Bob Jensen's Summary of Distance Education Pedagogy and Technology Tools

The 21st Century Pedagogy Alternatives and Tricks/Tools of the Trade
For the condensed summary page go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateel.htm

Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Please do what you can to lend financial support to Wikipedia --- Keep Knowledge Open Sourced, Interactive, and Free ---
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/WMFJA010/en/US?utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=20101125JA006&utm_source=20101124_JA011A_US&country_code=US
Wikipedia is about the power of people like us to do extraordinary things. People like us write Wikipedia, one word at a time. People like us fund it, one donation at a time. It's proof of our collective potential to change the world.

The crucial role of passion in teaching and learning

How can you best publish books, including multimedia and user interactive books, on the Web?
Note that interactive books may have quizzes and examinations where answers are sent back for grading.

First Consider Learning on Your Own

Study Skills Tip Sheets & Advice

Financial Literacy Should Be Required on Campus

History and Future of Course Authoring and Distribution Technologies
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
(This includes modules on Blackboard, Moodle, and various competitors)

Interactive Homework and Other Student-Friendly Features of Google Apps

Collaboration

Organizing your papers and citations from the Web
Sharing and remotely accessing your bookmarks

Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#KnowledgeBases

Ideas for Teaching and Testing

Bob Jensen's threads on Online Education Effectiveness and Testing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus

Social Networking for Education: The Beautiful and the Ugly
(including Google Plus and Orcut for Social Networking and some education uses of Twitter)
Updates will be at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

New and Old Tools (including tools for large classes)

Concept Maps

My Cool Camcorder Sunglasses

Video Capture, Editing, Compression, Playback
(With Links to UserView for Viewing and Capturing Remotely Located Computer Screens and Audio)

Hollywood Movies and Other Videos Featuring Accountants

Tardy Students

Manage All Your Media in Windows 7 From online streaming to all-new library controls, here's how to get more out of Windows 7's new multimedia features (This tutorial includes how to edit video in Windows 7)

Virtual World Research

Open Sharing and Adaptive Hypermedia

Using MindMaps To Teach, Learn, & Much More (video), Simoleon Sense, March 27, 2009 --- http://www.simoleonsense.com/

History of Spreadsheets in Education

Bye Bye Blackboard

Variable Speed Video and the BYU Noteworthy Success

The Future of Textbooks

Devices and Systems for Mobile Learning

Distance Education Magazines and Journals http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm#Resources

Resources for Faculty --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm

The Latest Experiments in Student Recruitment by Colleges

PowerPoint and Other Teaching Helpers (Socratic Dialogue Gives Way to PowerPoint)

How to Add Audio to PowerPoint Presentations

Finding, Capturing, Storing and Sending Open Courseware
(Including MIT's search engine for searching for topics within a video lecture and alternatives for making and capturing streaming media)

Future Lab (in the U.K.):
Developing innovative learning resources and practices that support new approaches to education for the 21st century.

Just-In-Time Teaching

Instant Messaging

College Credit Over the Phone

Absent Student Shadows in Class: Virtual Students in the Classroom

Classroom, Building, and Campus Design (including LCD versus DLP)

In a Nutshell: Authoring Design and Software for the Web --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetoolsa.htm

Innovative Cell Phone Technology

Response Pads and Clickers

Tablet Computing

Creating Educational Cartoons

Myths About Education Technologies

Ideas for Modifying Traditional Classroom Materials Into Online Learning Materials
(Including Updates on MIT's Open Knowledge Initiative called OKI)

Edutainment and Learning Games (including Dominos and Jeopardy and Monopoly and Fiction Writing)

xTREME Accounting Games from PwC

Using the Monopoly Board Game for Education Edutainment

Second Life and Other Virtual Worlds

Test Drive Running a University

Virtual Reality

Humor in Online Teaching

Example From a Texas A&M Professor Providing Distance Education in Mexico

Ideas for Teaching Online (including Distance Education via Centra Symposium and Webex)

Tools for Learning in the Boondocks

Technology Aids for the Handicapped, Disabled, and Learning Challenged

How To and How Not To Deliver Distance Education
War stories from teachers in the first accredited online MBA program.

Cognitive Processes and Artificial Intelligence

Real Aud Audit Simulation

Interactive Network Simulation Learning Example

Advantages and Disadvantages of Education Technologies

Chris Dede's Vignettes

An Example of a Low Budget and Very Remarkable Online Course

Knowledge Portals and Vortals
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/portals.htm

Web Page Design: Ah, What Rotten Webs We Weave

Resources --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources

Classroom Use of Laptops and iPods

Wikis Made Simple -- Very Simple

The Magic of DVR Recording

RU THR? OMW ---The University of Florida Experiment With Text Messaging

Statistical Survey Sampling and Analysis

Critical Thinking: Why Its So Hard to Teach

Case Research and Writing (Cases)

Bob Jensen's threads on PowerPoint (with warnings) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#PowerPointHelpers

Bob Jensen's Updates on Education Technologies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Hasselback Accounting Faculty Directory --- http://www.hasselback.org/

Free course materials, tutorials, and videos --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

AACSB Innovation Resource Center --- http://www.aacsb.edu/resources/innovation/default.asp

More than 100 colleges have set up channels on YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583 (or many more by now)
Search for words like “accounting”

"Top 10 YouTube Videos Posted by Colleges, and What They Mean," by Rachel Wiseman, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 5, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/top-10-youtube-videos-posted-by-colleges-and-what-they-mean/32070?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

More than 400 colleges and universities have set up channels on YouTube as part of the YouTube EDU section of the popular video site, but university officials admit they are still experimenting with the service and learning what types of videos resonate with off-campus audiences.

With data provided by YouTube, The Chronicle has determined the 10 most popular videos on YouTube EDU of the 2010-11 academic year (from June 2010 to June 2011). Some college officials stress that popularity is not always their main goal—because many colleges upload lectures and study materials designed for those enrolled in the courses. Still, the list gives a sense of the variety of videos colleges post and their impact.

Star-studded commencement speeches seem to be the best way for colleges to draw viewers. Four graduation videos made it onto the top-10 list, and three of the four featured high-profile celebrity speakers: Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Conan O’Brien. According to YouTube officials, searches on the site for the phrase “commencement speech” have increased eightfold since 2008.

But the biggest hit of the year focused on a graduating student rather than a star speaker. UC Berkeley’s video, “Paralyzed student, Austin Whitney, walks at graduation,” topped the list, with over 471,000 views. The clip shows Mr. Whitney, a graduating senior who was paralyzed from the waist down before entering college, walking to receive his diploma, aided by a mechanized exoskeleton that UC Berkeley engineers designed for him.

Robotics videos were also crowd pleasers this year. The University of Pennsylvania’s baseball-pitching machine earned it a spot in the top 10, and the University of Chicago made it on the list twice for gadget-themed clips. The first, the “Universal Gripper,” displays a device researchers developed that can grip and move nearly any object regardless of shape or size. The other video investigates how the mechanized book-retrieval system in the university’s newly constructed library works. Jeremy Manier, the university’s news director, attributed the library video’s success to the fact that it could engage several Web communities: those concerned with libraries and the future of print; architecture enthusiasts; and techies. “It tells a good story and it’s got robots,” he said, adding jocularly that “robots rule the Internet.”

No traditional lectures made the list. The closest thing to a lecture is an MIT physics “module”—a 20-minute explanatory video by Walter H.G. Lewin, a professor of physics at the institute. It explains the physics behind a familiar dilemma: Which will make you more wet, walking or running in the rain?

Other academic lectures have proven quite popular, though: A Harvard University lecture series on the philosophy of justice has accumulated more than 1.6 million views since it was uploaded in September 2009.

Although other individual lectures may not receive a high number of hits, a growing number of colleges are posting them. Some universities, such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT, have begun posting all of the recorded lectures from selected courses, allowing viewers from around the world to tune in and see what goes on in their classrooms. By broadcasting their lectures, they “broaden the window of access” to their resources, said Ben Hubbard, the manager of UC Berkeley’s YouTube EDU channel. Through feedback from students and spikes in viewership during midterms and exams, Mr. Hubbard has inferred that the channel is actually being used as a study tool. However, he said, “We know that we haven’t had just students logging in 120 million times. We know we’re serving the public.”

It can be difficult to determine the factors that lead a college video to go viral, and many college-news offices and technology departments are still experimenting with ways to take full advantage of their presence on YouTube. Angela Y. Lin, EDU’s manager at YouTube, says the service provides “resources for all of our partners regarding how to optimize their channels,” including statistics on user views, as well as suggestions such as adding metadata, creating playlists, and tagging keywords.

But the success of a video is ultimately determined by the whims of The Crowd. “There is a certain mystery or alchemy about what captures the public’s minds,” said Dan Mogulof, a UC Berkeley spokesman. “There are common themes and variables that can increase the chance of something becoming popular, but it’s not a simple formula.”

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on prestigious universities that open share course videos and other course materials for free ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

"YouTube Creates New Section to Highlight College Content," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 27, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3684&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

There are now nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of which are in very basic accounting.
But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
There are nearly 70 videos on XBRL

YouTube Education Channels --- http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

"YouTube Begins Streaming Commencement Speeches Live," by Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 10, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/youtube-begins-streaming-commencement-speeches-live/31693?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

YouTube is Going Live --- http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/04/youtube-is-going-live.html

SUNY Albany Guide to Web Resources --- http://libguides.library.albany.edu/content.php?pid=130754&sid=1121460

TeacherTube (a video server for teachers) --- http://www1.teachertube.com/

An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert. Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of work that they are now sharing with us

"YouTube Better at Funny Cat Videos Than Educational Content, Professors Say," by Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 26, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/YouTube-Better-at-Funny-Cat/25768/#lastComment

While many students turn to YouTube when looking for help with their homework, it can be hard to find good-quality educational clips there, according to two professors who did a preliminary analysis of several video search engines.

The two researchers, Jeffrey R. Bell, a professor of biological sciences at California State University at Chico, and Jim Bidlack, a biology prfessor at University of Central Oklahoma, entered scientific terms into several video search engines and analyzed the top 20 results from each one to compare their relevance and educational usefulness. Students were also shown some of the resulting videos and asked to rate their effectiveness at explaining the concept involved.

The professors found that YouTube favored videos made by students as class projects, perhaps because those videos attracted more comments than professionally made ones, said Mr. Bell in an interview. Google Video returned the most high-quality videos in the top 20 search results, the professors said. (Google owns YouTube but also operates Google Video, which includes videos across the Web rather than just those on YouTube, which hosts videos from users.

"You go into YouTube and you put in "mitosis," you're going to get 3,000 videos back," said Mr. Bell. "But no one looks at all of that. You're only going to look at the top 10, so the ranking algorithm is really important."

The professors presented their findings during a poster session at last week's Emerging Technologies for Online Learning symposium, run jointly by the Sloan Consortium, a nonprofit group to support teaching with technology, and two providers of educational software and resources. The professors say they plan to expand their study and hope to publish the results.

Jensen Comment
I posted the following comment at the Chronicle of Higher Education:

What the authors are indirectly concluding is that some of the top researchers in our most prestigious universities are lousy teachers.

The videos that I've watched to date are only the top researchers from Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT. I thought they had a lot to say although they were not always the most dynamic speakers. Some were pretty good.

What's lacking is the music and the graphics arts and the comedy found on Comedy Central. Take your pick.

YouTube Education Channels --- http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of work that they are now sharing with us.

MIT Media Lab --- http://www.media.mit.edu/

Thomas B. Fordham Foundation (education research) --- http://www.edexcellence.net/

Online Instructional Resources: Faculty Development Programs at Michigan State University --- http://fod.msu.edu/OIR/index.asp

Teaching Time Savers --- http://www.maa.org/features/TeachingTimeSavers.html

Edutools --- http://ocep.edutools.info/index.jsp?pj=1

WCET’s EduTools provides independent reviews, side-by-side comparisons, and consulting services to assist decision-making in the e-learning community

Course Management System – Compare reviews of the CMS products most commonly used in higher education and also used by many K-12 virtual schools

Online Course Evaluation Project – Compare reviews of online college, Advanced Placement®, and high school courses as conducted by the Monterey Institute of Technology and Education• WCALO Reviews of AP^® Courses

View the results of research projects • Learning object repository software • Student services products • e-Learning Policies • ePortfolios

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring and management software ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/

A Course in Game Theory ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/a-course-in-game-theory-martin-j-osborne/

Business Technology from Business Week Magazine --- http://bx.businessweek.com/business-technology/

The Journal of Accountancy has a great monthly technology section (with particular focus on things you never, ever thought you could do with MS Office, particularly Excel) --- http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/
The Q&A modules are particularly informative and should be centralized in one place in addition to monthly editions.

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting software --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#AccountingSoftware

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Education Tutorials

Free Images from the U.S. Government --- http://rastervector.com/resources/free/free.html

Free Federal Resources in Various Disciplines --- http://www.free.ed.gov/

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

The Master List of Free Online College Courses --- http://universitiesandcolleges.org/

Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
The Master List of Free Online College Courses --- http://universitiesandcolleges.org/

Bob Jensen's threads for online worldwide education and training alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads for online worldwide education and training alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Technology is changing the way students learn. Is it changing the way colleges teach?

Not enough, says George Siemens, associate director of research and development at the University of Manitoba’s Learning Technologies Centre.

While colleges and universities have been “fairly aggressive” in adapting their curricula to the changing world, Mr. Siemens told The Chronicle, “What we haven’t done very well in the last few decades is altering our pedagogy.”

To help get colleges thinking about how they might adapt their teaching styles to the new ways students absorb and process information, Mr. Siemens and Peter Tittenberger, director of the center, have created a Web-based guide, called the Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning.

Taking their own advice, they have outfitted the handbook with a wiki function that will allow readers to contribute their own additions.

In the its introduction, the handbook declares the old pedagogical model—where the students draw their information primarily from textbooks, newspapers, and their professors—dead. “Our learning and information acquisition is a mash-up,” the authors write. “We take pieces, add pieces, dialogue, reframe, rethink, connect, and ultimately, we end up with some type of pattern that symbolizes what’s happening ‘out there’ and what it means to us.” Students are forced to develop new ways of making sense of this flood of information fragments.

But Mr. Siemens said that colleges had been slow to appreciate this fact. “I don’t see a lot of research coming out on what universities might look like in the future,” he said. “If how we interact with information and with each other fundamentally changes, it would suggest that the institution also needs to change.”

Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning ---
http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wikis/etl/index.php/Handbook_of_Emerging_Technologies_for_Learning

Preface

This Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning (HETL) has been designed as a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities.

Introduction

How is education to fulfill its societal role of clarifying confusion when tools of control over information creation and dissemination rest in the hands of learners[3], contributing to the growing complexity and confusion of information abundance?

Change Pressures and Trends

Global, political, social, technological, and educational change pressures are disrupting the traditional role (and possibly design) of universities. Higher education faces a "re-balancing" in response to growing points of tension along the following fault lines...

What we know about learning

Over the last century, educator’s understanding of the process and act of learning has advanced considerably.

Technology, Teaching, and Learning

Technology is concerned with "designing aids and tools to perfect the mind". As a means of extending the sometimes limited reach of humanity, technology has been prominent in communication and learning. Technology has also played a role in classrooms through the use of movies, recorded video lectures, and overhead projectors. Emerging technology use is growing in communication and in creating, sharing, and interacting around content.

Media and technology

A transition from epistemology (knowledge) to ontology (being) suggests media and technology need to be employed to serve in the development of learners capable of participating in complex environments.

Change cycles and future patterns

It is not uncommon for theorists and thinkers to declare some variation of the theme "change is the only constant". Surprisingly, in an era where change is prominent, change itself has not been developed as a field of study. Why do systems change? Why do entire societies move from one governing philosophy to another? How does change occur within universities?

New Learners? New Educators? New Skills?

New literacies (based on abundance of information and the significant changes brought about technology) are needed. Rather than conceiving literacy as a singular concept, a multi-literacy view is warranted.

Tools

Each tool possesses multiple affordances. Blogs, for example, can be used for personal reflection and interaction. Wikis are well suited for collaborative work and brainstorming. Social networks tools are effective for the formation of learning and social networks. Matching affordances of a particular tool with learning activities is an important design and teaching activity

Research

Evaluating the effectiveness of technology use in teaching and learning brings to mind Albert Einstein’s statement: "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted". When we begin to consider the impact and effectiveness of technology in the teaching and learning process, obvious questions arise: "How do we measure effectiveness? Is it time spent in a classroom? Is it a function of test scores? Is it about learning? Or understanding?"

Conclusion

Through a process of active experimentation, the academy’s role in society will emerge as a prominent sensemaking and knowledge expansion institution, reflecting of the needs of learners and society while maintaining its role as a transformative agent in pursuit of humanity’s highest ideals.

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Ideas for Teaching Online --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Ideas
Also see the helpers for teaching in general at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Finance Test Questions --- http://financetestquestions.wikispaces.com/

In a previous edition of Tidbits, I provided a summary of resources for learning how and being inspired to teach online --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Ideas

I forgot to (and have since added) helpers for assessment (e.g. testing) online --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus
Also see the helpers for assessment in general at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Also I forgot to add some special considerations for detection and prevention of online cheating ---
Also see helpers for detection and prevention of cheating in general at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm

The Bea Sanders/AICPA Innovation in Teaching Award --- Click Here http://ceae.aicpa.org/Resources/Scholarships+and+Awards/The+Bea+Sanders+AICPA+Innovation+in+Teaching+Award.htm

Computer Grading of Essay Questions --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Essays

Remote (online) Testing of Students --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus

Accounting Education Software --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#software

Software for administering online examinations and quizzes ---

Onsite Versus Online Education (including controls for online examinations and assignments) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnsiteVersusOnline

Some universities, especially those with distance education programs, have online examination software. This varies greatly in cost and quality. You can read more about such software at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Examinations

How students can find internships
Helpers for managing student interns
Intern Toolkit --- http://www.interntoolkit.com/

Drama Simulations --- http://www.cob.tamucc.edu/ATABestPrac2K/drama-simulations.htm
(Including the use of Lego constructions in cost accounting classes.)

Bob Jensen's threads on classrooms and electronic classrooms are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Classrooms

Bob Jensen's Education Technology Threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

A tools PowerPoint file is included at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/

The American Accounting Association has a page on tools and cases --- http://aaahq.org/facdev/teaching/teaching_tools.htm

Also see the AAA’s wider set of helpers on teaching at http://aaahq.org/facdev/teach.cfm

Introductory Quotation

The movie Dead Poets Society showed examples of why students recalled so much of their learning. There were changes in location, circumstances, use of emotions, movement, and novel classroom positions. We know that learners remember much more when the learning is connected to a field trip, music, a disaster, a guest speaker, or a novel learning location. Follow up with a discussion, journal writing, a project, or peer teaching.

