Weekly Notes for 2012-01-22

Jan 22, 2012 at 8:49 pm, Jared Stein
  • There are a number of things that come naturally to me in writing. Humor is not one of them. #
  • For those interested in how I've been spending January weekends (skating aside): http://t.co/SqJejo5o #
  • My draft Canvas blog post on keeping it simple in desperate need of simplification. #
  • Looking forward to joining friends and colleagues at ITC eLearning 2012 month. #
  • One of the best parts of the semester is when my students start making blog posts. #
  • 5.5 is the only one I can dl, so unless you have a copy… #
  • Canadian friends: is it best to fly into Edmonton to get to Calgary? #
  • @brlamb Yeah, I don't know why our agent recommended Edmonton. But I've never flown into that part of Canada. #
  • @sleslie @brlamb Thanks guys, I'll push for that. #
  • @sleslie @dlnorman ; #
  • @diamond_mind Did you serenade him with La Bamba? #
  • Slice the bananas right onto the buttered griddle. Lay that pancake batter all over the top. #
  • I wasn't that impressed with the new iBooks 2 textbook samples… until I began looking at existing K12 digital publisher content. #
  • Still, that $500 iPad does quite a lot to offset the bargain of a $15 textbook. #
  • @holden Someone needs to build a brilliant, usable, epub creator to support OER textbook projects. W(w)iki-books are not competitive. #

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“Keep It Super Simple” on Instructure’s Blog

Jan 17, 2012 at 5:30 pm, Jared Stein

My next official Instructure blog post was published today, a brief list of general tips on keeping the design of your online learning simple and usable: Online Course Design: Keep It Super Simple.

I could have gone on for pages on this topic (in fact, I did, for about 2000 words before cutting to around 600). That’s my way of saying there’s plenty of room for exploration and discussion, so go ahead, check it out, and leave a comment.

Weekly Notes for 2012-01-15

Jan 15, 2012 at 8:49 pm, Jared Stein
  • OLPC and Marvell Introduce XO 3.0 Tablet for Education Purposes – X-bit labs http://t.co/6aNxPdS6 via @Diigo #
  • @diamond_mind And that’s _exactly_ the kind of book I would be writing. #
  • Fellow desert-dwellers: cure for perpetually dry eyeballs? #
  • New Kepi Ghoulie album, “I Bleed Rock N Roll” http://t.co/oj4rPgoF #
  • Every time we implement a scheduled 2-week Canvas cloud update, I get all tingly. Continual, iterative improvements ftw. #
  • @marionjensen Best Answer Ever. #
  • @injenuity You _must_ have photoshopped that. The texture of the sky is crazy. #
  • @giuliaforsythe I think I have my watercolor subject for Saturday. #
  • @injenuity I know, I was being sarcastic. #
  • @giuliaforsythe I just started this year. #
  • @giuliaforsythe Not yet. I’ve literally been doing it for 2 weeks, and have maybe a handful of exercises. Now, where do you post yours? #
  • Oh man, how did I survive before adding Gmail’s Send and Archive lab mod? #
  • Speaking of watercolor, very excited about a block of envelope-sized 140lb paper that I picked up today, perfect for postal mailing. #
  • @giuliaforsythe Awesome, thanks for sharing! I’m trying to do 2 a weekend, just to get the practice in. May have to post some tonight. #
  • @giuliaforsythe seriously. It’s on my quota for the weekend. #

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Jerrid Kruse on What Tech Enables for Teaching and Learning

Jan 10, 2012 at 12:02 pm, Jared Stein

In a recent blog post, Jerrid Kruse summarizes some of the tension between technology as a tool to perpetuate traditional practice vs. technology as a lever for new ways forward. New ways forward require philosophical transformation in the hearts and minds of the teacher and the learner. A shiny tool alone won’t suffice.

Kruse has also posted his paper that expands on this topic.

I’m sharing this particular post with some of our Sales team as a baby step toward understanding some of the fundamental underlying challenges of teaching with technology.

