Jared Stein – Education, Technology, Culture, and the Internet

I’ll probably regret this, but I’ll be presenting at the next Ignite Salt Lake, revisiting the topic of my WCET pecha kucha pres from last year, which connects teaching and instructional design to, yes, skateboarding (more…)

Utah Valley University is part of a statewide consortium of public higher education institutions that share a learning management system provided by the Utah Education Network. The Blackboard (WebCT) Vista license expires in 2012, and we’re currently considering our options for a replacement. This week we’ve been treated to vendor demonstrations by each of three finalists–one private demonstration for consortium selection committee members, and one open demonstration for institution faculty, staff, and students.

During these first private demonstrations I compiled some notes as to what I thought was effective and ineffective/detrimental in the presentations. I won’t reveal who did what, but will be very general, and talk in terms of “Dos” and “Don’ts” (more…)

I’ve read Jason’s paper on the topic of technological gravity, and I’ve heard him guest lecture in Stephen Yanchar’s learning theories course at BYU, so I thought I knew what to expect from Jason’s TTIX 2010 session. Jason’s pres was both pleasantly divergent and more expansive, and both his slides and his presentation style–which paced his own personal experiences between anecdotes and examples–complemented the content. Here are some rough notes from his session (more…)

I conducted a 1hr demonstration of the open source learning management system Moodle 1.9.5 for higher ed folks in Utah and the Utah Education Network. The demo went well enough, and I hope some of my colleagues from around the State got a little taste of Moodle, especially as it compares to Blackboard/WebCT Vista (more…)

This week I’ve decided to give SlideShare.net a go, and have now posted a half-dozen slide decks from different presentations over the past few years, all CC-licensed.

I must admit: now that I’ve shared, I have to worry if every image was properly credited, and the occasional borrowed slide attributed to the original lender. May the open web forgive us our sins of omission!

I’ve got to take a minute to plug the software WebCamMax ($50), which lets you alter your (Windows) computer’s webcam input. I used it this week to facilitate quality, DIY streaming and recording of two WCET09 presentations using a laptop (with distinct graphics card), a lavalier mic ($50-$500) and Ustream (free). Here’s how it worked (more…)

I traveled to Denver this week for WCET 2009, and though I was sunk with a cold on the second day, so far I’ve enjoyed participating in the conference, and, as always, have found the Twitter backchannel (#wcet09) a great way to connect with more ideas, and more people (more…)

Ignite Salt Lake 2, “a community event celebrating the passion and creativity of geek culture” that sounds quite a bit like pecha kucha, is happening March 26th, 2009 at Brewvies Cinema Pub in Salt Lake City, Utah (677 South 200 West).

I didn’t go to Ignite 1, but a 2-hour series of 5-minute presentations (20 slides or less) sounds like the best-ever format for a geek get-together.

Question: will Brewvies’ grill be open for business?

On Friday, August 8 2008 I presented at Distance Teaching and Learning 2008 with Marc Hugentobler and John Krutsch. I’ve posted the the slides and the rubric from that session as the page, “The Cheatability Factor”.

Presentation Slides

cheatability_factor.ppt

For this session I added several slides that illustrate my gut reaction to a number of the new technologically-based approaches to inhibit cheating in assessments which I hope you will find amusing.

We had a lively and interactive discussion of the problem of cheating in online courses, and possible approaches to inhibit it. We took one participant through our cheatbility rubric explaining criteria and concepts along the way.

For the first time John administered Buzzword Bingo live in-session with bingo cards printed with key terms from our presentation. We did this not (only) as a self-deprecating joke, but as a means of focusing participant attention on the presenters and the dialog. I believe at least 6 participants scored a prize during this session while playing Buzzword Bingo, though John and Marc had to coax more than one participant to simply shout out BINGO instead of raising their hands!

Today I am presenting at the SFo MoodleMoot on how Moodle can be used to deliver Open Educational Resources, especially through our modification of Moodle, the Open Meta Mod.

Presentation slides are now available and you are welcome to participate in the backchannel through the chat window provided below.

Presentation Slides

openmod.ppt

Web Sites Referenced

• OpenCourseWare Consortium
• Open Educational Resources Commons
• David Wiley’s OpenContent Wiki
• David Wiley’s OpenContent blog
• Utah Open High School
• Creative Commons licenses
• MIT’s “Making the Case for OCW”
• Why a Reputation Economy?
• UK’s Open University LearningSpace
• OpenContentDIY
• Leigh Blackall’s slide on Another Way

P.S. After my presentation was over, I came back to my hotel to find this bus in the parking lot. It’s nothing less than a sign for a questioning open education convert.