E. Jensen (1998, p. 110)
Teaching with the brain in mind

From U.K.'s Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol
Social Science Information Gateway http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/

Browse by Subject Map of the SOSIG sections

Anthropology

Business and Management

Economics

Education

Environmental Science

European Studies

Geography

Government Policy
Law

Philosophy

Politics

Psychology

Research Tools and Methods

Social Welfare

Sociology

Statistics

Women's Studies

The Crucial Role of Passion in Teaching and Learning

Some Jensen History
On August 2, 2010 in San Francisco I was invited to make a short speech at the Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Section Breakfast. Afterwards a couple of you questioned some of the dates I gave to events in my life. The events I mentioned were true, but the dates were way off --- something I can only attribute to old age and extemporaneous speaking.

For some unknown reason I decided to divert from my prepared remarks while approaching the podium on August 2. I had not planned to talk about the "game changer" in my professional life, but suddenly I was talking about the big game changer in my life. Between 1966 and 1990 I was a lousy teacher focused only on three performance scores for my work --- the number of accountics research working papers (over 200 by 1990), the number of invited out-of-town research presentations, and the number of refereed publications (about 50 by 1990) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Published

My research rather than my teaching paid off handsomely when I became the Nicolas M. Salgo Professor of Accounting at the University of Maine in 1968, received a Guggenheim Fellowship for two think tank years (1971/72 and 1973/74) at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford University), became the the KPMG Professor of Accounting at Florida State University in 1978, and ultimately became the Jesse H. Jones Professor of Business at Trinity University in 1982. My purpose here is not to brag. My purpose is to point out that research and publication outweighed every other criterion to my "success" prior to 1990 and made me what I think was overpaid between 1966 and 1990.

It was in the April 1990 (corrected date) when the game changer took place in my life. I was invited, along with about 40 other accounting professors in the State of Texas, by Prentice-Hall to attend an expense-paid seminar in Dallas on "How to Improve Your Teaching." The presentations on how to improve my teaching were uninspiring for nearly a day and a half until the very last presentation of the seminar --- the game changer in my life that instantly changed my entire focus from accountics research game playing to teaching, learning, and technology.

The game changer in my life was a presentation by Darrell Ward.---
http://www.einstruction.com/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.display&menu=news&content=showArticle&id=202
Darrell resigned from the Computer Science Department at the University of North Texas in the late 1980s to form HyperGraphics Corporation, HyperGraphics first built upon the old HyperCard seminal slide presentation software for the Apple II computers and added an entire non-linear navigation system and course management system for learning and assessment of learning. I don't think the Apple II version was all that successful, but when Darrill developed Hypergraphics for the DOS-based PC, HyperGraphics had considerable success.

I think my mouth was open during Darrell's entire presentation. Afterwards I went down and asked how I could buy the DOS-based HyperGraphics software. Darrill said that I could buy the stack of floppy disks and an instruction manual for $850 on the spot. I took out a check (my wife only allows me to carry one check) from my bill fold and wrote out a check for $850.

During the flight home from Dallas it then dawned on me that I did not own a PC. So instead of taking a taxi home from the San Antonio Airport, I took cab to a store called CompuAdd. There I paid over $2,000 for my first PC and projection panel. Until then I was always a snobby main frame guy (having taught FORTRAN, COBAL, and SPSS for the main frame) who, like IBM, thought that the the PC was simply a child's toy. After arriving home from the CompuAdd store I had to explain to my wife how I spent $3,000 on my way home from Dallas. Since I used my only check to buy the HyperGraphics software, I had to use a Visa card to buy the PC and an overhead panel.

In the summer of 1990 (corrected date) I worked about 15 hours a day programming my first course (a managerial accounting course) in HyperGraphics. In September of 1990 I unveiled my course to some of my Trinity University colleagues in a totally dark room using one of those terrible projection panels sitting on top of an overhead projector. The early panels converted all the color pictures to gray scale and were dim to read. But I could still demo what I thought was really cool --- nonlinear navigation for asynchronous learning and graphics/equation building in stages for student learning of complex details asynchronously. My colleagues departed shaking their heads and whispering that Jensen must be nuts.

It was October 4-5, 1990 (corrected date) when I made my first away-from-home dog and pony show on featuring HyperGraphics technology --- at the University of Wisconsin. HyperGraphics software pretty much died after Windows replaced the DOS operating system in PCs. I then shifted my managerial accounting and accounting theory courses to ToolBooks for the PC. My out-of-town dog and pony shows really commenced to roll when my university hosts invested in those old three-barrel color projectors that predated LCD projectors. I eventually made hundreds of presentations of HyperGraphics and then ToolBooks on college campuses in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Holland, and the United Kingdom (where I lugged my full PC and LCD projector between five campuses as the European Accounting Association Visiting Professor). Many of my campus visits and topics are listed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Presentations

Today I would probably rely more on video for asynchronous learning ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

You can read about the history of HyperGraphics, ToolBook, Authorware, and the many other course authoring and management software systems (most of which died either early or prolonged deaths) at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

The important game changer for me in April 1990 is that I belatedly commenced to think about how students learn and more importantly how I could become a better teacher (or rather learning manager) by helping students study complicated material on their own asynchronously with the ability to keep replaying at their own learning paces. I even wrote an early 1994 book on learning technology with the aid of Petrea Sandlin as my editor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245cont.htm

My thoughts about how students learn are summarized in two evolving papers at:

Evolving Papers on Learning

Working Paper 265 on Metacognition
Metacognitive Concerns in Designs and Evaluations of Computer Aided Education and Training:
Are We Misleading Ourselves About Measures of Success?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

Working Paper 255 on Asynchronous Learning Networks
Using Asynchronous Network Courses to Bridge Gaps in the
Teeth of a University Curriculum With Imported Gold: Bridgework
May Be Optimally Effective Only by Incurring High Labor Expenses
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

My evolving education technology threads are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

My life seems to have taken on more meaning since I focused more on my students and how they learn.

October 19, 2010 message from Jagdish Gangolly

Over the years I have been frustrated with the lack of software support for collaborative research, especially for writing papers. Very often my coauthors are far from Albany (and out of the country), and we need a way to maintain version control for papers, annotation of document changes, facilities for rollback, and management of bibliographies with minimum effort.

At long last, I (and my collaborators) seem to have found the solution from a very unlikely source: the Eclipse IDE used widely for programming. In fact I had used it in my teaching of Java language in the past. In conjunction with texlipse (which works within Eclipse), it provides a superior authoring environment in addition to being able to use the same environment for programming of necessary. Best of all. it is FREE, so no tithing the Church of Bill.

It works exactly like any commercial database system with good access controls. It also is platform agnostic, and works on windows, linux/unix/mac as well as most IBM mid-range and mainframes.

I wonder if any one on AECM has worked with it.

Jagdish Gangolly ( gangolly@albany.edu )
Department of Informatics College of Computing & Information State University of New York at Albany
7A, Harriman Campus Road, Suite 220 Albany, NY 12206
Phone: (518) 956-8251, Fax: (518) 956-8247

October 20, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Thank you Jagdish,

I will add your Tidbit to my threads on much simpler ways to collaborate such a Google Docs that Amy Dunbar and Rick Lillie passionately recommend for student collaboration projects.

August 15, 2010 message from Bob Jensen

Hi Rick,

In my reply I should’ve added some things about technology-experimenting accounting professors who pull off their experiments with an exceptional degree of passion. In addition to Amy Dunbar and Rick Lillie, I should’ve mentioned Steve Hornik ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
I can’t imagine how Steve pulls these innovations off with class sizes in the hundreds.

I’m certain there are others that are passionate in their own ways, and some of these passionate and innovative accounting educators are identified in the TLC Section Page at http://aaahq.org/TeachCurr/index.html

I also should’ve elaborated a bit about the passions of Amy Dunbar and Rick Lillie:
May 31, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

http://users.business.uconn.edu/adunbar/videos/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html

If anyone wants the “quiz” that the students worked, send me an email (not AECM), and I will send you the file.

Amy

Amy Dunbar
University of Connecticut School of Business
Department of Accounting
2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041 Storrs, CT 06269-1041
amy.dunbar@business.uconn.ed

May 31, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie [rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]

Hi Amy,

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses. It's free, includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for students to collaborate on team projects. It also makes it easy to submit the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype). To use these tools, they need a headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com) is a free, hosted video messaging service. You can record up to a 10 minute video clip that can be shared by URL link. TokBox also includes a video chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference. This feature works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com) includes chat, audio and video-conferencing. The chat feature works probably better than what you have been using. With a headset/microphone, you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call. Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype. Following is an example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper. One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space through an email link. Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group video conference call. This enables students to brainstorm and get a project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students use the audio conference call feature to talk with each other. While all are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and views it on his/her computer screen. One or more students act as the editor. All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document in .pdf format to his/her hard drive. The student then submits the document for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get things done. Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can do for free. Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively inexpensive. The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and online classes. It works great. The approach changes the nature of how students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
Email: rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone: (909) 537-5726Skype (Username): ricklillie

On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:
“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.” (Joe Hoyle)

Jensen Comment
I’m certain that you will miss your beloved TokBox software now that it, like Google Wave, has been discarded on the trash pile of abandoned technology.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How to author books and other materials for online delivery
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How Scholars Search the Web ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

Bob Jensen

From: AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU] On Behalf Of Rick Lillie
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 9:18 PM
To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
Subject: Re: An Example of how I combine technologies to create a fully online teaching-learning experience

Hi Bob,

Thank you for great feedback about the interactive Class Assignments Schedule (CAS) format that I developed for my third course in Intermediate Accounting. I agree with your comments. I am revising the CAS for my FQ 2010 course, so your comments and suggestions arrive at the right moment. Below are comments for several issues that you raised. Hopefully, I can explain why I did, what I did.

For AECM readers, below is the link to the interactive Class Assignments Schedule that you reviewed.

Link: http://www.drlillie.com/KIA3/2010/UCLA/CAS/CASSQ10.htm

When exploring linked features on the CAS, it works best to "right-click" on a link and then click the "open in a new window" option. This makes it easier to navigate CAS features.

ABOUT THE VOICETHREAD STUDENT COMMENTARIES

Both CalState San Bernardino and UCLA Extension use Blackboard. The LMS includes a discussion board feature that works well for certain information sharing activities. However, this past year, I became dissatisfied with using the "finger tapping" discussion board for student discussions.

What I tend to find is that the first few students who post discussion comments and responses post original thoughts. After the first postings, things get repetitive. Unfortunately, Blackboard (and most LMS systems) does not make it possible to keep postings private until after a deadline has passed. The LMS structure almost by default encourages plagiarism.

VoiceThread includes an option that allows postings to be kept private until I am ready to make them public for all class members to view. This greatly reduces the chances of plagiarism occurring.

VoiceThread allows three ways to post comments (i.e., text, audio, or video). For the first VoiceThread assignment, students can use any of the three formats to post comments. For subsequent VoiceThead assignments, students must post video comments. This helps students improve their oral speaking/conversation presentation skills. A student can see how he/she comes across to others. A student can hear his(her) own explanation.

I tell students to explain in terms a client will understand. Save the "technical jargon" for colleagues who need to be impressed. VoiceThread makes it possible for a student to see how well he(she) met this standard.

Once the posting deadline passes, I make all postings public to all class members. I use Zoomerang (online survey system) to allow students to anonymously rate each other's commentaries. I use the overall ratings and a simple grading rubric as the basis for awarding individual grades. Often a student wants to talk about his(her) presentation. We use Skype for a 1:1 video conference call.

EARLY COURSE FEATURES

I will add the "start-up" professionalization topics that you recommended. I talk about these throughout the course, but have not specifically included them on the Class Assignments Schedule. I set up other pages in Blackboard for these items. I'll see I can add them to the Class Assignments Schedule.

During FQ 2009, AAA allowed me to include Sir David Tweedie's speech from the 2009 AAA Annual Meeting. I replaced Sir Tweedie's speech with the Paul Volker video. I viewed the Partnoy video. I agree this would be a far better opening video. The "financial transparency" issue sets a good opening tone for the overall course. The way the CAS is currently designed, I use Warren Buffett materials to focus on "financial transparency." But, this is done through the closing topic.

My syllabus (which is different from the CAS) includes discussion of academic ethics, integrity, plagiarism, and cheating. However, my comments are not as dynamic as yours. I will revise wording in my syllabus.

I agree with your comment about introducing XBRL. I already decided to introduce XBRL throughout the course through short, web research exercises. This should make the coverage relevant, practical, and less technical.

GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT COURSE DESIGN

I agree with your comments about demanding almost too much from students. I am cutting back supplemental readings to no more than one or two per topic. I refer to the readings as "Connect to Practice." Readings will come from practitioner publications like the Journal of Accountancy or The CPA Journal. I appreciate your references to Joe Hoyle's teaching advice.

IN CLOSING

Thank you for great advice and outstanding ideas. Once I revise the interactive Class Assignments Schedule for FQ 2010, I will email you the hyperlink to the revised web page. I think you will see significant improvements.

Again, thank you for your comments at the TLC Breakfast meeting. I really appreciated you doing this.

Best wishes,

Rick Lillie
Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397

Email: rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone: (909) 537-5726
Skype (Username): ricklillie

On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.” (Joe Hoyle)

"Wordle Revisited," by Erin E. Templeton, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 6, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/wordle-revisited/38293?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

ProfHacker first wrote about Wordle back in October 2009, when Julie Meloni called it “the gateway drug to textual analysis.” George Williams followed her post with another in November of 2009 that further considered ways to “[Use] Wordle in the classroom.”

Inspired by a Twitter conversation last week with Caleb McDaniel (@wcaleb), I decided to revisit it here.

I recently used Wordle in an assignment for my January Intercession class (on F. Scott Fitzgerald) and found it very useful for introducing students to close-reading and the basics of textual analysis. As an English professor, textual analysis is one of the most fundamental skills that I teach, and as a result, it can feel like the bane of my existence. The source of my frustration (and that of my students) is trying to get from summary and/or description to analysis. Students are often very good at describing what is happening in a text, but it can be very hard for them to break out of this habit and think about language in other ways.

Enter Wordle.

To me, there are two things that make Wordle invaluable:

It’s free and very easy to use. As an open web-based program, all students with access to a computer can use it. It doesn’t require specific hardware (read: iPad) or charge fees for accessing the site.

It’s fun. Generating a Word Cloud is as simple as clicking on the “Create” link, pasting in “a bunch of text,” and clicking “Go.” Once the Word Cloud is created, students can then play with fonts, color schemes, and other visual variables such as whether they prefer the words to be laid out horizontally, vertically, or a bit of both.

In my class, I first demonstrated how to use Wordle with the novel we were reading (This Side of Paradise), which had the added benefit of being published in 1921, so it is no-longer copyright protected so I could use passages from Project Gutenberg’s edition of the novel rather than having to transcribe them manually. We created a few word clouds together as a class to make sure everyone knew how to do it, and then I asked the students how looking at these passages through the Wordle lens might change their understanding. What did they notice seeing the words rearranged, and in some cases resized (the size of words in the Wordle is directly proportionate to the number of times that the word appears in the initial text block)? By deconstructing and defamiliarizing the passage, Wordle magically freed students from the summary trap and helped them to think about the text analytically beyond the constraints of plot. Word clouds do not have plots, at least not in the linear convention sense that allows easy summary, so analysis was suddenly less confusing.

Finally, I asked students to create a Wordle on their own and post a screenshot of it to the class blog. They could choose any episode from This Side of Paradise that we had not already examined together in class. Once they had their Wordle, they were asked to answer a few questions: “Does this graphic visualization of the text highlight certain themes or issues in the episode? Does it emphasize particular themes or ideas? Do you notice things about the episode that you had previously discounted in your earlier reading?”

Posting the Wordles to the website proved to be a bit tricky for some, but that difficulty stemmed from the screenshot rather than Wordle itself.

My class created some very interesting Wordles, and more to the point, using this tool helped to make the task of literary analysis less daunting, which is often no easy feat! I was left wondering why I don’t use it more often in my classes and am currently trying to figure out ways to incorporate it into other assignments.

Continued in article

"Skype 5 beta is horrible," by Dennis Howlett, AccMan, January 4, 2011 --- Click Here
http://accmanpro.com/2011/01/04/skype-5-beta-is-horrible/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+flacknhack/jRao+%28Dennis+Howlett:+AccMan%29

I am not alone.
The howls of protest on the Skype forums are both impassioned and detailed in their condemnation of the new UI/UX.

January 4, 2010 reply from Robert Bowers (tax accountant)

This Skype thread interests me.

I have been cutting costs w/ a vengeance for sev yrs

Sev yrs ago I went from Verizon tel (120) + full Comcast cable (130) + net = about 250/mo

I talked Com into giving me a promo rate of 62, went to Vonage @ 25, total 87 … not bad

Then Com went back to 130, so I talked Verizon into 70 for all 3. But this expires in June.

I have looked at Vonage, Magic Jack, not Skype – all these alt phones don’t seem to support Faxes,

and to be honest it seems Verizon still beats all these for clarity

This wouldn’t bother me, as I send email attachments to all but one – guess who – the IRS

As far as cable, I just went w/ Netflix – unlimited movies for $8/mo

Now if I could find a TV provider of all the news (incl CNBC), I would be happy

When you go to alternative providers there is always a tradeoff – you can’t get something for nothing.

January 4, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie

While there are some features in Skype v5.0.0.156 that I do not care about, overall I really like the new Skype version. I'm not a Facebook person. I prefer that links to Facebook and other social media be kept optional for users who want such features.

We all have our biases, which is clear from the Howlett article, forum comments and my comments in this email message. I'm a "PC" person. I'm not an "Apple" person. I'm probably in the minority, but I don't care for the iPad. I'll stick with my ThinkPad Tablet computer. It's capabilities go far beyond what the iPad can do.

I use Skype to offer virtual office hours for my students. This makes it possible to extend the benefits of traditional office hours to students who are unable to come to my office during set times. Students really like using Skype to work together.

Skype features like desktop sharing make it easy to work one-on-one with students when they need help with assignments. The instant messaging and file sharing features are exceptional, especially with improvements added in v5. With v5, you can send a message or file to someone even though the other party is not online at the moment. Skype now temporarily stores the message or file until the other party is available and then downloads it. This improvement takes peer-to-peer to the next performance level.

I have used Skype's new multi-party video conferencing. It worked fine. Several study groups used multi-party video conferencing during Fall Quarter 2010 and liked its performance. I see a real future for multi-party video conferencing. My concern is that it will become a fee-based service that students will not be able to afford.

I combine the free features of Skype with features of other free Web 2.0 technologies to teach my students how to use technology to create, share, and communicate. For example, when we combine Skype with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, students learn to do what you can do in WebEx or Adobe Connect. This combination is free. The alternatives are extremely expensive.

Skype's interface changed with v5. Without a doubt, it will change again. Skype listens to feedback. Technology evolves.

Skype includes a bundle of features that makes it a powerful communicative, collaborative Web 2.0 technology tool. It includes far more useful features in one tool than I find in other similar tools. This is what makes Skype really useful and easy to use.

Skype changes itself about every 15 minutes. If you don't like the current version, be patient or find a better alternative. If you truly find a better alternative, please share it.