Weekly Notes for 2011-12-04

Dec 4, 2011 at 8:49 pm, Jared Stein
  • @brlamb Hah, oh I better not be! #
  • @lottruminates I liked Cacoo and Mind42. Still like Bubbl.us for real concept mapping. #
  • Bb disclaimer: "the term ‘openness’ means different things to different people…" http://t.co/8FwhFgjN #
  • New Instructure offices are appropriately Awesome. #
  • @injenuity I ♥ usability testing. Last year I paid students with Jamba Juice cards. I think people like to help tech improve. #
  • @skydaddy To make new friends. AKA colleagues. #
  • @kylemathews Ooh, you're making a gtd app? Is that because you were so underwhelmed by wunderlist? ;) #
  • @robmba To be fair, I can get creative with application of the word "open" , too. But only after fully exhausting the meaningful definition. #
  • @injenuity Uh oh. But I can fix that… stay tuned. #
  • @kylemathews Yes I Do. #
  • @stevehargadon The institution/teacher/textbook is no longer the primary source of authoritative info. #detche2011 #
  • @xolotl @stevehargadon I'd suspect it is, if only because I see no other recent cultural phenomenon that has affected change in ed. #
  • @sleslie #occupyslesliesaquarium #
  • @jjulius Technology doesn't reify ed practices, but teachers/admins sure do! (But reverse is true for ed change, right?) #
  • Sfard's acquisition vs participation metaphors of learning resonate with @stevehargadon's list of cultural shifts. #detche2011 #
  • @jjulius I like your acknowledgement of (some kind of) balance of power between the tool and the user. #detche2011 #
  • @xolotl History of radio? Oh man, you're going to have to elaborate on that! #
  • Have to disagree that the uniqueness of the on-campus university experience is not expendable/replaceable. #detche2011 #
  • @stevehargadon Nice job on the #detche2011 keynote. Refreshing and useful message. #
  • Dinner at Lori's Diner in downtown SFO: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, chocolate soda. #
  • Presuming this isn't just a gimmick, the summary looks awesome: "Aligning quantum perspective of learning to ID" http://t.co/kg9olweR #
  • Phil Hall's mid-term post on Instructure Canvas's Securus Global security testing: http://t.co/ElcRouej #
  • Check out "Nobody Likes You (When You're Dead)" by Zombina and the Skeletones – http://t.co/JfVGdBdZ #
  • Poltergeist noises coming from my hotel room minibar. #

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Canvas Tip: Use Browser Add-Ons to Play with the Canvas API

Nov 28, 2011 at 5:30 pm, Jared Stein

For all of you who, like me, are intrigued by Instructure Canvas’s open API but just haven’t had a big block of time to play with it, well, just get yourself a browser plug-in that operates as a REST client and you can be up and running in no time. You’ll be surprised at what doors this might open.

1. Install a REST client extension.

Chrome has several great extensions to this end, but so far I like Advanced Rest Client. It lets you save requests and view your history.

For Firefox the most popular REST client is intuitively named RESTClient. Same basic functionality, but with nice tabs to view the output in different ways.

2. Create a Canvas Access Token in your account profile.

The access token will provide a secure key, if you will, to Canvas with all your own unique permissions and enrollments. Most modern web services help you create these to securely talk with other systems.

Login to Canvas, click on your name, and scroll down to Approved Integrations. If you don’t already have a token, click New Access Token.

Give your token a label (purpose) and expiration date (if you want).

Copy that really long string that Canvas generates and paste it into a text document for later reference–you’ll need it to talk to Canvas via your REST client.

3. Pick an API resource or action from the Canvas documentation

Start by going to the Canvas API documentation. Browse through the Authentication page as well as the Resources, which contain all the currently possible the API actions and outputs.

I don’t have a lot of time to get into API calls and REST, but you can think of it as simply a message sent to a server with an authorization method that tells the server how to respond based on the target and the access token. In this case we’re using the GET method. The API calls will simply be HTTPS URLs with the access token appended as a variable. The URL will change based on what data in Canvas you want to access.

