and Sakai. Access: http:// multiplayer online gaming has returned the blackboard.com/products/Academic_Suite/. social nature of networked computing to • John Suler, “Extending the Class- popular discussion. room into Cyberspace: The Discussion In education, this social nature has been Board.” A psychologist’s view on how to one of the major virtues of digital technolo maximize use of discussion boards; ap gies. Discussion boards (Usenet, PHPBB) peared in CyberPsychology and Behavior, 7, and fora (WebBoard, Caucus), email, instant 397403. Access: http://www.rider.edu/~suler messenger, groupware, and course manage /psycyber/extendclass.html. ment systems (CMSes, Blackboard, WebCT, • PHPBB. A widely used open source Moodle, Sakai) have supported threaded and discussion forum—easy to install, support, unthreaded conversations among students and use. Access: http://www.phpbb.com/ both geographically copresent and dispersed. • Worcester Polytech, “Improving Web 2.0 technologies have enabled different the Use of Discussion Boards.” This set of discussion forms, such as distributed con practical guidelines is informed by scholar versations (blogs), conversations embedded ship and applies to a variety of platforms. within documents (wikis), and threads at Access: http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC tached to “social objects” (Flickr). /Collaboratory/Idea/boards.html. These conversations have sometimes been distinguished by their temporal nature, asyn Web publishing chronous (discussion boards, blogs) versus • Dreamweaver. Few teachers and synchronous (chat, Second Life, IM). Discus students produce Web content by handcod sions in both forms have connected members ing HTML. Instead they use Web editors, of of a class to each other, students to instructors, which Macromedia’s Dreamweaver remains and students with learners elsewhere. the most popular. Access: http://www.adobe. Both of these themes constitute a continu com/products/dreamweaver/. um of sociability and objects, with most digital • Euclid’s Elements, Interactive Pre- learning occurring with some combination of sentation. A Furman University project,
February 2007 97 tag">C&RL News this series of pages constitutes a tutorial tak of pedagogy. Access: http://www.rc.umd. ing students through a classical math text. edu/pedagogies/commons/innovations/rap Access: http://math.furman.edu/~jpoole /toc.htm. /euclidselements/euclid.htm. • Wiki evaluation tools. This article • Salem Witch Trials Documentary from Dossiers technopedagogiques links as Archive. A very rich set of documents sessment to wiki capabilities. Access: http:// for study. Access: http://etext.virginia.edu www.profetic.org:16080/dossiers/article. /salem/witchcraft/home.html. php3?id_article=973. • Virtual Seminars for Teaching Lit- • Wikipedia. The most widely recog erature. Oxford made a vast WWI archive nized wiki project is the Wikipedia, a pub available for teaching by publishing it to the licly editable encyclopedia. Access: http:// Web through a usergenerated hypertext en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page). engine. Access: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk /ltg/projects/jtap/. Blogging • Visual Elements Periodic Table. A Blog platforms and projects have proliferated fine visualization from the Royal Society of enormously in the past halfdecade, due, in Chemistry. Access: http://www.chemsoc.org/ part, to ease of use. viselements/pages/pertable_fl a.htm. • Barbara Ganley at Middlebury Col- lege. This faculty member blogs about her Wikis work, reflects on blogging, and teaches • Google Docs. Google purchased a wiki with blogs in a variety of innovative ways. hosting project, then integrated it within their Her blog contains links to all of these. Ac suite of linked services. Access: http://docs. cess: http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs google.com/. /ganley/bgblogging/. • Jim Giles, “Internet encyclopaedias • Blogger. A very popular and basic blog go head to head.” A controversial and in ging tool, hosted by a company owned by fluential study finding Wikipedia and Brit Google, Blogger is a fine starting point. Basic tanica entries to have comparable error rates. accounts are free. Access: http://blogger. Nature December 2005March 2006. Access: com. http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212 • LiveJournal. This service adds more func /full/438900a.html. tionality to blogging, including fl agging content • Pmwiki. Many wiki packages are avail for emotional state, and aggregating friends able for users to download and host. Pmwiki through links. It is hosted externally. Basic ac is one good example of many, offering el counts are free. Access: http://livejournal.com. egance and ease of use. Access: http://www. • WordPress. Some blog services can be pmwiki.org/. run by users themselves, on servers they own • Socialtext. Wikis may also be exter or have access to. WordPress has emerged nally hosted. Socialtext offers varying rates as a leading example of this, offering a great depending on scale. Access: http://www. deal of functionality and fl exibility. Access: socialtext.com/. http://wordpress.org/. • The Romantic Audience Project. Of fered several years at Bowdoin College, this Sample blogbased classes and projects English literature experiment let students • Blogging the World. A multiblog create an open miniencylopedia of British project connecting students studying abroad literature around 1800. Access: http://ssad. with campus, home, and world. Access: bowdoin.edu:8668/space/snipsnapindex. http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs/ganley • “The Romantic Audience Project: /bloggingtheworld/ A Wiki Experiment.” Romantic Circles, • Library-supported blogs at the Uni- December 2004. Peerreviewed scholarship versity of Minnesota. Librarians have been
C&RL News February 2007 98 blogging about library content, events, and teach reading Xray photos of the human issues. Some support blogging beyond the body. Access: http://www.fl ickr.com/photos library, such as the University of Minnesota’s /mjagbayani/sets/895629/. campuswide initiative. Access: http://blog. lib.umn.edu/. Social bookmarking • Religious studies class. A philosophy • Del.icio.us. This service lets users store course at Ursinus College used multiple blogs, bookmarks on the Web, tag them, then share including one for the syllabus and class news their discoveries with other users. Accounts and one for each student. Access: http:// are free, and the project owned by Yahoo! religiousstudies.blogspot.com/. Access: http://del.icio.us. • Spivak Seminar at Crooked Timber. • H2O. There are social bookmarking A group of scholars designed a twoweek services created by academics. Harvard’s H2O seminar around an important essay, blogged is aimed at faculty. Access: http://h2obeta.law. their discussions, then made the entire aggre harvard.edu/home.do. gate available as a single download. Access: • PennTags. Penn State University’s http://www.longsunday.net/spivak/. library system created a usertagged system • Student blogs at Centenary College. for library content. Access: http://tags.library. Some institutions have published sample stu upenn.edu/. dent blogs as examples of student life. Cente nary College of Louisiana is one case of this. Podcasting Access: http://www.centenary.edu/blogs. • Bryan Alexander, podcasting sche- • The Pepys Diary. This innovative proj matic. A diagram of podcast creation, publi ect presents a classic 17thcentury British liter cation, and consumption. Published to Flickr, ary document, a diary of London life. The blog and discussable there. Access: http://flickr. format makes the content more accessible, com/photos/bryanalexander/204078355/. while enriching it further through comments. Access: http://www.pepysdiary.com/. Social images ,IB15!, • Documenting Lewis Elementary. This &KDUWLQJ/LEUDU\6HUYLFH4XDOLW\ school used Flickr to store, publish, and share images recording its teaching and learning experience. Access: http://www.fl ickr.com /photos/lewiselementary/. #ELEBRATING • Flickr. While other social image projects exist (Photobucket, 23HQ), Flickr remains the LIBRARIES IMPROVING most prominent, and consistently innovates. SERVICE QUALITY It pioneered usergenerated “folksonomic” image tagging. Access: http://fl ickr.com. • Steve: Exploring folksonomies *OIN THEM TODAY and museums. This multimuseum, long REGISTRATION AND term project has studied usergenerated GRANT APPLICATIONS tagging from a curatorial perspective. The site archives papers and other records of AVAILABLE NOW Steve’s work, which represent many break throughs and advances. Access: http://www. archimuse.com/research/steve.html. WWWLIBQUALORG • The Teaching Files: X-Rays. A res ! SUITE OF SERVICES OFFERED BY THE ident physician uses Flickr images to !SSOCIATION OF 2ESEARCH ,IBRARIES
