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

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.

While Canvas, the LMS we’re using at UVU, does have easy-to-use grading and assignment features, I’m always interested in new tools and services that pop up. Enter Engrade.com, a free, online toolset that focuses on providing a robust and user-friendly online gradebook (more…)

I just had the wacky idea that I could force users in an experimental situation to engage in movements that help track their reading behavior in a web browser. This method would employ Javascript and CSS–in short, the script would obscure text outside of the foveal vision area–the readable foveal vision area would be centered near the cursor, requiring the user to move the cursor with her fixations. Combine this with coordinate-based Javascript mouse tracking and user input that reports to a server via AJAX a la UsaProxy, and you’ve got an interesting, albeit limited, method of tracking eye movements (more…)

There’s so much buzz about the iPad you can taste it! And it ain’t all minty! I got my paws on one Tuesday afternoon, and found it not revolutionary as Apple prophesied, but rather as many have described: a big iPod Touch (which is essentially a phone-less iPhone).

Now like the iPhone/Touch the iPad can use thousands of “apps”– miniature applications developed solely for use on iPhone/iTouch/iPad, and sold through the Apple store. What’s always been disconcerting about the app development process is that (more…)

This semester I elected to test Instructure‘s (pilot? beta?) learning management system with my own online course, DGM 2740: Web Design, the third course in the Digital Media web development track at UVU. Instructure is showing us how it’s done with strong AJAX enhancements for more streamlined user processes (more…)

As I begin the pilot of our WordPress MU installation for Utah Valley University, questions naturally arise as to expected usage of the system. This led to the idea of running a short survey for students, faculty, and staff that asks if and how they would use such a community publishing platform. I then wondered if students or faculty who already had a blog would use the institutional system as a blog, whether in addition to or as a replacement for their own (even if only to meet a course requirement). This, of course, led me back to the idea of “creepy treehouses” (more…)

In my Web Essentials online course I facilitate a discussion on the future of internet technologies. One student focused on how education is, and, as you’ll see here, should be affected:

The internet is a rebel and a bully, threatening to destroy the established system of education that dictates how we learn. Shocked? Well, this is a good thing any way you look at it (more…)

Over the next ten weeks or so I’ll be looking at the viability and results of different methods and approaches to reusing and remixing OERs for David Wiley’s Intro to Open Ed course.

I would love to see examples of your reuses/remixes so I can highlight them in future posts, and gain new ideas and insights. Please comment, pingback, or e-mail me URLs or details!

A member of the ITForum mailing list asked about the legality of using Audacity to create MP3 files for an educational project, because patents on the MP3 technology are claimed by various different companies and organizations (more…)

Mark Crane pointed my attention to the following video recording of Richard Miller addressing academics in the humanities re. new media/technology and the alteration of the acts of authoring and publishing (more…)