Happy New Year! May we all prosper in 2011.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
Email: rlillie@csusb.edu \
Telephone: (909) 537-5726
Skype (Username): ricklillie

From: AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jensen, Robert
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 3:17 PM
To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
Subject: FW: An Example of how I combine technologies to create a fully online teaching-learning experience

Hi Rick,

I will expand well beyond your direct question to me in the interest of all AECM readers.

Probably the most unique aspect of your course is the use of student voice threads. I really don’t have much to say about these since I’ve never seen them used and have not read testimonials about how it well they work. Like most education technology, I suspect that this technology mostly depends on context and how it is used for grading purposes. Like Joe Hoyle, I think how you test is how students really learn. The voice thread idea might counter this somewhat, but much depends upon the role of voice threads in the grading formula.

I think all AECM readers should watch your tutorial on how to use the voice threading system.

You are a bit like Amy Dunbar in that when you try something new it will probably work for you because of your passion for making it a success. Less passionate accounting educators should be warned that what works fantastically for Rick Lillie and Amy Dunbar will not necessarily work for them without the accompanying passion.

My first reaction to your syllabus is that you demand almost too much from your students --- especially in terms of the volume of reading and video watching. For the readings assigned as “peruse readings” perhaps you need guidelines about what you expect from a “peruse” cruse. Some students will spend a great deal of time and take copious notes if they think any assigned material will be on an exam or quiz. Perhaps you should let students see “possible quiz questions” in advance for each “peruse” cruise. But then reserve the right to ask a general question not given in advance to scare students who may decentralize (among themselves) the answering of possible quiz questions.

Early in the course (read that the first or second class) display the tables and graphs that show the following:
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

2009 Best Places to Start/Intern According to Bloomberg/Business Week
Also see the Internship and Table links .
The Top five rankings contain all Big Four accountancy firms.
Somehow Proctor and Gamble slipped into Rank 4 above PwC
The accountancy firms of Grant Thornton and RMS McGladrey make the top 40 at ranks 32 and 33 respectively.

Best Places to Intern
I'm waiting for Francine to throw cold water on the "ever before" claim
Especially note the KPMG Experience Abroad module below
"Best Places to Intern: Bloomberg BusinessWeek's 2009 list shows employers are hiring more interns to fill entry-level positions than ever before," by Lindsey Gerdes, Business Week, December 10, 2009 ---

Early on invite some of your most gifted graduate students in to talk about their intern experiences --- hopefully there will be Big Four interns and non-Big Four interns for these presentations.

In lieu of having live presentations, former intern videos might be displayed for the class.

Perhaps XBRL can be delayed a bit. That’s a bit technical and dull for openers.

You should explain why global work opportunities are opening up somewhat because of IFRS (avoid the convergence debate at this point).

I would also dwell on the growing opportunities for accounting majors --- including working for the FBI and working on your own or within a company as a forensic accountant. Explain the typical duties of both types of professionals. Explain how advantages arise for graduates fluent in more than one language. Also explain the difference between education and training so that your students try to stop hating humanities and science requirements.

Also explain why working for government (e.g., the IRS) can lead to great career opportunities later in life such that you’ve given hope to graduates who do not make it into or do not want to make it into the Big Four to start with at the time of graduation. Graduates who do not get Big Four offers are not doomed for life.

I would also devote some class time to the shortage of doctoral graduates in accounting and opportunities for accounting doctoral graduates (e.g., mention Texas A&M, USC, and Stanford starting salaries, research stipends, teaching loads, and research expense report. But be fair and also mention tenure track hurdles. A good reference is the following:

"So you want to get a Ph.D.?" by David Wood, BYU ---
http://www.byuaccounting.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=So_you_want_to_get_a_Ph.D.%3F

Do You Want to Teach? ---
http://financialexecutives.blogspot.com/2009/05/do-you-want-to-teach.html

Then explain why it is probably best to obtain 1-5 years of experience as a practicing accountant before returning to a doctoral program.

Drop the VARK Stuff
I’m not into learning styles since I think top students adapt to whatever pedagogy is used by the instructor in every course taken at a university. I would instead explain why self-learning may be superior for nearly all students without going into details and conjectures at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

And remember what Joe Hoyle alleges --- students learn what you test them on such that, good or bad, examinations and quizzes are the focal point of student attention. You need to spell you your testing and grading guidelines very clearly.

Early on, especially in the syllabus, I would explain the nuances of academic ethics, integrity, plagiarism, and cheating that you will not tolerate in the course. Explain the difference between learning collaboration/cooperating versus cheating and free riding.

Probably the most unique aspect of your course is the use of student voice threads. I really don’t have much to say about this since I’ve never seen this used and have not read testimonials about how it well it works. Like most education technology, I suspect that it mostly depends on context and how it is used for grading purposes. Like Joe Hoyle, I think how you test is how students really learn. The voice thread idea might counter this somewhat, but much depends upon the role of voice threads in the grading formula.

One thing the AECM can provide are alternate ideas to replace the financial system collapse as the first topic of voice threading. For example, it might be better to focus on the Partnoy video than the Volcker video:
Watch the video! (a bit slow loading)
"Bring Transparency to Off-Balance Sheet Accounting," by Frank Partnoy, Roosevelt Institute, March 2010 ---
http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/policy-and-ideas/ideas-database/bring-transparency-balance-sheet-accounting
Watch the video!

Abusive off-balance sheet accounting was a major cause of the financial crisis. These abuses triggered a daisy chain of dysfunctional decision-making by removing transparency from investors, markets, and regulators. Off-balance sheet accounting facilitating the spread of the bad loans, securitizations, and derivative transactions that brought the financial system to the brink of collapse.

As in the 1920s, the balance sheets of major corporations recently failed to provide a clear picture of the financial health of those entities. Banks in particular have become predisposed to narrow the size of their balance sheets, because investors and regulators use the balance sheet as an anchor in their assessment of risk. Banks use financial engineering to make it appear that they are better capitalized and less risky than they really are. Most people and businesses include all of their assets and liabilities on their balance sheets. But large financial institutions do not.

Click here to read the full chapter.---
http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/sites/all/files/Off-Balance Sheet Transactions.pdf

Frank Partnoy is the George E. Barnett Professor of Law and Finance and is the director of the Center on Corporate and Securities Law at the University of San Diego. He worked as a derivatives structurer at Morgan Stanley and CS First Boston during the mid-1990s and wrote F.I.A.S.C.O.: Blook in the Water on Wall Street, a best-selling book about his experiences there. His other books include Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets and The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals.

Lynn Turner has the unique perspective of having been the Chief Accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a member of boards of public companies, a trustee of a mutual fund and a public pension fund, a professor of accounting, a partner in one of the major international auditing firms, the managing director of a research firm and a chief financial officers and an executive in industry. In 2007, Treasury Secretary Paulson appointed him to the Treasury Committee on the Auditing Profession. He currently serves as a senior advisor to LECG, an international forensics and economic consulting firm.

The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Roosevelt Institute, its officers, or its directors.

My point is that I think there are a lot of better accounting things to start this course with than the Volcker finance video.

As I mentioned in my TLC breakfast speech, I think Rick Lillie is one of the brightest resources in accounting education’s stable of accounting educators. He brings a passion for technology experimentation into learning and is willing to share his experiences with the education world. All accounting educators should track his main blog at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
The postings are not frequent (i.e.., not daily) but they are highly informative about new advances in education technology.

Robert E. (Bob) Jensen

Trinity University Accounting Professor (Emeritus)
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Tel. 603-823-8482
www.trinity.edu/rjensen

From: Rick Lillie [mailto:rlillie@csusb.edu]
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 8:36 PM
To: Jensen, Robert
Subject: FW: An Example of how I combine technologies to create a fully online teaching-learning experience

Hi Bob,

I have deactivated several links on the example Class Assignments Schedule. As I wrote to you earlier today, I deactivated some links in order to protect student privacy. It is OK now to share my comments and example Class Assignments Schedule on your website and AECM.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Have a great weekend,

Rick Lillie

From: Rick Lillie [mailto:rlillie@csusb.edu]
Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 1:55 PM
To: Jensen, Robert
Subject: An Example of how I combine technologies to create a fully online teaching-learning experience

Dear Bob,

You blew me away at the TLC breakfast, when during your presentation, you mentioned me and my work. Thank you. I am most grateful for the kind comments.

I read your comments today about the game-changing experience that moved you toward teaching with technology. I really enjoyed your presentation at the TLC breakfast. I wish there had been more time, but that's how speeches go.

Like your experience, several events happening since "2000," have done much the same thing for me. I would like to share an example of how I use technology to create course materials and share them with my students. I do not think I have shared this with you before. I would appreciate your feedback comments.

The approaches I am developing may be used in face-2-face, blended, and fully online formats. Click the link below to access what I call an interactive class assignments schedule. I have taken the traditional assignments schedule included in a course syllabus and converted it into a Web 2.0 interactive teaching-learning experience.

I use the interactive class assignments schedule format with the third course in Intermediate Accounting that I teach for both CSUSB and UCLA Extension. The CSUSB section is taught in a blended format. The UCLA Extension class includes students from around the world and is fully online.

Link to Class Assignment Schedule: http://www.drlillie.com/KIA3/2010/UCLA/CAS/CASSQ10.htm

The page design is simple. It is a data table. Each row presents a study week during the course. The study process moves left-to-right across the row. I treat the study week as beginning on Monday and ending the following Saturday evening at 11 PM (PST/PDT).

The second column of the table includes study content. The third column includes practice. The fourth column includes assessment.

Each week begins with an embedded video where I talk with students about the study week. I create an interactive mind map to guide students through the chapter topic. I use VoiceThread to create short lecture/discussion segments that are linked to subtopics of the mind map diagram. Click on the "V" icon on the mind map to view a streaming video lecture segment.

Homework is completed through WileyPlus, an online homework system that supports the Kieso textbook. I talked with Jerry Weygandt about how I select exercises for homework assignments.

Homework assignments are at the concept-technique level. Weekly quiz questions are open-book, research-based and go deeper into concepts and critical thinking. Each Sunday morning, I post links to suggested solutions and support explanations for quiz questions.

The interactive class assignments schedule is asynchronous and combines features of several Web 2.0 technology tools. When a student needs "live" contact, we use Skype. This works great.

Student feedback has been excellent. During Spring Quarter 2010, UCLA Extension students rated the course 8.5 out of 9.0. It was a great class. Everyone enjoyed the give-and-take during the term.

I would really appreciate your feedback comments about the interactive class assignments schedule. This is one example of what I am doing. I am working on a paper that describes how to use technology to create "teaching presence" in the teaching-learning experience.

If you would be interested, perhaps we could use Skype to talk about the class assignments schedule.

Best wishes,

Rick Lillie
Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397

Email: rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone: (909) 537-5726
Skype (Username): ricklillie

On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:
“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.” (Joe Hoyle)

The iPad Decision
Some CPAs swear by the iPad, calling it an indispensable business tool. Other CPAs believe Apple's tablet is about as useful as a legless table. This article examines the iPad's strengths and weaknesses, introduces the top apps and accessories, and gives guidelines for deciding if the iPad is right for you and your business.
http://email.aicpa.org/cgi-bin15/DM/t/eit20bAne80GTt0Bpwt0Ea

"Colleges Take Varied Approaches to iPad Experiments, With Mixed Results," by Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 19, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/colleges-take-varied-approaches-to-ipad-experiments-with-mixed-results/33749?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Video Tutorial
"Windows on an Ipad," MIT's Technology Review, January 30, 2012 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=796&nlid=nldly&nld=2012-01-31

"Working In Word, Excel, PowerPoint on an iPad," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577154840906816210.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_RightMostPopular

Although Apple's popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn't a big hit with folks who'd like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents.

While Microsoft has released a number of apps for the iPad, it hasn't yet released an iPad version of Office. There are a number of valuable apps that can create or edit Office documents, such as Quickoffice Pro, Documents To Go and the iPad version of Apple's own iWork suite. But their fidelity with Office documents created on a Windows PC or a Mac isn't perfect.

This week, Onlive Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., is releasing an app that brings the full, genuine Windows versions of the key Office productivity apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—to the iPad. And it's free. These are the real programs. They look and work just like they do on a real Windows PC. They let you create or edit genuine Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

I've been testing a pre-release version of this new app, called OnLive Desktop, which the company says will be available in the next few days in Apple's app store. More information is at desktop.onlive.com.

My verdict is that it works, but with some caveats, limitations and rough edges. Some of these downsides are inherent in the product, while others have to do with the mismatch between the iPad's touch interface and the fact that Office for Windows was primarily designed for a physical keyboard and mouse.

Creating or editing long documents on a tablet with a virtual on-screen keyboard is a chore, no matter what Office-type app you choose. So, although it isn't a requirement, I strongly recommend that users of OnLive Desktop employ one of the many add-on wireless keyboards for the iPad.

OnLive Desktop is a cloud-based app. That means it doesn't actually install Office on your iPad. It acts as a gateway to a remote server where Windows 7, and the three Office apps, are actually running. You create an account, sign in, and Windows pops up on your iPad, with icons allowing you to launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint. (There are also a few other, minor Windows programs included, like Notepad, Calculator and Paint.)

In my tests, the Office apps launched and worked smoothly and quickly, without any noticeable lag, despite the fact that they were operating remotely. Although this worked better for me on my fast home Internet connection, it also worked pretty well on a much slower hotel connection.

Like Office itself, the documents you create or modify don't live on the iPad. Instead, they go to a cloud-based repository, a sort of virtual hard disk. When you sign into OnLive Desktop, you see your documents in the standard Windows documents folder, which is actually on the remote server. The company says that this document storage won't be available until a few days after the app becomes available.

To get files into and out of OnLive Desktop, you log into a Web site on your PC or Mac, where you see all the documents you've saved to your cloud repository. You can use this Web site to upload and download files to your OnLive Desktop account. Any changes made will be automatically synced, the company says, though I wasn't able to test that capability in my pre-release version.

Because it's a cloud-based service, OnLive Desktop won't work offline, such as in planes without Wi-Fi. And it can be finicky about network speeds. It requires a wireless network with at least 1 megabit per second of download speed, and works best with at least 1.5 to 2.0 megabits. Many hotels have trouble delivering those speeds, and, in my tests, the app refused to start in a hotel twice, claiming insufficient network speed when the hotel Wi-Fi was overloaded.

The free version of the app has some other limitations. You get just 2 gigabytes of file storage, there's no Web browser or email program like Outlook included, and you can't install additional software. If many users are trying to log onto the OnLive Desktop servers at once, you may have to wait your turn to use Office.

In the coming weeks, the company plans to launch a Pro version, which will cost $10 a month. It will offer 50 GB of cloud document storage, "priority" access to the servers, a Web browser, and the ability to install some added programs. It will also allow you to collaborate on documents with other users, or even to chat with, and present material to, groups of other OnLive Desktop users.

The company also plans to offer OnLive Desktop on Android tablets, PCs and Macs, and iPhones.

In my tests, I was able to create documents on an iPad in each of the three cloud-based Office programs. I was able to download them to a computer, and alter them on both the iPad and computer. I was also able to upload files from the computer for use in OnLive Desktop.

OnLive Desktop can't use the iPad's built-in virtual keyboard, but it can use the virtual keyboard built into Windows 7 and Windows' limited touch features and handwriting recognition. As noted above, I recommend using a wireless physical keyboard. But even these aren't a perfect solution, because the ones that work with the iPad can't send common Windows keyboard commands to OnLive Desktop, so you wind up moving between the keyboard and the touch screen, which can be frustrating. And you can't use a mouse.

Another drawback is that OnLive Desktop is entirely isolated from the rest of the iPad. Unlike Office-compatible apps that install directly on the tablet, this cloud-based service can't, for instance, be used to open Office documents you receive via email on the iPad. And, at least at first, the only way you can get files into and out of OnLive Desktop is through its Web-accessible cloud-storage service. The free version has no email capability, and the app doesn't support common file-transfer services like Dropbox or SugarSync. The company says it hopes to add those.

OnLive Desktop competes not only with the iPad's Office clones, but with iPad apps that let you remotely access and control your own PCs and Macs, and thus use Office and other computer software on those.

Continued in article

Video Messaging and Self-Testing

September 27, 2011 message from Amy Dunbar

Has anyone used Google docs to create self-tests? I have been creating self-tests in Flash, but I just discovered that I can create a “form” in Google docs that results in a self-test. I can edit the form after I have created it, but if I delete a question it still stays in the Excel doc that records the student answers. I’m not sure what I am doing wrong.

I am trying to get undergrads to engage in class, and I thought the Google self-tests might be one way. One thing I know for sure is that the way I am using Powerpoint doesn’t work. For example, I developed slides to illustrate a problem step by step. Then I ask a similar question, and it’s like I’m speaking a different language. My students just tune out when the slides start going.

If the Google self-test works like I think it could, I could post a link to a self-test in a web page or slide, have the students work the question in class and submit the answer, and then bring up the answers in the Excel sheet to see in real time if students are understanding the concept. I think clickers would do the same thing, but I should have adopted those at the beginning of the semester.

I’m open to any other suggestions you might have.

Amy

September 27, 2011 reply from Rick Lillie

Hi Amy,

Have you considered using VoiceThread as an alternative to the PowerPoint slides? You can still use PowerPoint slides or your own slides and mark them up as you talk about each slide. Rather than audio narration, you can use video narration that displays in a separate side window to the presentation screen.

This approach works much the same way as if you projected an image onto a whiteboard in the classroom and then talked to students while marking up the image. I use this technique in fully online classes. Students really like this approach. It might get you a better result than what you describe in your AECM post.

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets to create an online scantron type answer sheet for quizzes. The underlying spreadsheet format is set up in the spreadsheet. The form is tied to the spreadsheet. You can select a theme to make the form look more appealing to students.

You should be able to modify the spreadsheet and then resave or recreate the form. Changes should then be reflected in the online form.

I hope this helps.

Rick Lillie
CalState San Bernardino

September 27, 2011 reply from Ruth Bender

Hi Amy

I don’t use it myself, but you might like to read this page and the comments below it. @russeltarr has tweeted about it a few times.

http://classtools.net/twitter/tweet.php?message=How%2520to%2520create%2520self-grading%2520quizzes%2520using%2520Google%2520Forms&url=http://www.robinstechtips.com/?p=394

Regards

Ruth
Dr Ruth Bender
Cranfield School of Management
UK

September 27, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar

WOW! That was a great talk with Rick Lillie. I am going to check out eyejot (http://www.eyejot.com/)

and voicethread. (http://voicethread.com/). Also Rick suggested the following book:

http://www.amazon.com/-Learning-Science-Instruction-Guidelines-Multimedia/dp/0470874309/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317147358&sr=1-1#_

Rick also said he posts on a teaching/learning blog on the AAA Commons.

Amy

Bob Jensen's links to Tools of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Hewlett Packard TouchPad a Poor Alternative to iPad at this Point in Time
TouchPad Visual Overview --- http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/tablets/231000659
TouchPad Overview Video--- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_bE8TzgQOc&feature=pyv

"TouchPad Needs More Apps, Reboot to Rival iPad," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304450604576415863218975194.html

A small army of multitouch tablet computers has been launched this year to take on Apple's iPad, which has managed to sell 25 million units and attract 90,000 tablet-specific apps in just about 15 months, and is already in its second generation, the iPad 2. So far, none of these contenders has gained any significant traction with consumers or app developers.