February 2007 99 C&RL News • Gardner Campbell, “There’s Some- Access: http://www.ratchetup.com/we thing in the Air: Podcasting in Education.” _media_podcast/. Educause Review, November/December 2005, Volume 40, Number 6. The best article on Campus podcasting examples pedagogy of podcasting. Access: http://www. • Allegheny College. Access: http:// educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0561.pdf. webtools.allegheny.edu/podcast/. • Bowdoin College. Access: http://www. Sample podcasting classes and projects bowdoin.edu/podcasts/. • Artmobs. A Marymount Manhattan • Lafayette College Soapbox. Ac College class created its own MP3 tours cess: https://ww2.lafayette.edu/~soapbox of a museum, using podcasts to refl ect on /podcast. primary materials (art) and secondary (the • Wofford College. Access: http://www. museum’s own tour). Access: http://mod. wofford.edu/interactive/podcasts.asp. blogs.com/art_mobs/. • Berkeley Groks science podcasts. Virtual worlds These studentcreated podcasts discuss science • The Croquet Project. This ambi issues and often include university faculty in tious effort, designed by academics, seeks terviews. Access: http://www.groks.net/. to create an openended space for discus • Chemistry at Bryn Mawr. Professor sion and exploration. Access: http://www. Michelle Frankl recorded her lectures within opencroquet.org/. class session, then podcast them for student • Second Life. Virtual environments in use within and beyond her classroom. Access: habited socially by multiple users are increas http://chemistry221.blogspot.com/. ingly of pedagogical interest. Second Life has • Digital Media for Management and won public attention through its innovative Marketing. This business textbook migrated combination of usergenerated content and entirely to podcast, appearing in small openended nature. Access: http://secondlife. pieces. Access: http://www.baclass.panam. com/. edu/mana3333/. • Second Life Education Wiki. Perhaps • John Donne podcasts. An English the best site for aggregating teaching and professor podcasted careful readings of 17th learning practices with Second Life. Ac century poetry, in order to draw out syntactic cess: http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index. complexities. Students then podcasted back, php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki. demonstrating their learning. Access: http:// www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=372. Journals • Out of the Past. A classic example of • Academic Commons. This collaborative social software enabling the public intel publishes articles in issues, along with blog lectual, this podcast is cocreated by a fi lm ging. Access: http://www.academiccommons. studies professor, allowing him to share org/. academic insights into a genre with the • Educause Review. This journal is pub larger world. Access: http://outofthepast. lished by Educause, the leading educational libsyn.com/. technology organization in the United States. • smARThistory. This blogbased class Topics cover infrastructure, pedagogy, sup uses podcasts to introduce art topics and port, and institutional transformation. Access: works, while also recording student reactions. http://www.educause.edu/er/. Access: http://www.smarthistory.org/blog/. • eLearn Magazine. This magazine • “We Media” class at Carleton Col- publishes Web articles steadily during the lege. This media studies course explored year. Access: http://www.elearnmag.org popularly generated and social media using /index.cfm. podcast creation to develop student work. • Innovate Online. This is a peerreviewed
C&RL News February 2007 100 publication exploring education and technol • Stephen Downes. An energetic, ogy. Access: http://www.innovateonline. highquality and –quantity blog, offering a info/index.php. potent mix of news and thoughtful commen • T. H. E. Journal. This journal explores tary. Access: http://www.downes.ca/news many issues concerning technology and edu /OLDaily.htm. cation and has done so since 1994. Access: • Will Richardson. Formerly an award http://www.thejournal.com/. winning high school teacher, Richardson is one of the leading thinkers about networked Blogs about teaching and technology learning and the read/write Web. Access: There are a great deal of blogs about this http://weblogged.com/. subject, and the number grows every month. Participating in the edublogosphere is a Conferences fine way to learn about educational tech • Educause Annual Conference. Edu nology. cause hosts an enormous annual conference, • KairosNews. This site focuses on the largest one for the intersection of tech teaching writing with technology, and com nology and education. Access: http://www. bines theoretical, practical, and technologi educause.edu/conference/annual/. cal perspectives. Access: http://kairosnews. • Educause Learning Initiative. This org/. Educause division focuses on teaching and • NITLE Liberal Education Today (LET). learning. Access: www.educause.edu/eli. The blog for an organization of liberal arts • New Media Consortium. This organi campuses, LET blogs on a variety of issues zation focuses on digital media and teaching. driven by instructional technologists and The annual conference is complemented by teaching faculty. Access: http://b2e.nitle.org/ regional ones. Access: http://www.nmc.org (full disclosure: author is chief blogger). /events/2006summerconf/index.shtml.
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