For example, if I want to see all of my page view data, I start with the base Canvas HTTPS URL:

https://canvas.instructure.com

I then append the location of the API resource or action:

/api/v1/users/:user_id/page_views

Be sure to replace :user_id with the numeric value of the user id (or course or account id) you want to access. In this case I want my own. It’s easy to grab this from the end of the URL of my profile page (which happens to be https://canvas.instructure.com/users/123456, so my user id = 123456)

Finally, you’ll need to append your access token as the value of a variable:

?access_token=somereallylongsecurestringhere

So it looks something like this:

https://canvas.instructure.com/api/v1/users/123456/page_views?access_token=somereallylongsecurestringhere

This URL is what we’ll feed our REST client in the next step.

4. Run the API through the browser REST client

Open your REST client add-on/extension and paste in the URL customized for the API action you want to perform plus the course/account/user id plus your access token.

Be sure you’re using the right method (typically GET) before clicking send.

You’ll end up with output below. I recommend looking at the JSON formatted response. This data is organized in name/value pairs, but can also contain objects, so a whole lot of data in a very simple format is possible here.

This gives you a glimpse of the possible data exchanges that Canvas makes available via its open API. Your ability to get data will depend upon your role and permissions within Canvas. Obviously student and teacher users will have far less access than admins at any sub-account level.

In real-world practice, you’ll need to know a bit more than this. But the essence is that you’d use any number of scripting languages to request the data from the Canvas API, parse it in JSON format, then do wonderful, magical things–like calculate an individual user’s course progress in order to dynamically generate a badge. Or not.

“Canvas Tastes Like Open” on Instructure’s Blog

Nov 3, 2011 at 7:17 am, Jared Stein

I’ve just had my first official blog post for Instructure (my new employer–more on that soon) posted on the company blog: Canvas Tastes Like Open. This post explains some of the ways that the Canvas LMS is truly open, and how Instructure has advocated and supported openness since day 1, be that open source, open licensing, open sharing, or open learning experiences.

So check it out and leave a comment there if you can!

Canvas Tip: Build Quizzes with Multimedia Answers

Nov 2, 2011 at 4:47 pm, Jared Stein

I discovered a nice way to create a Quiz in Canvas that associates images or really any multimedia with answer choices.

When creating a Canvas question choose either Fill in Multiple Blanks or Multiple Dropdowns. Multiple Blanks is similar to short answer, and the blanks may need to be manually assessed to provide latitude with spelling etc. Multiple Dropdowns works like matching or multiple choice.

In either of these cases you build the question and the answers in the rich text editor for the question field. Start by introducing the question, e.g. “Match the following constellation images to their names.”

Follow this by one or more images, videos–whatever.

For each of those media items type in the Canvas-standard markup for the blank/dropdown variable name, e.g. [fig1]. It looks something like this:

…where each [fig1] is for a single blank or dropdown choice. Don’t worry–this makes more sense when you’re in the editor!

Then simply use the area below the editor to show the correct answers with feedback.

Voila!

If this works for you, please share some examples.

The Future of Education: Blended as a Digital Facelift?

Oct 17, 2011 at 10:44 am, Jared Stein

In the latest post on The Blended Learning Toolkit, Is blended the same as half-distance? , Anders Norberg asks many of the important questions about the design of blended learning experiences that Marc and I push against in our Hybrid Teaching Initiatives. Here’s one summative quote:

..isn’t it a little sad that even in Second Life, an environment where almost everything is possible, universities build campuses with classrooms where their avatar students can sit at their desks, watch power point slides and listen to lectures?

This brings me back once again to Gardner Campbell‘s No Digital Facelifts stance. Read more on the Morning Blend blog

Wanted: Your Blended/Hybrid Stories (Successful or Not)

Sep 27, 2011 at 9:44 am, Jared Stein

For the past year I’ve been spearheading UVU’s Hybrid Teaching Initiative through our Innovation Center. We’ve focused most of our efforts on designing, conducting, and revising various forms of our HTI workshop series, from a 12-week version to a 3-day version.

Now I’m gathering fuel for reflection, evaluation, and possible expansion of our efforts. Some of that fuel comes from existing research literature, of course, but I’m especially interested in new or unsung anecdotes of hybrid course redesigns from your schools and institutions.

So, whether you’re a teacher, a student, an instructional designer/technologist, or administrator — higher ed, k12, or corporate — please e-mail or post your hybrid course experiences and anecdotes. I’m interested in both successes and failures as a means of contextualizing and analyzing process and outcomes.