Now, the world's largest PC maker, Hewlett-Packard, is entering the fray. On Friday, it will start selling the TouchPad, a 10-inch tablet with a slick, distinctive software interface. The TouchPad starts at $500, the same entry price as the iPad 2.

Clever Interface

I like the interface a lot. Instead of a screen full of app icons, the main screen of the TouchPad's operating system, called webOS, presents running apps as "cards"—large, live rectangles that you scroll through in a horizontal row.

When you tap a card, it fills the screen and is ready to use. To minimize it, you just swipe up on the bezel surrounding the screen. A second swipe takes you to a screen from which you can launch or download a new app. To get rid of a card, you just flick it upward, and it disappears. Multiple cards can run in the background.

And these cards are clever. For instance, the contacts and photo cards combine both local and online content, from sources like Google and Facebook; and cards with related functions, like an email message and an attachment you've opened, are stacked atop one another.

You can make Skype video and audio calls directly from the messaging apps. And if you buy a forthcoming H-P webOS smartphone, you can link it to the tablet wirelessly, and send and receive voice calls and text messages from the tablet, or transfer a Web page from the phone by tapping the phone on the tablet.

Hardware and Battery

But the tablet's hardware is bulbous and heavy compared with the iPad 2 or the svelte Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, an Android tablet. Worse, it's missing some key features common on the other tablets, like a rear camera or even a camera app for taking videos and still pictures. It has a front camera that can be used only for video chats.

I found the TouchPad's battery life was only 60% that of the iPad 2. In my standard tablet battery test, where I set the screen brightness to 75%, keep the Wi-Fi connection active and play local videos back to back, the TouchPad lasted just 6 hours and 5 minutes, compared with 10 hours and 9 minutes for the iPad 2. H-P claims 9 hours of continuous video playback, but that's with Wi-Fi turned off. In mixed use, battery life was decent. Apps

When H-P bought webOS a year ago this week as part of its purchase of the system's inventor, Palm, one hope was that the giant company's clout would attract lots of apps to the platform. But the TouchPad will launch with just 300 tablet-optimized apps and only 6,200 webOS apps overall, most written for phones and only 70% of which can run on the tablet, in a small, phone-size window that can't be expanded. That compares with 425,000 total apps for the iPad and 200,000 for Android tablets, nearly all of which can run on tablets even if they aren't optimized for the tablet.

This first TouchPad has no app, such as Netflix, for streaming TV shows or movies (though its Web browser, unlike the iPad's, can run Adobe Flash and can stream videos via the Web). Its version of the QuickOffice productivity suite, unlike the same product on the iPad, can't edit documents, but merely displays them. My test unit lacked stores for directly downloading TV shows, movies and music. H-P says a music store will be available at launch and a video download store "shortly" after launch. Glitches

I also ran into plenty of bugs in my tests, even though H-P said I was testing a production unit. For instance, on various occasions, the email app failed to display the contents of messages, the photos app failed to display pictures, and the game "Angry Birds" crashed repeatedly. All of these problems required a reboot of the device to resolve.

. . .

Bottom line

H-P stresses that webOS is a platform and that the TouchPad is just one iteration of it. The company plans to add the operating system to numerous devices, including laptops, and hopes that this scale will attract many more apps. And it pledges continuous updates to fix the current shortcomings.

But, at least for now, I can't recommend the TouchPad over the iPad 2.

Jensen Comment
All the competitors to iPad have the advantage of being able to play Adobe Flash.

Question
How can you best publish books, including multimedia and user interactive books, on the Web?
Note that interactive books may have quizzes and examinations where answers are sent back for grading.

Answer
There is no optimal software for all authors, because different alternatives have different features that will appeal to authors in varying degrees. Below are a few of the leading alternatives.

You can read more about the terminology and history of both course authoring software and course (learning) management software at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

How Web Pages Work --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Author it in MS Word and save as an HTML file

Advantages

The main advantage is that most authors are familiar with how to write in MS Word.

This is the easiest Web alternative for authors who've already written their books in MS Word. All an author has to do is simply click on "File save as" and choose the HTM option in place of the usual DOC option. Updates of older HTM files created in MS Word are done in Word and the revised document can then be easily saved as an updated HTML file.

Saving a DOC file to an HTML file enables the book to be viewed in all Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Foxfox, Opera, and Safari.

Saving to an HTML file eliminates some MS Word features such as macros, but authors rarely write books with macros for readers.

MS Word is probably the best alternative for importing other MS Office content such as Excel and PowerPoint content.

HTML files work well in conjunction with extensive coding like XML and XBRL --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XMLRDF.htm
For example company filings with the SEC can now be viewed in interactive XBRL linked from HTML documents. It becomes rather simple send HTML book readers off to SEC interactive filings on HTML book pages.

Disadvantages

Saving as an HTML file loses some of the author's desired security alternatives that are optional for DOC files

Some of the features of imported content from Excel and PowerPoint may be lost when pasted into the DOC/HTML file in MS Word.

MS Word is not the best authoring alternative for multimedia and interactive content.

MS Word does not have a lot of the authoring wizards that are pre-programmed into other alternatives. For example, Toolbook has various wizards that make writing of examinations and answers to examinations much easier than writing them in MS Word.

MS Word does not have built-in features for writing learning simulations and scenarios.

Author it in MS Word and save as a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file

Advantages

This has all the ease of authoring in MS Word.

PDF reader files are free and it's easy to update these readers from Adobe.

Adobe Acrobat has the best security alternatives for protection of copyrighted material of all the Web publishing alternatives which is the main reason the major publishing firms choose PDF files when they want to make books available on the Web. For example, it's possible to make it impossible to easily select text for cut and paste from a clipboard.

You can see how this format is used in the many free electronic textbooks now available in most academic disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Disadvantages

Some of the features of imported content from Excel and PowerPoint may be lost when pasted into the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat.

MS Word is not the best authoring alternative for multimedia and interactive content. This content cannot be added in Acrobat since Acrobat itself is not authoring software.

MS Word does not have a lot of the authoring wizards that are pre-programmed into other alternatives. For example, Toolbook has various wizards that make writing of examinations and answers to examinations much easier than writing them in MS Word.

MS Word does not have built-in features for writing learning simulations and scenarios.

Author it directly into HTML files using such authoring software as FrontPage or Dreamweaver

Advantages

HTML authoring software has some features that are not be available when saving DOC files as HTML files.

FrontPage is more than authoring software. It can be used as a complete Website system.

Some authors, not me, find Dreamweaver easier to use as an authoring tool without some of what I call FrontPage bugs and complexities.

Disadvantages

Authoring directly in HTML loses some of the author's desired security alternatives that are optional for DOC and PDF files

Some of the features of imported content from Excel and PowerPoint may be lost when pasted into the HTML file..

MS Word is not the best authoring alternative for multimedia and interactive content.

HTML authoring software does not have a lot of the authoring wizards that are pre-programmed into other alternatives. For example, Toolbook has various wizards that make writing of examinations and answers to examinations much easier than writing them in MS Word.

HTML authoring is not an efficient alternative for pasting in multimedia.

MS Word does not have built-in features for writing learning simulations and scenarios.

Author it in Toolbook that automatically saves files in HTML/DHTML files

Advantages

Although I've not yet tried the latest version of Toolbook Instructor, authors who use this software contend it is much easier to use than HTML software such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver. One of the main advantages is that shells for writing book chapters are already pre-programmed. Watch the video at http://www.toolbook.com/demos/toolBook_demo/index.html

It is much much easier to author multimedia and interaction (such as examinations) in Toolbook than in HTML software such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Watch the video at http://www.toolbook.com/demos/toolBook_demo/index.html
You can author interactive books in either Toolbook Instructor or ToolBook Assistant.

Toolbook makes it quite easy to author animations using built-in wizards.

Whereas early versions of Toolbook required Toolbook Reader software, Toolbook now saves the files in HTML or DHTML files that can be read in major Web browsers such as Internet Explorer.

ToolBook also has a foreign language translation system that automatically translates books into other languages --- http://www.toolbook.com/learn_translation_system.php

Disadvantages

Toolbook authoring software is not commonly provided free by colleges as part of the installed software that computer centers pre-install in all college-owned computers using campus wide license agreements. The single-user license is currently $2,795 for Toolbook Instructor Version 9.01 as of March 2008. There are group-license discounts.

Although I've not yet gone back to ToolBook, I was an early Toolbook enthusiast in the 1990s. One of my constant complaints in those days was the tendency of the company to send out software before its time and let customers find the many bugs in the system. The company's technical support often had not yet discovered the problems or their solutions. Toolbook today has only a miniscule part of the Web authoring market. Being small means that it will take longer to discover and correct bugs vis-a-vis big market share alternatives like MS Word and Adobe Acrobat. In fairness, however, it is now easier for Toolbook to pre-test its software than it was back in the days of its bug-saturated OpenScript scripting code. I'm just about convinced to give Toolbook another chance for my Web authoring. I've delayed this long because of memories of the days and weeks I sometimes wasted using bugged-up OpenScript software.

If the book contains animation and interactive features requiring DHTML above and beyond simple HTML, this may restrict readers to read books in a smaller subset of Web browsers that are DHTML compliant. Fortunately Internet Explorer is DHTML compliant. But if DHTML declines in popularity among authors worldwide, newer browsers may eliminate these rather expensive code blocks from browsers. Fortunately there's no immediate threat of this happening.

DHTML itself is a very inefficient coding/markup scripting alternative. More than a hundred lines of code may have to be written for a very simple task. This highly restricts authoring creativity of animations and interactions. Authors in Toolbook are for all practical purposes limited to the pre-scripted templates provided in Toolbook.

Most colleges and business firms have firewalls that prevent two-way communication via DHTML such as when a student fills out the answers to an examination and then clicks on a "Send" button to transmit the an answer or set of answers to graders on campus. Some universities allow their Blackboard servers to receive answer files.

A cheap alternative for penetrating a firewall is to attach an answer file to an email message that penetrates campus firewalls. This can even be done via instant messaging with live graders responding to each answer in real time. But there are huge security risks to opening email attachments. Students can innocently or knowingly attach bad things to attached messages that will destroy your computer. Graders can reduce the risk by telling students that they will only open attached TXT files such as those generated in Wordpad.

Another alternative is to run your own server that will allow student returned answer files to penetrate the firewall (firewalls can be adjusted for degrees of security). If done right this is enormously expensive. First you must hire technicians to maintain the system. Second you much install back up systems such as RAID.

Another alternative is to hire a commercial online testing service our course management service, including Blackboard, that allows student returned answer files to penetrate its firewalls. Such services off campus, including Blackboard, will even serve up your entire book, although it is possible to have them only serve up the examinations and receive returned student answer files. Some testing services have course management systems and will serve up and manage entire courses and tutorials.
Examples such as eCollege are reviewed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Other examples of testing services are provided at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardized_test

At this point you may want to read about SCORM standards --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORM

March 23, 2008 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@rio.edu]

Bob:
In respect to sending exam scores and exam answers as email attachments - it really isn't effective in just about any content authoring tool that offers it - Camtasia, Toolbook or Captivate because of security issues. Before the email goes out it goes to the email client and the student can edit the exam score if they wished. Because of security issues the "owner" of the system should be the only one to control outgoing messages.

Author it as an interactive video (probably a flash video) file.

Advantages

Youth of today prefer video and animated games to reading an many, many instances. Even us venerable readers often prefer short video tutorials of complicated tasks rather than having to read the manual. For example, I much prefer to watch a video on how to install and operate hardware/software than having to read the confusing manual. Demonstrating is often a better pedagogy than reading.

The video alternative is better for certain types of handicapped users such as attention deficit readers, partly blind readers, and users who like an easy choice of subtitles for use in alternative languages such as English subtitles to Japanese learning videos.

Adobe Flash interactive videos can be created from the relatively inexpensive Camtasia Producer software suite that offers various video compression choices including Adobe Flash. Another alternative is Adobe's Captivate3. Interactive Flash videos allow users to navigate nonlinearly through video modules. For example, it is easy to repeat short segments on the fly or drill down into details when a user chooses to drill down further or skip details when desired. I find interactive video authoring to be somewhat complicated for authors but neat for readers.

It is possible to author books that are viewed by users as streaming video rather than files that have to be downloaded into a user's computer. This has the advantage of not requiring large amounts of storage capacity on a users computer. This also makes it much more difficult for users to save and modify the video files. It is possible to capture and save streaming video, but its somewhat technical and there probably will be a downgrading of quality for inexpensive capturing alternatives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

Disadvantages

Even interactive video cannot be navigated as efficiently as text and large tables. A reader of text may speed read and scan paragraphs and tables at will rather than have to live with the navigation alternatives that authors pre-programmed into the video.

Video files, even highly compressed video files, are enormously costly in terms of massive file size. They can be put on DVD disks or auxiliary storage such as thumb drives. But downloading on the Web may be very slow for big files. It is best to author in multiple smaller files than huge files, although this can limited interactive navigation through a video book.

Streaming video overcomes the file storage problems, but there are drawbacks since users of streaming video must generally be on high bandwidth Internet connections. Also streaming videos must be served up from streaming video broadcasters. Most colleges do not broadcast streaming video, but there are commercial broadcasters available to authors. For example see the broadcast service available from Camtasia ScreenCast --- http://www.techsmith.com/screencast.asp

Video files are not optimal for simulation and game authoring, although they may be quite useful as modules within simulations and games.

How Web Pages Work --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm

May 20, 2010 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Respondus is a very powerful test generator and most publishers provide test banks in that format.
http://www.screencast.com/t/NTdlNzAw

Richard J. Campbell
School of Business
218 N. College Ave.
University of Rio Grande
Rio Grande, OH 45674
Voice:740-245-7288
http://faculty.rio.edu/campbell

Dell Sells 64-bit Windows 7 Computers But the Sales Division is Still Relying on 32-Bit Windows XP Computers
Maybe that tells us something about backwards compatibility problems of 64-bit Windows 7 computers

I sure would like to know if and why some 64-bit Windows 7 computers can run the videos such as the videos at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/
Most such computers, however, cannot run the above samples of part of my life's work.

My experience also tells me that there's something to being able to store your life's work in hard copy on library shelves.

When I recently bought a 64-bit Dell Studio 17 Laptop, Dell assigned me to a good guy named Charlie Mullins in the Sales Division. Charlie not only held my hand so to speak and tracked my order before my new computer was built, he continues to hold my hand figuratively-speaking throughout my three-year onsite service warranty that I paid extra for when I bought my computer.

When I have a hardware problem, I must pass through Charlie to get access to a Dell hardware technician who then walks me through some tests to determine if I really have a hardware problem. On this Charlie is very efficient and merely forwards my phone call to the hardware specialist. I am having troubles with a flaky on-off switch, and the hardware technician spent an hour with me yesterday on the phone guiding me through a series of tests. He even remotely took charge operating my new computer. It turns out that I really do need a new switch and possibly a new motherboard such at a hardware technician will soon visit my house. Since I live in the far-away New Hampshire mountains some Dell technician may have to travel all the way from Boston, thereby giving me his entire day and maybe more just to replace a switch (I think the motherboard is fine).

I also have a problem in that a huge part of my life's work producing educational media files will run perfectly on my old Dell 32-bit XP laptop, but my life's work will not run on my new Dell 64-bit laptop due to what a popup claims are missing codecs. It turns out that this is a huge problem for Microsoft to the extent that the 64-bit Windows Media Player in Windows 7 is not the default WMP player you see on your screen. Microsoft embeds a 32-bit WMP player in Windows 7 that is the default player in your new 64-bit Windows 7 machine. The reason is the shortage of 64-bit codecs for the world of media playback. But if you choose to do so, a few techies in the world know how to change to a 64-bit WMP:
WMP 64-bit switch --- http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/10/25/how-to-set-64-bit-windows-media-player-12-wmp12-as-default-player/

Things get more complicated when I have a software problem under warranty on my new computer. Dell only offers a warranty on applications that are built into the Windows 7 operating system and not other software that Dell installs such as MS Office software. Both the 32-bit and 64-bit WMP applications are buried in the operating system, so I argued with Charlie Mullins that my WMP problem is under warranty. He's now writing up a proposal pleading with Level 2 technicians at Dell to talk to me.

I turns out that I do not have to go through Charlie to reach Level 1 technicians at Dell. I first did so with my codec problems. Two Level 1 technicians concluded that my codec problem cannot be solved. I will have to keep keep my old XP computer running for the rest of my life if I want to replay my life's work. And so will any other accounting educator and researcher who wants to view the videos of my professional career.

This just does not seem right, so I want access to Level 2 experts at Dell. However, to do so I have to describe my problem to Charlie Mullins who then must write up a formal proposal on my behalf to try to convince Level 2 experts to consider my problem. Two Level 1 technicians at Dell who declared my problem unsolvable privately admitted they did not understand problems of missing codecs and how to resolve the problems of not having codecs present in the Windows 7 operating system that were and still are present in the old Windows XP operating system.

When sending Charlie an email describing my problem I asked him to try to run any one of these sample accounting theory wmv video files on an XP machine and a Windows 7 machine ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/
In my case all the wmv videos run perfectly on my old Windows XP machine and not on my new 64-bit machine. By the way, many people have by now contacted me claiming they cannot run my accounting education and research videos on their 64-bit computers, although a few have mysteriously managed to get them to run on their 64-bit computers. In most cases they don't fully understand why they work on their 64-bit Windows operating machines.

By the way, the Quicktime player from Apple never would play my wmv files. Nor will any other video player such as VLC that I installed play my life's work on a 64-bit machine even though these players work fine on my 32-bit machine.

Charlie wrote back and informed me that he cannot try to run my sample videos linked above on a 64-bit computer, because nobody in his Sales Division at Dell has a 64-bit computer even though virtually all the computers sold by this division are now 64-bit computers. I'm not sure Charlie was supposed to let this out, but to me this tells me something about Dell still having worries about leaving the 32-bit architecture.

One sign of getting too old is when years of a professor's work can no longer be used under current versions of hardware and software. It's a little like having a double tree for horses on a wagon in the era of tractors or an old threshing machine in the era of harvesting combines.

The real definitive sign is when your wife wants you evaluated on the PBS "Antiques Road Show."

My experience also tells me that there's something to being able to store your life's work in hard copy on library shelves.

I sure would like to know if and why some 64-bit Windows 7 computers can run the videos such as the videos at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/

A Bit of History
This reminds me of when Apple used to come out with new versions of the Mac operating system that were not backwards compatible. I recall sharing a cab in Manhattan with the University of Waterloo's Efrim Boritz years ago. Efrim grumbled that Apple had destroyed years of his work by not making the new version of the Mac operating system sufficiently compatible with an updated version.

For years one huge advantage of Microsoft was insistance on making new versions of DOS compatible with older versions which led to millions of lines of code that would've been unnecessary if new versions of DOS were not backwards compatible.

That does not seem to be the case today.

Boo on TechSmith! Boo on Microsoft! Boo on Apple!

They are sometimes uncaringly destroying years of our work with new upgrades.

Author it in simulation/game authoring software, including Second Choice virtual learning

Advantages

Simulation, interactive game, and virtual learning software can do things that just are not possible in other authoring software. You can read about some of the authoring alternatives at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_software

Virtual learning books used to be expensive to author and sometimes required computers more powerful than cheap PCs. Second Life is an increasing possible authoring alternative that is cheap and relatively easy for authoring --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Video and computer games have huge attractions to 21st Century learners who grew up enthralled with playing such games in arcades and at home. These games are a way of reaching certain learners who are turned off by more traditional pedagogy. You can read more about learning games and edutainment at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
The above site also links to some relatively inexpensive software for authoring learning games.

Disadvantages

Simulation, learning games, and virtual learning systems sometime sound better on paper than they deliver in real life. These can be quite time consuming for students relative to other alternatives for a defined set of learning content. You can read about some of the problems at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Artificial worlds are just that --- artificial. It is only possible to program in a miniscule number of factors from the myriad of contingency factors and combinations of factors in the real world.

Author it in some of the other surviving course (learning) management software described at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Advantages

Its one thing to author a book or a tutorial. It's quite another to manage an entire course with software systems. Course (learning) management software (CMS/LMS) software often includes software for authoring books and lesson tutorials. CMS software, for example, often integrates learning modules with e-Mail chat rooms and other student networks.

CMS software can offers different levels of security. For example, alternatives like Blackboard and Moodle allow authors to control access to students enrolled in a course rather than making the materials available to the world on a Web server.

Disadvantages

Authoring software embedded in CMS/LMS systems often is not a full featured as software designed for book, simulation, game, and virtual world learning.

Blackboard increasingly has a monopoly on CMS/LMS systems and is beginning to abuse its monopoly privileges and pricing --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm

You can read more about the terminology and history of both course authoring software and course (learning) management software at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

How Web Pages Work --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Toolbook, unlike Authorware, Still Lives
ToolBook --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ToolBook

September 25, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the update. At one time ToolBook was my main man, but those days are long gone. ToolBook has morphed through many changes in ownership and codes, but it does somehow manage a Darwinian evolution. It evolved from early versions that required authors to be techies in coding in OpenScript to later versions that feature over a dozen templates for relatively simple course authoring --- almost plug and play.

It seems to have caught on with training programs in some deep pockets corporations, including Big Four accounting firms. Some of the sample courses look great --- http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/resources/toolbook/learn_showcase.html?src=tbhome
However, there are no samples from universities as far as I can tell.
Is there a reason?

I do not see signs that the latest ToolBook upgrades have cracked into the academic market.

Are there any universities that have ToolBooks to demo?

Are there any college online education or training programs built on ToolBook?

Is there special academic pricing for Version 10?
Apparently not. The single-user price is $2,800 although pricing is complicated for company licenses.

ToolBook's Homepage --- http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/products/content-creation/tb_index.html

ToolBook 10:
Revolutionize the way you create e-Learning content ToolBook empowers subject matter experts and learning professionals to rapidly create interactive learning content, quizzes, assessments, and software simulations. With the convenience of on-demand and mobile access, your employees will learn more, faster—and deliver better business results.

Learning content that you create in ToolBook is distributed as HTML and delivered through almost any Learning Management System (LMS) available, including the SumTotal LMS, other SCORM/AICC-compliant LMS, or standalone systems.

Thousands of corporations use ToolBook today to deliver high-value learning. ToolBook users span multiple industries—including healthcare, manufacturing, finance, retail, government, education and more—and easily deploy across major operating systems, Web browsers, and mobile devices.

September 25, 2009 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Bob:
I'll be developing in Toolbook, and will share some of my output, but I am very busy until the end of the year at least.

They have become more aggressive in pricing - A single license is now in the $2,800 range, and I am not aware of any academic pricing. I usually shy away from academic licenses, since I sell my output in the commercial market, and most academic licenses prohibit that. Most content authoring tools like Toolbook do not have royalty sharing arrangements. You are paying big bucks for the product, why pay more?

Jeff Rhodes at www.plattecanyon.com is the smartest, most productive multimedia programmer in the world (IMHO) created a very profitable private corporation around Toolbook and multimedia development.

Richard

"Microsoft Office Simplified For the Web," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704575304575296681972150418.html
Word, Excel, PowerPoing

I am writing this in Microsoft Word, hardly an unusual way to author a document. But I'm not using Word as you know it—part of the large, complex Microsoft Office suite installed on your computer's hard drive. Instead, I am using a new, streamlined version of Word that for the first time resides on remote servers you reach through the Internet.

This new version of Word is used inside a Web browser. It works on both Windows PCs and Macs, and via the newer versions of the major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. It's free and it doesn't require you to have regular Office on your computer.

Word isn't the only Office component that's now available in a free online version. Microsoft has created similar simplified versions of Excel, PowerPoint and its OneNote note-taking program as part of the free online suite called Office Web Apps, which is available at office.live.com. To use the new online Office, you'll need a free account for the company's broader Windows Live online service.

WSJ's Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg takes a look at the new free, online version of Microsoft Office, called Office Web Apps. It's a stripped down version of the familiar desktop edition of Office, and runs on both PCs and Macs. Walt says it may be all you'll ever need in an Office suite. Microsoft is also releasing a new version of its traditional desktop Office for Windows next week, called Office 2010. But in my view, the online edition is the most interesting new development for consumers in this round of updates. It's part of the broader trend toward cloud computing—doing tasks online rather than with desktop programs. And it's meant to help the software giant compete with rival online office suites from competitors like Google and Zoho.

I've been testing Office Web Apps on both Windows and Mac computers, and in all four major browsers, and I like it. It has some downsides and is still a work in progress. It lacks many of the more sophisticated features of the local, desktop version of Office. In fact, Microsoft—apparently trying to protect its profitable desktop suite—refers to Office Web Apps as a "companion" to desktop Office, for "light" work.

Mossberg Mailbox Mossberg on buying an iPad for children But these are capable, if simpler, programs that look and feel like their desktop counterparts and they will likely meet the needs of many consumers who produce basic documents, even if they don't own desktop Office. Also, the new Web Apps are connected to a generous 25 gigabytes of free online storage for your documents, via a companion Microsoft online storage system called SkyDrive.

Another big benefit: Microsoft boasts its Office Web Apps produce documents that use the same file formats as the desktop programs and thus, look fully accurate when opened in desktop Office. The company calls this "fidelity." In my tests, this claim held true, at least on my Windows PC. (A revised version of Microsoft Office for the Mac, tuned to work with Web Apps, is in the works.)

The new version of the desktop Office suite also has many new features, but a lot of these are for power users or corporate users, and, overall, it isn't nearly as big a change as its predecessor, Office 2007. Among the new desktop features consumers will notice and use are the extension of the consolidated top tool bar called the "Ribbon," introduced in the 2007 version in most Office programs, to Outlook; a new unified view for printing, sharing and previewing documents, called "Backstage"; and richer graphics. You can also now customize the Ribbon.

In my tests of the streamlined Office Web Apps, I was able to use a variety of fonts and styles, insert and resize photos, and create tables. And I was able to view my documents, though not edit them, on an iPhone and iPad. This also works with other mobile devices.

One glitch I ran into in the Word Web App was that, if you use a tab to start a paragraph, it changes the left margin of each subsequent line. Microsoft says this is a bug and it is working to fix it.

Another downside for some users may be that the Web Apps only directly open documents from, and save them to, your online SkyDrive storage, not your hard disk. So you have to upload files from your hard disk to SkyDrive to edit them in the Web Apps. And, like most cloud-based programs, they can only be used when you're online.

There are numerous things you may be used to doing in desktop Office that can't be done in the online version. For instance, you can't drag photos by the corners to resize them, embed videos, create slide transitions or add new spreadsheet charts.

You can, with one click, open a Web version of your document in the full desktop program, to take advantage of richer editing. However, this only works with certain combinations of browsers and desktop Office versions.

Two of the Web apps, Excel and OneNote, allow multiple users to log on and work on the same document together. The others don't yet. In fact, in my tests, I couldn't open a Word document locally until I had closed it online, and vice versa. Microsoft says it is working on expanding simultaneous use to all the apps.

Office Web Apps are a good start for Microsoft at bringing its productivity expertise to the Web, and may be all many consumers need for creating simple documents.

Greg Smith, chief information officer at George Fox, said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask and print, and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on their notebooks. "That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent device," he said.
"Classroom iPad Programs Get Mixed Response," by Travis Kaya, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Classroom-iPad-Programs-Get/27046/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

A few weeks after a handful of colleges gave away iPads to determine the tablet's place in the classroom, students and faculty seem confident that the device has some future in academe.

But they're still not exactly sure where that might be.

At those early-adopter schools, iPads are competing with MacBooks as the students' go-to gadget for note taking and Web surfing. Zach Kramberg, a first-year student at George Fox University, which allowed incoming students to choose between a complimentary iPad or MacBook this fall, said the tablet has become an important tool for recording and organizing lecture notes. He also takes the device with him to the university's dimly lit chapel so he can follow along with an app called iBible. "The iPad's very easy to use once you figure them out," he said.

Still, Mr. Kramberg said the majority of students rely on bound Bibles in chapel and stick to pen and paper or MacBooks in the classroom.

Greg Smith, chief information officer at George Fox, said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask and print, and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on their notebooks. "That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent device," he said.

Mr. Smith said that the 67 students—10 percent of the freshman class—that opted for iPads over MacBooks are really excited about the technology but have not been "pushing the capabilities" of the device.

Caitlin Corning, a history professor at George Fox, said it's been hard to meld iPads into the curriculum because only a small subset of her students has the device. Ms. Corning used the iPad as a portable teaching tool during a student art trip to Europe this summer, flashing Van Gogh works on the screen when they were in the places he painted them. Translating that portable-classroom experience into her classroom back in Oregon, however, has not been easy. "It's still a work in progress," she said. "It's a little complex because only some of the freshmen have iPads."

Faculty members at Seton Hill University, which gave iPads to all full-time students, are working with the developers of an e-book app called Inkling to come up with new ways to integrate the iPad into classroom instruction. The textbook software—one of many in development—allows students to access interactive graphics and add notes as they read along. Faculty members can access the students' marginalia to see whether they understand the text. They can also remotely receive and answer questions from students in real time.

Catherine Giunta, an associate professor of business at Seton Hill, said the technology has changed the way students interact with their textbooks and how she interacts with her students. While reviewing the margin notes of a student in her marketing class, Ms. Giunta was able to pinpoint and correct a student's apparent misunderstanding of a concept that was going to be covered in class the next day. "The misunderstanding may not have been apparent until [the student] did a written report," Ms. Giunta said. "I could really give her individualized instruction and guidance."

As students and faculty members around the country feel around for new ways to integrate the iPad into academic life, a handful of programs are taking a more formal approach to finding its place in the classroom. Students in the Digital Cultures and Creativity program at the University of Maryland at College Park will turn a critical eye on the iPad as a study tool while integrating it into their curriculum. "I think [students are] taking a sort of wait-and-see approach," said Matthew Kirschenbaum, the program director and an associate professor of English.

Similarly, the faculty at Indiana University has formed a 24-member focus group to evaluate iPad-driven teaching strategies. The groups have started meeting this month to assess how their iPad experiments are going, with a preliminary report due in January. "It's meant to be a supportive, collaborative, formalized conversation," said Stacy Morrone, Indiana's associate dean of learning technologies. "We don't expect that everything will go perfectly."

Although not entirely related to the substance of the iPad educational debate, a pilot program at Long Island University was thrust into the spotlight over the weekend in an animated e-mail exchange between a college journalist and Apple's founder Steve Jobs. As Gawker reports it, complaints about a few unreturned media inquiries from a deadline-stressed reporter led to a curt "leave us alone" response from the Apple chief executive.

In the e-mail chain, Mr. Jobs said, "Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade."

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm

First Consider Learning On Your Own

How to Learn Accounting On Your Own

June 19, 2010 message from Tom Hood [tom@MACPA.ORG]

Greetings Colleagues,

I have two sons home for the summer asking if I know of any great resources to help them get ahead of Intermediate Accounting as they approach the fall semester. I figured I would go to the best source I know of to help them out – these two listservs.

So can you direct me to any on-line and other resources that may get them studying for Intermediate Accounting I and Intermediate Accounting II?

Also, what advice would you give them on how to approach these courses (one is in I and the older in II)?

I will also be sharing this on our student site…

On another note – we are working in an International Pavilion on CPA Island in Second Life and our Accounting Eductaion Pavilion (see details at www.cpaisland.com and www.slacpa.org ). We continue to offer free kiosks with links to your colleges and universities and free areas to meet as classes. We have an interne working this summer who can give you a demo and show you around – just send an e-mail to my attention ad mention the CPA Island.

Thanks,

Warmest regards,

Tom

Tom Hood, CPA.CITP CEO & Executive Director Maryland Association of CPAs Business Learning Institute
www.macpa.org
www.bizlearning.net

June 20, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Tom,

First of all consider video alternatives. More than 100 universities have set up channels on YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

Next take a topic list from a typical intermediate accounting textbook, some of which are free (not necessarily completely up to date for rapidly changing standards) at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Then search for the term "accounting" at http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400
Scroll down to find videos that might be relevant to intermediate accounting topics. Some of these videos are more up to date than even the latest textbooks.
Some of these videos are from the top teachers or top CPA firm leaders (like Jim Turley's videos) in the world.
Also note that if you search out the instructor (usually found at her/his university) you will often find more course materials available for downloading. Also email messages to these instructors may result in more shared learning materials.

But more importantly, Tom, consider the goals of your two sons in studying for intermediate accounting. The overriding goal of an intermediate accounting student is to eventually pass the CPA examination. For studying intermediate accounting I would have your sons dig directly into a CPA examination review course and focus on the answers to CPA examination questions in the topical areas identified above in intermediate accounting textbooks. They have to pick and chose topics found in an intermediate accounting textbook, because many CPA examination questions come from other courses such as advanced accounting and governmental accounting and tax accounting and managerial accounting.

A free CPA examination review package, complete with practice questions, answers, and examinations, is available at
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
If you want more video review modules for the CPA examination, then a commercial package is probably better ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010303CPAExam

There are some topics that are probably not totally up to date in even the latest available intermediate accounting textbooks. One is IFRS although, unless your sons will be taking intermediate accounting from an IFRS nut, I would probably not worry too much about technical IFRS problems on the CPA examination in the near future. However, great free materials for learning IFRS are available at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#IFRSlearning

In a typical intermediate accounting two semester sequence, much of the first semester is spent reviewing basic accounting (especially in universities that receive a large number of community college transfer students). If your sons need video reviews of basic accounting, I highly recommend Susan Crosson's video lectures. The links are at the bottom of the page at http://www.youtube.com/SusanCrosson
Look for "Financial Videos Organized by Topic."

Members of the American Accounting Association, including student members, can find some instructional helper materials at the AAA Commons ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home
Click on the menu choice "Teaching" and then "Browse resources."

Implied in all the above recommendations is a learning pedagogy that pretty much entails memory aiding and abetting in a traditional manner (study the problems and then study the textbook answers). At the other extreme there is better and longer-lasting metacognitive learning such as the award-winning BAM pedagogy (for an intermediate accounting two-course sequence) invented by Catanach, Croll, and Grinacker --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
This pedagogy is more like the real world where your supervisor gives you a problem to solve and you go out and solve it any way you can. You can study BAM's problems, but there are no answers provided to study. Students have to teach themselves by seeking out the answers from anywhere in the world.

Although the BAM pedagogy would be much more time consuming for your sons, you can probably get the Hydromate Case and some of the instructional support materials from Tony Catanach --- anthony.catanach@villanova.edu
If Tony is not available, Noah Barsky can help --- noah.barsky@villanova.edu

By the way, at the University of Virginia, where the BAM pedagogy was born, the passage rate on the CPA examination rose dramatically after switching to the BAM pedagogy in intermediate accounting, This is not surprising since you remember best those things you had to learn on your own. Of course many students looking for an easy way out hate the BAM pedagogy.

Bob Jensen

"So you want to learn to program?" by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/01/16/so-you-want-to-learn-to-program/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
Having taught both Fortran and COBOL at one point in my career, I will pass on this opportunity to upgrade my programming skills. However, these sound like valuable free resources for the younger generation headed for college or that generation of unemployable history majors seeking new skills.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

"Top 10 YouTube Videos Posted by Colleges, and What They Mean," by Rachel Wiseman, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 5, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/top-10-youtube-videos-posted-by-colleges-and-what-they-mean/32070?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

More than 400 colleges and universities have set up channels on YouTube as part of the YouTube EDU section of the popular video site, but university officials admit they are still experimenting with the service and learning what types of videos resonate with off-campus audiences.

With data provided by YouTube, The Chronicle has determined the 10 most popular videos on YouTube EDU of the 2010-11 academic year (from June 2010 to June 2011). Some college officials stress that popularity is not always their main goal—because many colleges upload lectures and study materials designed for those enrolled in the courses. Still, the list gives a sense of the variety of videos colleges post and their impact.

Star-studded commencement speeches seem to be the best way for colleges to draw viewers. Four graduation videos made it onto the top-10 list, and three of the four featured high-profile celebrity speakers: Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Conan O’Brien. According to YouTube officials, searches on the site for the phrase “commencement speech” have increased eightfold since 2008.

But the biggest hit of the year focused on a graduating student rather than a star speaker. UC Berkeley’s video, “Paralyzed student, Austin Whitney, walks at graduation,” topped the list, with over 471,000 views. The clip shows Mr. Whitney, a graduating senior who was paralyzed from the waist down before entering college, walking to receive his diploma, aided by a mechanized exoskeleton that UC Berkeley engineers designed for him.

Robotics videos were also crowd pleasers this year. The University of Pennsylvania’s baseball-pitching machine earned it a spot in the top 10, and the University of Chicago made it on the list twice for gadget-themed clips. The first, the “Universal Gripper,” displays a device researchers developed that can grip and move nearly any object regardless of shape or size. The other video investigates how the mechanized book-retrieval system in the university’s newly constructed library works. Jeremy Manier, the university’s news director, attributed the library video’s success to the fact that it could engage several Web communities: those concerned with libraries and the future of print; architecture enthusiasts; and techies. “It tells a good story and it’s got robots,” he said, adding jocularly that “robots rule the Internet.”

No traditional lectures made the list. The closest thing to a lecture is an MIT physics “module”—a 20-minute explanatory video by Walter H.G. Lewin, a professor of physics at the institute. It explains the physics behind a familiar dilemma: Which will make you more wet, walking or running in the rain?

Other academic lectures have proven quite popular, though: A Harvard University lecture series on the philosophy of justice has accumulated more than 1.6 million views since it was uploaded in September 2009.

Although other individual lectures may not receive a high number of hits, a growing number of colleges are posting them. Some universities, such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT, have begun posting all of the recorded lectures from selected courses, allowing viewers from around the world to tune in and see what goes on in their classrooms. By broadcasting their lectures, they “broaden the window of access” to their resources, said Ben Hubbard, the manager of UC Berkeley’s YouTube EDU channel. Through feedback from students and spikes in viewership during midterms and exams, Mr. Hubbard has inferred that the channel is actually being used as a study tool. However, he said, “We know that we haven’t had just students logging in 120 million times. We know we’re serving the public.”

It can be difficult to determine the factors that lead a college video to go viral, and many college-news offices and technology departments are still experimenting with ways to take full advantage of their presence on YouTube. Angela Y. Lin, EDU’s manager at YouTube, says the service provides “resources for all of our partners regarding how to optimize their channels,” including statistics on user views, as well as suggestions such as adding metadata, creating playlists, and tagging keywords.

But the success of a video is ultimately determined by the whims of The Crowd. “There is a certain mystery or alchemy about what captures the public’s minds,” said Dan Mogulof, a UC Berkeley spokesman. “There are common themes and variables that can increase the chance of something becoming popular, but it’s not a simple formula.”

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on prestigious universities that open share course videos and other course materials for free ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Khan Academy Home Page --- http://www.khanacademy.org/
This site lists the course categories (none for accounting)

2,300+ YouTube Free Educational Videos from Salman Khan
"Salman Khan: The Messiah of Math: Can an ex-hedge fund guy and his nonprofit Khan Academy make American school kids competitive again?" by Bryant Urstadt, Business Week, May 19, 2011 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_22/b4230072816925.htm?link_position=link3

In August 2004, Salman Khan agreed to help his niece, Nadia, with her math homework. Nadia was headed into seventh grade in New Orleans, where Khan had grown up, but she hadn't been placed in her private school's advanced math track, which to a motivated parent these days is a little bit like hearing your child has just been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. In particular, Nadia was having trouble with unit conversion, turning gallons into liters and ounces into grams.

Math was something Khan, then 28, understood. It was one of his majors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with computer science and electrical engineering. He had gone on to get a master's in computer science and electrical engineering, also at MIT, and then an MBA from Harvard. He was working in Boston at the time for Daniel Wohl, who ran a hedge fund called Wohl Capital Management. Khan, an analyst, was the only employee.

Being a bit of a geek, Khan put Yahoo!'s (YHOO) Messenger to work to help Nadia, using the Doodle function to let him illustrate concepts for his niece as they spoke on the phone. Then he wrote some code that generated problems she could do on a website. With Khan's help, Nadia made it into the fast track, and her younger brothers Arman and Ali signed on for Khan's tutoring as well. Then they brought in some of their friends. Khan built his site out a little more, grouping the concepts into "modules" and creating a database that would keep track of how many problems the kids had tried and how they had fared, so he'd know how each of his charges was progressing.

Messenger didn't make sense with multiple viewers, so he started creating videos that he could upload to YouTube. This required a Wacom tablet with an electronic pen, which cost about $80. The videos were each about 10 minutes long and contained two elements: his blackboard-style diagrams—Khan happens to be an excellent sketcher—and his voice-over explaining things like greatest common divisors and equivalent fractions. He posted the first video on Nov. 16, 2006; in it, he explained the basics of least common multiples. Soon other students, not all children, were checking out his videos, then watching them all, then sending him notes telling him that he had saved their math careers, too.

Less than five years later, Khan's sideline has turned into more than just his profession. He's now a quasi-religious figure in a country desperate for a math Moses. His free website, dubbed the Khan Academy, may well be the most popular educational site in the world. Last month about 2 million students visited. MIT's OpenCourseWare site, by comparison, has been around since 2001 and averages 1 million visits each month. He has posted more than 2,300 videos, beginning with simple addition and going all the way to subjects such as Green's theorem, normally found in a college calculus syllabus. He's adding videos on accounting, the credit crisis, the French Revolution, and the SAT and GMAT, among other things. He masters the subjects himself and then teaches them. As of the end of April, he claims to have served up more than 54 million individual lessons.

His program has also spread from the homes of online learners to classrooms around the world, to the point that, in at least a few classrooms, it has supplanted textbooks. (Students often write Khan that they aced a course without opening their texts, though Khan doesn't post these notes on his site.) Dan Meyer, a high school math teacher and Stanford University PhD candidate in education, puts it this way: "If you're teaching math in this country right now, then there's pretty much no way you haven't heard of Salman Khan."

Continued in article

"Video: Salman Khan @ Google 'Free World Class Virtual School(s)'," Simoleon Sense, March 28, 2011 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-salman-khan-google-free-world-class-virtual-schools/

Salman Khan is the founder and faculty of Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ a not-for-profit educational organization. With the stated mission “of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere”, the Academy supplies a free online collection of over 2,000 videos on mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and economics.

In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin in mathematics using Yahoo!’s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought his tutorial, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube. Their popularity there and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job in finance in 2009 and focus on the Academy full-time.

Khan Academy’s channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy has 45+ million views so far and it’s one of YouTube’s most successful academic partners.

In September 2010, Google announced they would be providing the Khan Academy with $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate their core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages, as part of Project 10^100, http://www.project10tothe100.com/.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing tutorials and videos ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on online training and education alternatives are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

"What Can We (live teachers) Add?" by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Financial Accounting Blog, July 22, 2010 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-do-we-add.html

Over the last few years, my wife and I have become big fans of the video classes produced by The Teaching Company. Two or three times per week, we will watch a 30 or 45-minute video lecture on art or literature or history or religion prepared by a college teacher. I am amazed by how much I now know about topics that once were totally foreign to me.

In watching these videos, I am occasionally reminded of a question that comes up in colleges now and then: Do we need live instructors? Why don’t we find the very best college teachers and film their classes? Then, put those videos up on the Internet and everyone (or, at least, our students) can learn the material without the need of a classroom or a teacher.

Well, the easy answer to that query is that a college education has to be more than the conveyance of information to a passive student taking notes. So, doesn’t that automatically raise the next question that we need to address as teachers: What are we adding in our classes that goes beyond the conveyance of information to a passive student? If the answer is nothing, then maybe we should all be replaced by videos.

As you get ready for the fall semester, ponder how you are going to add value to your students. --“I’m going to tell them some interesting stories.” -- A video can tell them hundreds of interesting stories. --“I’m going to tell them about the history of my discipline.” -- A video can tell them about the history of your discipline. --“I’m going to walk them step-by-step through the essential core of the disciple.” - A video can walk students through the essential core of the discipline.

Those are all important to a class but they could just as easily be done by a person on video. What are you going to do this coming semester in your classes that a video could not do?

We live in a time when too many people believed that they could not be replaced until they were replaced. My assumption is that if you add real value to a process, you become essential. Otherwise, someone will eventually catch on that you can be replaced.

There are many, many ways that teachers add value to the students in their classes. How will you do that in the coming fall? What will you do that couldn’t be replaced by a video?

Jensen Comment
Believe it or not, I think the most important thing we can add is to be live role models day-to-day for our students. We can be role models regarding what it means to be professionally competent (without necessarily awing them in every class). We can be role models for such other things in life as empathy, caring, ethics, human frailty, and yes even fashion.

Fashion?
Professors who show up in class wearing T-shirts, jeans, and open toe sandals really turn me off. Perhaps that's because I'm an old farm boy who, at one time, was awed by male professionals who wore white shirts and neckties to work. Our most scruffy professors will spiff up when applying for a job or make a speech at a local Rotary Club luncheon. What makes our students less important day-to-day?

But the most important thing we add is to awe our students with both our professional competence combined with professional honesty in admitting things we cannot answer. Watching a talking head on television can be really educational, but having a live teacher fumble about out loud while trying to reason out a brilliant answer can be even more educational (even if it is more time consuming). Teachers demonstrate how real-world thinking takes us down blind alleys and stumbling blocks of dumb ideas. Students leave our courses with a better understanding of what a non-perfect world of reasoning is really like (as long as our stumbling really gets eventually us to the best answers).

The latest exchange of AECM messaging regarding the question raised by Tom Selling about sales discounts provides a perfect example of great teachers stumbling about trying to find the best answer. If Carla had been the first to respond it would've been disappointing to the AECM learning process.

What is sad in teaching, as illustrated by many lurkers on the AECM, is the hesitancy of some teachers to be fearful of subjecting their incomplete or flawed reasoning to students and peers. The classic case is the teacher who delivers only canned lectures and cases in which he or she only delivers perfect reasoning that are much like prepared answers being read from a teleprompter. This can make students fearful that they can never be as smart as their teachers who always seem to know the best answers.

I love teachers who have the confidence to even provide answers they know are wrong and then testing how students discover the errors and are willing to point them out. This, by the way, is part of the BAM pedagogy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
Probably the best teaching lies in asking the best questions without telling or even knowing the best answers.

Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM --- http://www.tiesteach.org/

From Emory University
Study Skills Tip Sheets & Advice --- http://www.college.emory.edu/home/academic/learning/studyskillsconsultations/tips.html

Advice From Students

Essential Tips for Freshmen (and other students too) (PDF)

Science and Math Tips for Success (PDF)

Humanities and Social Science Tips for Success (PDF)

Study Skills Tip Sheets

Learning Styles (PDF)

Memory & Concentration (PDF)

Note-taking (PDF)

Reading (PDF)

Time Management (PDF)

Test Preparation (PDF)

Test Taking (PDF)

Links to Academic Resources

GPA Grade Calculator

Raise Your GPA Calculator

Problem-Based Learning at the University of Delaware --- http://www.udel.edu/inst/

Financial Literacy Should Be Required Learning on Campus

"Teach Financial Literacy," by Steven Bahls, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/13/essay_on_responsibility_of_colleges_to_teach_financial_literacy

As a college president, I ask students and graduates what are we doing correctly and what can we improve upon. The typical responses to how we can improve are not surprising — more parking and more financial aid (often in that order). Lately the most common answer from recent graduates as to how we can improve has been surprising — more education about financial literacy and the practical aspects of living in today’s world.

I hear the following comments with increasing frequency, particularly since the Great Recession of 2008:

had no idea of the impact of my student debt and credit card debt on my ability to live a comfortable life after college.

Living in the residence halls and dining at the college, I didn’t need to know about budgeting and renting an apartment. I had no idea how to create a budget so I could live responsibly and comfortably on my salary.

In college I learned how to cultivate a pointed argument, but quickly learned that in the workplace an aggressive argument can get you fired. No one told me about how to disagree with your boss and not have your job threatened.

Faculty and administrators at liberal arts colleges do not shy at complex thinking. We tend to scrutinize the details even as we comprehend the big picture. We look for connections among areas of thought, and revel in a multitude of perspectives. By the end of their four years on campus, our students have benefited from a well-rounded, richly layered education. I believe most even recognize what it means to be liberally educated. Having learned to "turn the crystal" as they develop their views and goals, they are confident and able to find success on many levels.

Why then do so many recent graduates seem unable to demonstrate sound decision-making in an area as fundamental as finances and entering the work world?

Is it possible that in our efforts to foster creative and critical problem solving, we neglect the basics of responsible day-to-day living and working? As we carefully engage students in discerning shades of gray, is it at the expense of black and white?

Two events have led me to ask these questions. First is the number of conversations like those described above, with graduates who confided to me their frustrating lack of “real-world” financial knowledge. The second is the fact of the high loan default rate among recent college graduates, which is 7 percent nationwide (Augustana’s rate is 4.2 percent). I know I am not alone in asking the question: What should we do?

Personal Prosperity and the Common Good

Jon Meacham, the former editor of Newsweek, addressed the 2011 Council of Independent College Presidents Institute. Meacham praised the role of liberal education, noting that "people who know about Shakespeare tend to create the Internet." But if appreciating Shakespeare and other skills common to a liberal education is viewed by most as "quaint and quirky," liberal education will not survive. Instead, he argues that liberal education must be "vital and relevant" by "training young minds to solve problems and to see what others have yet to see and to think energetically about creating jobs and wealth," which Meacham calls the "oxygen of democracy."

I'd go one step further than Meacham. Our graduates can’t create wealth and jobs if they don’t have the ability to balance a checkbook, or the skills to hold a job.

When asked to define "personal success," I think it is fair to suggest that most college freshmen would put "financial success" toward the top of their list. As they begin taking liberal arts courses, they connect their learning to other aspects of their lives, and many begin to think of a career as something more than just a paycheck. They develop meaningful working relationships with faculty members and other students, and may experience some peaks in their education — whether through an internship, international study, research with faculty or other achievements in their major studies. Their definition of success develops more facets.

At Augustana College, we have long promoted high-impact learning experiences as well as the close relationships that allow integrated and collaborative learning to flourish. Recently we have begun to take new steps toward teaching certain life skills fundamental to ensuring success of all kinds.

Leadership about financial literacy must come from the top. I remind our students that if they live like college graduates with good jobs while they are students, their debt levels will cause them to live like students when they graduate. Going out to a mid-priced restaurant twice a week for four years could easily cost $8,000. Putting those charges on a credit card and carrying the balance over four years tips the cost to well over $10,000.

Five years ago, before the severe economic downturn, we introduced a class on personal finance. Offered each spring and fall term, the class is packed with seniors and some juniors. Having read Plato and Neruda, spent hours upon hours working in our human cadaver or volcano lab, or climbed Machu Picchu, these students suspect they must improve their financial literacy before they graduate.

Their instructor, an alumnus retired banker, begins by teaching how to use financial templates. The students create a personal profile and then produce a cash flow statement for the previous year. After clarifying their own understanding of their financial history, which generally is filled with gaps until this class, they work with their instructor on the process of creating a budget for the next year. Taking into account three to four personal financial goals (e.g., paying for students loans, emergency funds, etc., and even retirement), the students lay their financial path for the future. At all times throughout the class they keep in mind their current net worth, and how that value should affect their financial decisions. The course is such a success that, given the financial illiteracy demonstrated by too many young alumni, we now are offering a free three-hour seminar as a "crash course" in personal finance for our graduating seniors.

Sharing Responsibility

Augustana is not the only liberal arts college to offer such a class, and there is more we all can do. Many liberal arts colleges are adding majors that address personal financial viability in a changing world and also attract prospective students in an increasingly competitive market.

Augustana’s newest majors — which extend from traditional majors — include graphic design, neuroscience, environmental studies, multimedia journalism and engineering physics, among others. While some of our faculty state concerns that our college’s liberal arts foundation might be shaken by the contemporary and perhaps more fiscal focus of these programs, most see the new majors as logical progressions of traditional fields and therefore deeply related to our college’s mission.

Continued in article

A Sad, Sad Case That Might Be Used When Teaching Personal Finance: Another Joe Lewis Example
"Desperate times: Ex-Celtic Williams, once a top scorer, is now looking for an assist," by Bob Hohler, Boston Globe, July 2, 2010 ---
http://www.boston.com/sports/basketball/celtics/articles/2010/07/02/desperate_times/

Every night at bedtime, former Celtic Ray Williams locks the doors of his home: a broken-down 1992 Buick, rusting on a back street where he ran out of everything.

The 10-year NBA veteran formerly known as “Sugar Ray’’ leans back in the driver’s seat, drapes his legs over the center console, and rests his head on a pillow of tattered towels. He tunes his boom box to gospel music, closes his eyes, and wonders.

Williams, a generation removed from staying in first-class hotels with Larry Bird and Co. in their drive to the 1985 NBA Finals, mostly wonders how much more he can bear. He is not new to poverty, illness, homelessness. Or quiet desperation.

In recent weeks, he has lived on bread and water.

“They say God won’t give you more than you can handle,’’ Williams said in his roadside sedan. “But this is wearing me out.’’

A former top-10 NBA draft pick who once scored 52 points in a game, Williams is a face of big-time basketball’s underclass. As the NBA employs players whose average annual salaries top $5 million, Williams is among scores of retired players for whom the good life vanished not long after the final whistle.

Dozens of NBA retirees, including Williams and his brother, Gus, a two-time All-Star, have sought bankruptcy protection.

“Ray is like many players who invested so much of their lives in basketball,’’ said Mike Glenn, who played 10 years in the NBA, including three with Williams and the New York Knicks. “When the dividends stopped coming, the problems started escalating. It’s a cold reality.’’

Williams, 55 and diabetic, wants the titans of today’s NBA to help take care of him and other retirees who have plenty of time to watch games but no televisions to do so. He needs food, shelter, cash for car repairs, and a job, and he believes the multibillion-dollar league and its players should treat him as if he were a teammate in distress.

One thing Williams especially wants them to know: Unlike many troubled ex-players, he has never fallen prey to drugs, alcohol, or gambling.

“When I played the game, they always talked about loyalty to the team,’’ Williams said. “Well, where’s the loyalty and compassion for ex-players who are hurting? We opened the door for these guys whose salaries are through the roof.’’

Unfortunately for Williams, the NBA-related organizations best suited to help him have closed their checkbooks to him. The NBA Legends Foundation, which awarded him grants totaling more than $10,000 in 1996 and 2004, denied his recent request for help. So did the NBA Retired Players Association, which in the past year gave him two grants totaling $2,000.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/BookBob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers

Interactive (online or offline) Homework and Other Student-Friendly Features of Google Apps

Google Docs has added an equation editor so students can actually complete math problems within a document, allowing students to not only write papers that include numbers and equations but also take notes from quantitative classes using Google Docs. Google has also added the ability to insert superscripts and subscripts, which can be useful for writing out chemical compounds or algebraic expressions.
"Google Docs Become More Student-Friendly," by Lena Rao, TechCrunch.com via The Washington Post, September 28, 2009 --- Click Here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092802665.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Google has been aggressively marketing Google Apps to schools, recently launching a centralized site designed to recruit universities and colleges. Now, Google is tweaking Google Docs, which is a part of Google Apps' productivity suite, by adding a few student-friendly features.

Google Docs has added an equation editor so students can actually complete math problems within a document, allowing students to not only write papers that include numbers and equations but also take notes from quantitative classes using Google Docs. Google has also added the ability to insert superscripts and subscripts, which can be useful for writing out chemical compounds or algebraic expressions.

Google is also trying to make Docs appealing to those humanities majors out there by letting users to select from various bulleting styles for creating outlines and giving students ability to print footnotes as endnotes for term papers. And a few weeks ago, Google launched a translation feature in Google Docs.

As we've written in the past, Google is wise to recruit educational institutions because that's where many people get trained, start relying on, and form brand allegiances to productivity apps. Drawing from Apple's strategy, Google knows that brand loyalty is definitely forged at these schools and is steadily developing its products to become more appealing to students. Rival Microsoft is also launching web-based versions of its Office products aimed at the student audience. And startup Zoho offers a free web-based productivity suite.

"Click here to find out more! Google Docs Can Now Be Exported Through Takeout," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, January 24, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_docs_data_can_now_be_exported_through_takeo.php

Google Docs can now be exported from the Google Takeout menu, thanks to Google's Data Liberation Front. Previously, users could export and import documents in various formats, but they are now available alongside data from all other Google services in Takeout.

Google Takeout was unveiled in summer 2011. It allows Google users to export all their Google data to disk or just data from individual services. It's all thanks to the Data Liberation Front team, which builds tools to give Google users control over their data.

Continued in article

Tax Professor Amy Dunbar Loves Google Docs

Collaboration --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Collaboration

Social Networking --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

Google Wave --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave

Google Docs --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs

May 31, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

http://users.business.uconn.edu/adunbar/videos/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html

If anyone wants the “quiz” that the students worked, send me an email (not AECM), and I will send you the file.

Amy

Amy Dunbar University of Connecticut School of Business Department of Accounting 2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041 Storrs, CT 06269-1041

cell 860-208-2737
amy.dunbar@business.uconn.ed

May 31, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie [rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]

Hi Amy,

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses. It's free, includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for students to collaborate on team projects. It also makes it easy to submit the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype). To use these tools, they need a headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com) is a free, hosted video messaging service. You can record up to a 10 minute video clip that can be shared by URL link. TokBox also includes a video chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference. This feature works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com) includes chat, audio and video-conferencing. The chat feature works probably better than what you have been using. With a headset/microphone, you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call. Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype. Following is an example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper. One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space through an email link. Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group video conference call. This enables students to brainstorm and get a project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students use the audio conference call feature to talk with each other. While all are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and views it on his/her computer screen. One or more students act as the editor. All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document in .pdf format to his/her hard drive. The student then submits the document for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get things done. Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can do for free. Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively inexpensive. The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and online classes. It works great. The approach changes the nature of how students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
Email: rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone: (909) 537-5726Skype (Username): ricklillie

On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.” (Joe Hoyle)

January 25, 2012 update from Amy Dunbar

Hi Bob,

I’m now using Google Docs with my undergrad students, too. (I’m back in the classroom after 12 years online.) No one needs instructions on how to use the tool anymore. I particularly like the chat function in the spreadsheet. Students generally use the Google chat feature instead of AIM. To make sure I have access to the spreadsheets, I set them up for each group and send the groups the link. Google is truly making learning collaborative. At the end of the semester, I delete them all and start over with the next class.

And a follow-up to Rick Lillie’s suggestion to read

Clark, R. C., and R. E. Mayer. 2011. E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning Third ed. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

After reading that book, I revised all my content modules in an effort to reduce cognitive overload. Now I use dropdown windows to provide examples, problems, comments. My Dunbar comments are coded a different color, so they can ignore them. ;-) When I mapped my quizzes back to the content modules, I discovered that a lot of my material was not on point for the quizzes, and thus wasn’t essential to what I thought they should know cold when the course was over. That extra material is now in a drop-down window titled “more,” which students can read if they want to know more. The content on each page is now fairly straightforward (she says hopefully). Thank you, Rick, for suggesting that book. It changed the way I create my content modules.

Amy
UConn

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How to author books and other materials for online delivery
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How Scholars Search the Web ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

How Web Pages Work ---
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"Mapping Novels with Google Earth," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 6, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/mapping-novels/32528?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
Various accounting student team projects come to mind using the above technology. One could be an accounting history project in which students map important events in early accounting history, some of which are mentioned at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory

Abacus Techniques by Totton Heffelfinger & Gary Flom.

Articles, Excerpts and Analysis

The Abacus vs.The Electric Calculator
In 1946, a contest held in Tokyo, pitted an abacus against an electric calculator; the abacus won, of course.

Feynman vs. The Abacus
Richard Feynman battles against the abacus; the result is not surprising (if you know Feynman).

Comparing the Chinese and the Mesoamerican Abacus
An analysis contributed by David B. Kelley.

The Roman Hand-Abacus
An analysis contributed by Steve Stephenson.

The Incan Khipu
String, and Knot, Theory of Inca Writing by John Noble Wilford.
Talking Knots of the Incas by Viviano and Davide Domenici.

Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge
An article about the dangers of forgetting knowledge learned from the past, by Eugene Linden.

All Things Abacus

Additional Abacus Resources
Purchase or build an abacus · An abacus for your Palm · Books about the abacus · Java applet source code · The Mesoamerican abacus

Resources For Teachers
The abacus in the classroom · Abacus lesson plan · Math and science resources for teachers

Photos
High-resolution photos of my abacus collection.

Early History of Mathematics and Calculating in China
The best general source for ancient Chinese mathematics is Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3. In this volume you will learn, for example, that the Chinese proved the Pythagorean Theorem at the very latest by the Later Han dynasty (25-221 CE). The proof comes from an ancient text called The Arithmetical Classic of the Gnomon and the Circular Paths of Heaven. The book has been translated by Christopher Cullen in his Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient China: The Zhou Bi Suan Jing. Needham also discusses the abacus, or suanpan ("calculating plate").
Steve Field, Professor of Chinese, Trinity University, September 24, 2008
Jensen Comment
Later Han Dynasty --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later_Han_Dynasty_(Five_Dynasties)
Pythagorean Theorem Theorem --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_Theorem
Pythagorean Theorem (Gougu Theorem in China) History --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_Theorem#History
Suanpan --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suanpan

A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING

From Texas A&M University
Accounting History Outline --- http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html

Accounting History (across hundreds of years)
A Change Fifty-Years in the Making, by Jennie Mitchell, Project Accounting WED Interconnect --- http://accounting.smwc.edu/historyacc.htm

Papyrus --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus
Early accounting records were written on papyrus

Serious Accounting Historians May Find Some Things of Use Here
Advanced Papyrological Information System from Columbia University --- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/projects/digital/apis/

Questions
What was an ancient Greek ploy to combat inflation?
How do you account for interest paid in cabbages during hyperinflation?

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter --- http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/walrus.html

"Papyrus Research Provides Insights Into 'Modern Concerns' of Ancient World," Science Daily, October 30, 2010 --- Click Here
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101029092045.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

Origins of Double Entry Accounting are Unknown

1300s A.D. crusades opened the Middle East and Mediterranean trade routes
Venice and Genoa became venture trading centers for commerce
1296 A.D. Fini Ledgers in Florence
1340 A.D. City of Massri Treasurers Accounts are in Double Entry form.
1458 A.D.Benedikt Kotruljevic (Croatian) (Dubrovnik,1416-L’Aquila,1469) (His Italian name was Benedetto Cotrugli Raguseo), wrote The Book on the Art of Trading which is now acknowledged to be the first person to write a book describing double-entry techniques (although the origins of double entry bookkeeping in practice are unknown)
1494 Luca Pacioli's Summa de Arithmetica Geometria Proportionalita (A Review of Arithmetic, Geometry and Proportions) which is the best known early book on double entry bookkeeping in algebraic form.

Recall that double entry bookkeeping supposedly evolved in Italy long before it was put into algebraic form in the book Summa by Luca Pacioli and into an earlier book by Benedikt Kotruljevic.

"A Brief History of Double Entry Book-keeping (10 Episodes) ," BBC Radio ---
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r401p
Thanks to Len Steenkamp for the heads up

Jolyon Jenkins investigates how accountants shaped the modern world. They sit in boardrooms, audit schools, make government policy and pull the plug on failing companies. And most of us have our performance measured. The history of accounting and book-keeping is largely the history of civilisation.

Jolyon asks how this came about and traces the religious roots of some accounting practices.

Eventually, educators might be able to get copies of these audio files.

October 3, 2009 message from Rick Dull

Benedikt Kotruljevic (Croatian) (Dubrovnik,1416-L’Aquila,1469) (His Italian name was Benedetto Cotrugli Raguseo), who in 1458, wrote "The Book on the Art of Trading" which is now acknowledged to be the first person to write a book describing double-entry techniques? See the American Mathematical Society’s web-site: http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/book1.html .

Rick Dull

And so on --- I think you get the idea.

One truly valuable research for an accounting history mapping project is the free Accounting Historians Journal archive (although not all of the publications are free online but should be free to students using the hard copy stacks in campus libraries) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/dac/files/ahj.html

Using MAAW and Jstor for Accounting History Research ---
http://maaw.info/

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory

Collaboration

Collaboration --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Collaboration

Social Networking --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

Google Wave --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave

Rick Telberg pointed me to this excellent slide show by Tom Hood (Maryland Association of CPAs and a close friend of Barry Rice)

CPAs and the Social Media (75 slides) --- http://www.slideshare.net/thoodcpa/social-media-strategy-quickstart-for-cpas
Early on Tom picked up on social networking as an important tool in a CPA firm's tool bag.

Collaboration Software --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_software

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of work that they are now sharing with us.

MIT Media Lab --- http://www.media.mit.edu/

Stanford University's d. school
"It's all about the space at Stanford's design school," by Robin Wander, The Stanford Report, January 18, 2012 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

Stanford's d.school space is the stage for creative collaboration. A new book by two of its leaders provides direction for design spaces elsewhere.

The spaces within Stanford's popular d.school are as creative as the furniture and fixtures are inventive, and every aspect of the space impacts behavior.

In his foreword for Make Space, David Kelley, the founder of the design school as well as the design firm IDEO, writes, "Regardless of whether it's a classroom or the offices of a billion-dollar company, space is something to think of as an instrument for innovation and collaboration. Space is a valuable tool that can help you create deep and meaningful collaborations in your work and life."

As a spectator on the second floor of Stanford's d.school building, on any given day you might observe a team of students standing at a project table in an active stance – literally learning on their feet. Or you might see a group engaged in a sharing exercise sitting on foam cubes in a circle as if around a campfire. From the overlook you might also be able to peer down at the atrium and see an assembly of executives paired up at cocktail tables doing some cutting and pasting – as in scissors and glue, not keystrokes.

Need an office? Slide a few suspended dry-erase panels together and roll in a table and chair. Swap out the table and chair for a couple of couches on coasters and you've got yourself an informal lounge. Need a respite from an open, collaborative environment? Step into the "Booth Noir," a simply furnished low-tech hiding place tucked in a corner. In each case the environment supports a different kind of learning or exchange of information.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's sadly neglected threads on classroom, building, and campus design are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Design

Google Docs can now be exported from the Google Takeout menu, thanks to Google's Data Liberation Front. Previously, users could export and import documents in various formats, but they are now available alongside data from all other Google services in Takeout.

Google Takeout was unveiled in summer 2011. It allows Google users to export all their Google data to disk or just data from individual services. It's all thanks to the Data Liberation Front team, which builds tools to give Google users control over their data.

Continued in article

Tax Professor Amy Dunbar Loves Google Docs

Collaboration --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Collaboration

Social Networking --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

Google Wave --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave

Google Docs --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs

May 31, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

http://users.business.uconn.edu/adunbar/videos/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html

If anyone wants the “quiz” that the students worked, send me an email (not AECM), and I will send you the file.

Amy

Amy Dunbar University of Connecticut School of Business Department of Accounting 2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041 Storrs, CT 06269-1041

cell 860-208-2737
amy.dunbar@business.uconn.ed

May 31, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie [rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]

Hi Amy,

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses. It's free, includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for students to collaborate on team projects. It also makes it easy to submit the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype). To use these tools, they need a headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com) is a free, hosted video messaging service. You can record up to a 10 minute video clip that can be shared by URL link. TokBox also includes a video chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference. This feature works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com) includes chat, audio and video-conferencing. The chat feature works probably better than what you have been using. With a headset/microphone, you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call. Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype. Following is an example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper. One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space through an email link. Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group video conference call. This enables students to brainstorm and get a project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students use the audio conference call feature to talk with each other. While all are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and views it on his/her computer screen. One or more students act as the editor. All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document in .pdf format to his/her hard drive. The student then submits the document for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get things done. Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can do for free. Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively inexpensive. The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and online classes. It works great. The approach changes the nature of how students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
Email: rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone: (909) 537-5726Skype (Username): ricklillie

On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.” (Joe Hoyle)

January 25, 2012 update from Amy Dunbar

Hi Bob,

I’m now using Google Docs with my undergrad students, too. (I’m back in the classroom after 12 years online.) No one needs instructions on how to use the tool anymore. I particularly like the chat function in the spreadsheet. Students generally use the Google chat feature instead of AIM. To make sure I have access to the spreadsheets, I set them up for each group and send the groups the link. Google is truly making learning collaborative. At the end of the semester, I delete them all and start over with the next class.

And a follow-up to Rick Lillie’s suggestion to read

Clark, R. C., and R. E. Mayer. 2011. E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning Third ed. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

After reading that book, I revised all my content modules in an effort to reduce cognitive overload. Now I use dropdown windows to provide examples, problems, comments. My Dunbar comments are coded a different color, so they can ignore them. ;-) When I mapped my quizzes back to the content modules, I discovered that a lot of my material was not on point for the quizzes, and thus wasn’t essential to what I thought they should know cold when the course was over. That extra material is now in a drop-down window titled “more,” which students can read if they want to know more. The content on each page is now fairly straightforward (she says hopefully). Thank you, Rick, for suggesting that book. It changed the way I create my content modules.

Amy
UConn

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How to author books and other materials for online delivery
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How Scholars Search the Web ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

Open Sharing Tool Library and Networking for Multiple Nations
"OpenScout supports the collaborative reuse and adaptation of Portuguese and Brazilian OER," by Alexander Mikroyannidis, The Financial Education Daily, November 16, 2011 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

The OpenScout Tool Library is a social network of individuals and collectives who are developing or using learning resources and want to share their stories and resources from different countries.

The OpenScout Tool Library is currently hosting the activities of the COLEARN community of research in collaborative learning and educational technologies in the Portuguese language. This group is run by Alexandra Okada (The Open University UK) and consists of learners, educators and researchers from academic institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Their interests focus on collaborative participation through social media, colearning (collaborative open learning) using Open Educational Resources (OER), Social Media and Web 2.0 research. There are 26 research groups from Brazilian and Portugal universities - 115 people currently registered in the Tool Library.

At the moment, this community is developing a book project called "Web 2.0: Open Educational Resources in Learning and Professional Development". From January to February 2012, three workshops will be run in the Tool Library for improving OER skills: image, presentation and audio/visual material. These collaborative activities and workshops aim at engaging people in developing their skills and discussing concepts as well as preparing themselves to be OER users who are able to produce, remix and share open resources and open ideas.

Related Links:

The OpenScout Tool Library --- http://openscout.kmi.open.ac.uk/tool-library/

Video clip of the Tool Library --- http://youtu.be/Z1Z-fpRrbDg

The OpenScout project --- http://www.openscout.net/

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Cutting-Edge Social Media Approaches to Business Education: Teaching with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, and Blogs, by Charles Wankel ---
http://management-education.net/rmed9/

January 10, 2011 message from David Albrecht

HETL is a professional organization dedicated to advancing teaching and learning in higher education. It got its start on LinkedIn with discussion groups. To participate in the discussion group, a collegiate teacher (and now doctoral students) would have to apply. If the applicant had 2-5 years experience teaching in higher education (and met certain disclosure requirements on their profile), they were admitted.

LinkedIn membership is now over 10,000 and rapidly climing. I believe it is the largest LinkedIn discussion group. Knowing me, you'd probably expect that I'd get involved in the discussions. I have. I answered a call for volunteers, and am now a reviewer for its publications. There are two refereed venues. One is for commentary pieces on higher education. So far, contributors have been well-known academics such as Dee Fink. The other is an on-line journal.

Currently, HETL has a call out for volunteers to expand its editorial and review boards. Information can be found at the HETL portal (http://hetl.org). While there, you can see that an option is to join with a paid membership ($60 per year).

I really like the give and take with profs from around the world. There were over 450 comments on a thread about whether or not to be a Facebook friend with a student.

You can find out more information about the group from the web site: http://hetl.org

Dave Albrecht

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology and learning ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

"8 Simple Ways To Share Data Online," by David Strom, ReadWriteWeb, June 17, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2011/06/8-simple-ways-to-share-data-on.php

If you have to jointly author a spreadsheet with a colleague, what is the first thing that you do? Email it back and forth. This can be painful, particularly as you try to keep track of your partner's changes and hope the emails transit back and forth across the Internet. Add a third or fourth person, and things get worse. Luckily, there is a better way, and a number of Web-based service providers have stepped up with tools to make spreadsheet sharing a lot easier than sending attachments.

We've written about a few of them, including Longjump and Hyperbase (one of our products of the year for 2008), but I have tried a bunch others, and will show you what is involved and how they stack up.

The process is very straightforward: you either copy and paste data or take your spreadsheet and upload it to the service, after creating accounts for you and your collaborators. Then you can make changes via your Web browser, no other software is required. Some of the services allow for more bells and whistles. Setup time is minimal; your data is properly protected by the service and safe from harm. And you don't need to learn any Web/database programming skills either.

For many people, the spreadsheet is still one of the most popular low-end database applications. The rubric of a table of rows and columns is easily understood and can easily be used as a way to view records and fields of a database. Plus, you don't need to design special reports to view your data entries, and you can easily sort your data without having to create data dictionaries or other database structures, just use the appropriate Excel commands. Having a specialized service that can share this data makes it easier to collaborate too, whether your partners are across the office or on the other side of the world. As long as they have an Internet connection, they are good to go.

There are eight different services currently available, in order of increasing cost:

Online Spreadsheet Sharing Services

Service

Price

Storage limits

Pagos Spreadsheetlive.com

Free (for now)

1 MB

Google Docs

Free

Really unlimited

Microsoft Live

Free

50 MB

Smartsheet.com

$10/mo for up to 10 spreadsheets

30 MB

Longjump Database

$19/mo for two users

3 MB

HyperBase

$175 setup plus $44/mo for 5 users

1.25 GB

TrackVia.com

$250/mo for 10 users

4 GB for entry plan

Intuit QuickBase

$299/mo for 10 users

1 GB for entry plan

Pricing and support

When you decide on the particular service, it pays to read the pricing fine print. There are discounts for annual subscriptions on most services, and some such as Smartsheet offer additional discounts for non-profit and educational institutions. All of these services have 14 day or 30 day free trials to get started, so you can get a feel of what is involved in manipulating your data and how easy it is to make changes, produce reports, and receive notifications.

Continued in article

June 18, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar

I find Google docs great for small spreadsheets, but cumbersome for large files.

I set up Dropbox folders for each of my groups in my online class (3-5 students in a group). They post their project spreadsheets in the group folders, and if a student has a question, I can quickly open the spreadsheet to see what is going on. Students contact me by AIM and we discuss the spreadsheet via AIM. Works like a charm for me.

Amy Dunbar

UConn

Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL): Learning Spaces Collaborative --- http://www.pkallsc.org/

Bob Jensen's threads on sending large files across the Internet ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles

Tax Professor Amy Dunbar Loves Google Docs

Google Docs --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs

May 31, 2010 message from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

http://users.business.uconn.edu/adunbar/videos/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html

If anyone wants the “quiz” that the students worked, send me an email (not AECM), and I will send you the file.

Amy

Amy Dunbar
University of Connecticut School of Business
Department of Accounting 2100 Hillside Road Unit 1041 Storrs, CT 06269-1041

cell 860-208-2737
amy.dunbar@business.uconn.ed

May 31, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie [rlillie@CSUSB.EDU]

Hi Amy,

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses. It's free, includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for students to collaborate on team projects. It also makes it easy to submit the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype). To use these tools, they need a headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com) is a free, hosted video messaging service. You can record up to a 10 minute video clip that can be shared by URL link. TokBox also includes a video chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference. This feature works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com) includes chat, audio and video-conferencing. The chat feature works probably better than what you have been using. With a headset/microphone, you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call. Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype. Following is an example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper. One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space through an email link. Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group video conference call. This enables students to brainstorm and get a project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students use the audio conference call feature to talk with each other. While all are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and views it on his/her computer screen. One or more students act as the editor. All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document in .pdf format to his/her hard drive. The student then submits the document for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get things done. Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can do for free. Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively inexpensive. The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and online classes. It works great. The approach changes the nature of how students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

Rick Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
Email: rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone: (909) 537-5726Skype (Username): ricklillie

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.” (Joe Hoyle)

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's Updates on Education Technologies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

How Scholars Search the Web ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

From Rick Lillie's on Thinking Outside the Box Blog on March 7, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/collanos-workplace-free-collaboration-workspace/

~~Collanos Workplace: Free Collaboration Workspace~~
~~March 7, 2010 — Rick Lillie~~

In an earlier post, I wrote about the latest book by Curtis J. Bonk, The World Is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education. Bonk’s book is an excellent read. I highly recommend it to educators at all levels.
While I am familiar with most of what Bonk writes about, just about every chapter introduces me to something new. For example, Chapter 8, “Collaborate or Die!” introduced me to Collanos Workspace, a free collaboration workspace software tool developed by Collanos Software, AG (Zurich, Switzerland). Collanos Workspace is a workspace tool similar in design to Groove workspace, originally developed by Ray Ozzie. Groove is now integrated into Microsoft Office . Ray Ozzie is the guiding light for Microsoft’s move toward cloud computing.

"Update to Posting about Collanos Workspace — Exceptional Program," by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog, March 11, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/update-to-posting-about-collanos-workspace-exceptional-program/

Last week, I posted comments about Collanos Workspace. I asked several Master of Science in Accountancy (MSA) grad students that I will direct in a self-study project during Spring Quarter 2010 to download Collanos Workspace. They have gotten up and running very quickly. So far, I am really impressed with the features of Collanos Workspace and how easy it is to use.

While Collanos Workspace does not have all the built-in bells and whistles of Microsoft Groove, the bells and whistles are easily replaced by Web 2.0 tools (e.g., Skype, TokBox, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets). Web 2.0 sharing/collaboration tools can be used in conjunction with the Collanos Workspace. This is very easy to do.

This morning, one of my students called me on Skype. He shared his desktop with me and then opened his Collanos Workspace. I have two monitor screens, so I opened my Collanos Workspace on my other monitor. We talked on Skype. He added files and posted a note to his workspace. Since we were both online, the items he added instantly added and displayed on my workspace. Outstanding performance!

I am working on papers with a couple of colleagues. I am going to do my best to persuade them to download and use Collanos Workspace. We can work together both live and offline. I cannot say enough about the convenience that Collanos Workspace offers.

~~This new tool is taking me back to my “Groove” days. I really liked Groove and hated to see it get buried as an advanced feature of Microsoft Office.~~

~~Continued in article~~

Rick Lillie has to be frustrated. First his beloved TokBox software became vaporware. Now his highly acclaimed Collanos is possibly history.
"Collanos Workplace — Seems to have died!" by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog,October 22, 2010 —
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/collanos-workplace-seems-to-have-died/

In a previous posting, I introduced you to Collanos Workplace and told you how great the collaboration software is, especially for use with distance teaching and learning projects. I have used it successfully with both undergraduate and graduate students. For example, during Winter Quarter 2010, I used Collanos Workplace to guide five grad students through independent study projects. Collanos Workplace made it easy to communicate with students and keep the whole process under control. In a nutshell, I felt that Collanos Workplace was a great collaboration tool!

Jensen Comment
Collaboration software sees to be particularly vulnerable. Google Wave crashed on shore. However, Google Docs lives on with great prospects for the future.
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Collaboration

Interactive Network Simulation
Inspiration: Games versus Teachers
"Creator of 'The Sims' Talks Educational Gaming," Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/media/video/v55/i41.5/wright/?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Introduction to (video) Game Design 2009 --- http://pod.gscept.com/intro2gd2009.xml
Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment and learning games --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Bob Jensen's threads on virtual worlds in education are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Accounting professors should seek out the free online

"What Belongs in a 21st-Century Classroom? Faculty and IT Staff Disagree," by Sophia Li, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 19, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/What-Belongs-in-a-21st-Century/25642/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Faculty members and information-technology staff members alike say technology is useful for teaching and learning, but professors take a narrower view of what technology belongs in today's classroom, according to a report released on Monday by the technology company CDW Government Inc.

Eighty-eight percent of the 303 faculty members surveyed said technology was essential or useful for student learning, and over 60 percent said they used electronic materials in their teaching, according to the report.

The most popular tools cited by professors were e-textbooks and online documents, with faculty members reporting far less enthusiasm for other electronic tools. Under a quarter of faculty members surveyed use wikis or blogs in their teaching, and only 31 percent of professors surveyed considered online collaboration tools "essential" to today's classroom, compared with 72 percent of over 300 IT employees surveyed.

That suggests an interesting gap between technology staff members and professors when it comes to how smart classrooms need to be. How wired should teaching spaces be?

E-mail Print Comment (22) Share Share Delicious Digg Facebook Linked In Mixx Reddit Twitter Yahoo Buzz Comments 1. morningsider - July 19, 2010 at 05:47 pm

Perhaps IT employees already know how to use such tools. I am self taught but have been evangelizing wikis to my faculty colleagues. I have even voluntarily led a faculty workshop on wikis--just to help my colleagues learn how to use them.

I think there are at least three problems that might explain this "gap" between IT and faculty attitudes. First, for many faculty there is a learning curve: on top of structuring course material, they have to learn the vagaries of specific software or platforms. Second, there are so many options for tech tools many faculty don't know which are most appropriate for their teaching style. Who can guide them to the tools most useful for their teaching? Third, many faculty, at least at my institution, don't have enough technical support in the classroom. Let's say an instructor has prepared a class period on collaborative work on a wiki: the network goes down (too frequent an occurrence on our campus) or the data projector malfunctions. S/he calls computer services for help--no one is available to troubleshoot until it is too late.

The existence of technology tools is not enough. Faculty need help, training, and technical support before such tools can be used effectively.

2. arrive2__net - July 20, 2010 at 05:06 am

The information-technology staff members provide support across all faculty members, so their answers probably would reflect the perceived needs across all faculty. Faculty are likely answering just for themselves. Faculty have to pay a lot of attention to what is going on in their own field, they have to keep up-to-date with what often turns out to be a moving target. For professors, learning, developing, and practicing applications of new learning technologies is a whole other work effort that goes on top of their existing full time job of being a teacher and a scholar (and often a researcher). Another factor is that a professor can get burned by investing a lot of time developing and learning tech applications if then, he or she turns out not to be teaching that course next year or term, or if changes in the text or field renders the tech application out-of-date. For IT, on the other hand, the technology is their bread-and-butter, so naturally ... (you'd better bet) it matters.

Bernard Schuster Arrive2.net

3. beveridge - July 20, 2010 at 07:09 am

At Queens College, where I teach, seven different sign-ons are required for students to have full access to the various types of computer systems they need: Account to Claim College System Account, College System Account, E-mail Account, Blackboard Account, Cuny Portal Account, MyQc Web Account, Portal Account for Library Access, Account for Remote Access.

Any of these tools: wikis, e-portfolios, blogs, add still another level of access issues and make teaching even more difficult with extremely limited resources.

In a recent survey, we found tht about 15% of students do not have adequate access to do their work in a Statistics class. About half drop out, and the other half jump through significant hoops to get them.

In the words of Van Holland (former UMICH Tech Guru) "No more miracles please."

4. paievoli - July 20, 2010 at 07:20 am

You can easily fix the sign-on problem. Just use a student portal that supplies all needs in one place. A very simple aggregator of all contant in one place that is accessible 24/7/365. This is the problem. Just take a look at my site and see. http://www.thecampuscenter.com everything in one place and for free no seat charges no cost.

5. mberman54 - July 20, 2010 at 08:05 am

I'll throw in an IT prefessional's point of view: It's our job to be futurists in this area. Pin one of us down and we'll admit that we don't know which of the tools we advocate for today will still be around in 10 years, but we also know that if they're not around, the functions will be subsumed into other things. We also know, from supporting our student populations, that the students are trending strongly towards a preference for online communications. Morningsider made the important point that many faculty don't know how to use, or are uncomfortable, with these tools. From experience I can promise you that they will get easier to use over time, but in the meantime we're here to help you, and if you want to reach your students, you'll find them online.

6. infogoon - July 20, 2010 at 08:05 am

@beveridge - There are many single sign-on technologies that would help with that. Industry standards like LDAP and Kerberos are supported by most systems (email, Blackboard, etc.) and can be used to synchronize passwords across multiple login environments.

My school decided to bite the bullet and deploy a solution to mitigate this same problem a few years back. It's a fair amount of legwork, but not especially cutting edge or difficult for most environments.

7. infogoon - July 20, 2010 at 08:06 am

(Oh, I forgot to mention - Blackboard does _not_ support LDAP authentication on their lowest tier product, forcing you to buy a huge and expensive bundle of additional services instead. They're an exception. We got around the problem by switching to another LMS, since our contract with them ended during this deployment.)

8. vudutu - July 20, 2010 at 08:17 am

There are a number of problems, the usual budget issues, management by committee, lack of training, dated and overly complex systems and tools, poor direction, lack of faculty involvement in understanding IT and not feeling inclusion in IT decisions.

That all said I believe the biggest issue is digital immigrants teaching digital natives. The most digitaly enabled and accepting are the adjuncts, the aging faculty are frozen in the digital headlights. IT personel, like the younger students live with tech so they accept it.

9. csgirl - July 20, 2010 at 08:22 am

I'm in computer science, and if anything, tend to be ahead of our IT staff when it comes to nifty online tools. My teaching is of course very dependent on technology. My problem is, I can't get IT to adequately support the tools that I need - software repositories, bug tracking systems, any IDE other than Visual Studio - so I have to spend a lot of time doing my own setup and support. I also find that IT is its own little closed world. They don't have much inkling of the teaching needs of faculty, so the applications they choose to promote are often not that useful.

10. jleone - July 20, 2010 at 08:23 am

At RIT, we have a strong ITS and excellent support services for using technology in the classroom. And while older faculty tend to be lass facile with technology, it isn't uniformly true. At age 72, I have pushed myself to stay current with technology. Of course, I teach in the computing disciplines. We have access to very high quality seminares and workshops for faculty on our campus. We have access to hi-tech rooms for recording lectures. Our major problem is the strong push for scholarly endeavors, a recent (past 10 years) in the direction our institution has taken.

11. interface - July 20, 2010 at 08:39 am

Every IT department has its favorite platforms; every IT person has preferred programs and ways of accomplishing any given task; every administration has different notions of the place of technology in the classroom. And those favorites and preferences and notions keep changing. If you're an adjunct working for different institutions, as more and more of us are, it's tiring and time-consuming and ultimately counterproductive to try to adjust to them all. One thing's true across the board: those most enamored of technology are the first to lose sight of the fact that it's a good servant and a bad master, and that there's no substitute for the human connection necessary for good teaching.

12. clancymarshall - July 20, 2010 at 08:50 am

The DynamicBooks platform is an e-book that enables instructors to upload online documents, audio and video and also to edit the text to make it more relevant for students. What do you think? Will instructors in 21st Century classrooms customize e-books for their students or use them as is?

13. 3224243 - July 20, 2010 at 09:21 am

#9 (csgirl) - I'm at a comprehensive state institution with 8500 students and 300 faculty. All of our general-use classrooms (appx 100) have a base level of technology with upgrades performed regularly and newgen technology implemented as budget allows. What we provide and support is a result of what faculty members request. And, we do it with 2.5 FTE.

Get off your high horse. You're not the only instructor on campus and you're not the only one we support.

14. catlkelley - July 20, 2010 at 09:21 am

From the title I thought this article would be about the classroom itself - i.e. what technologies need to be installed in a classroom, such as data projectors and smart boards.

In any case, from an IT / teaching support point of view, I agree with comment #2 above. If 25% (or even 10%) of our faculty need or want a particular technology, then that is 100% a concern for me. So I am not at all surprised that the numbers of IT people who find particular technologies to be "essential" is much higher than the numbers of faculty who say that about the same technology. I am actually surprised that the numbers for IT staff aren't higher than they are.

Reading through the comments so far, it is very clear to me that there is a great deal of variability in the kind of support that is provided to faculty. And by this I do not mean only the breadth of technologies available. I mean the support that faculty need to thoughtfully integrate technology into the curriculum. My office is dedicated to the concept mentioned by "interface" in comment #11 - namely, technology is a good servant but bad master. We try to focus on teaching & learning first and technology only when it will help. It's a difficult thing to do, as we are also bound to keep up with current trends and new technologies. We'd like to see adventurous faculty try out the new stuff so that we can gauge its utility in real life.

15. broekhuysen - July 20, 2010 at 09:44 am

I wonder how many of the faculty members surveyed are teachers of foreign languages -- I'd be willing to bet that a very higher percentage of them use technology regularly (as long as they teach in institutions with the specific professional support they need) -- and not only in "labs", for doing homework, but as a constant presence in the classrooom -- if they have the kind of access they need.

16. alex369 - July 20, 2010 at 10:32 am

Let me get this straight: The Chronicle publishes a free ad for CDW Government Inc., a private company with undisclosed interests, and there is a serious debate about the company's claims?

17. jeanniec - July 20, 2010 at 10:40 am

@alex369 Agreed. Why is this even posted here? According to the report you can contact Kelly Caraher CDW-G Public Relations for more information. Her title says it all.

18. drjeff - July 20, 2010 at 10:44 am

As an IT guy, I couldn't sit here a "listen" to everyone saying how "easy" it is to do "single sign-on." (This is what IT folks call integrating things to the point that students -- and faculty -- don't have a separate account on each little fiefdom's system.)

Yes, the technology to do it is reasonably well-known (even if beyond the least expensive version of Blackboard and some other products). All you do it install, set up and populate a directory system (usualy LDAP), then make every system refer to it rather than its own database. But, because the various systems are, on most campuses, highly Balkanzed (at least in their ownership), many campuses, like many corporations, find it exceptionally difficult to get essentially every department to dedicate the effort (even if fairly small) to support the project, which is what's necessary to actually make it happen.

In corporations, the CEO or COO usually ends up "pushing" successful implementations, or else it takes literally years. On a campus, it often takes the President. The next person in line (on our campus, it's the Executive VP for Finance and Administration) may or may not have the necessary "pull" with some of the departments.

Don't forget, we're probably talking about everyone from the Rec center to the Religious Studies department to the Credit Union, not to mention Food Services, Computer Science and the LGBTQ Center. Did I leave out Middle Eastern studies and the repair shop behind the research labs? You get the idea.

Sure, you (or I) can describe what has to be done with one sentence. Getting it done? That's going to take a little more.

19. csgirl - July 20, 2010 at 11:29 am

#13, you guys sound seriously overwhelmed, and I can appreciate that. I used to teach at a comprehensive state U that sounds remarkably like what you are describing. But that isn't what this article is talking about. The article seems to be discussing a gap between supremely knowledgable IT people and Luddite professors who won't adopt the wonderful technology the IT people recommend (at least, this is how the IT folks see it). This is the mentality I deal with at my current school, where we have armies of IT specialists. The problem is, our IT people are spending tons of time playing with whiz-bang technology that no professor has requested, congratulating themselves on how "advanced" they are, instead of educating themselves on the technology that we actually need and use.

20. jboncek - July 20, 2010 at 11:45 am

Technology is sometimes useful, but hardly essential.

21. lizlanin - July 20, 2010 at 11:58 am

"For professors, learning, developing, and practicing applications of new learning technologies is a whole other work effort that goes on top of their existing full time job of being a teacher and a scholar (and often a researcher)."

Shocker, sounds like my job in the corporate world. I too have to learn new technologies in order to do my full-time job... why should professors be any different?

"Frontiers of Collaboration: The Evolution of Social Networking," Knowledge@Wharton, July 7, 2010 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2536

Social networking tools such as Twitter and the emerging Google Wave web application are taking individuals and organizations to the frontiers of real-time communication and collaboration. The technology has the potential to make it easier to discover and share information, interact with others, and decide what to buy or do. But the key word is "potential": Social networking's evolution is still in its early stages. What makes the current crop of services more promising than those that came before? What are the obstacles to further progress?

An expert panel debated these questions at the annual Supernova technology strategy conference, produced in partnership with Wharton and held last winter in San Francisco. The 2010 Supernova forum will be held this month in Philadelphia.

The panel at the San Francisco event was chaired by David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Appearing on the panel were: Anna-Christina Douglas, product marketing manager at Google; Laura Fitton, principal of Pistachio Consulting and co-author of Twitter for Dummies; Paul Lippe, founder and CEO of Legal OnRamp; Jason Shellen, founder and CEO of Thing Labs, and Deborah Schultz, a partner with the Altimeter Group. In addition, Google engineers were in the room demonstrating Google Wave by allowing the audience to post to the social networking service during the session; their comments appeared in real time on projection screens near the panelists.

Weinberger began the session by asking panelists what made the introduction of social networking tools different from previous technological endeavors to improve communication and collaboration. One significant issue discussed was how social networking compared with knowledge management (KM). KM systems first appeared on the scene about 20 years ago and once represented the frontier, embodying companies' most innovative ideas for integrating internal access to disparate information in order to improve communication, collaboration and business processes.

KM systems were implemented through technologies such as web portals, e-mail networks, content management systems and business intelligence infrastructure. Web portals, which were probably the most successful type of KM system, allow users to access a range of information -- including reports, diagrams, catalogs and maintenance records -- through one interface, rather than many. The portals also include external information supplied by business partners, government agencies and news sources. The technology automatically pulls information from the sources on demand so that users do not have to search for it manually.

Organizations employ KM systems to increase the value of their "intellectual capital." However, the technology that supports KM systems has traditionally been difficult to develop and deploy. And the systems have not been universally successful at fostering real time collaboration between employees.

According to Shellen -- who was part of the development teams for Google's blogging program and Reader aggregator service -- before social networking tools enabled quick and casual communication, many bloggers in corporate organizations had "some KM tool where you captured the knowledge in the tool's silo and assigned all sorts of tags, folders and so on to it. You would then pass the blog to your manager for him or her to [learn from] what you were writing." Shellen now heads Thing Labs, a San Francisco-based company that builds web-based software for sharing content. Social networking is easing some of the frustration users in many organizations have encountered with traditional KM systems. Through use of Twitter and other tools, more of the intellectual capital that KM systems once guarded is flowing freely, in real time, inside and outside organizations. If an employee needs to find expertise or share information, he or she doesn't have to work within the rigid confines of a KM system, or even the confines of his or her organization. Instead, the employee can use social media to collaborate with others and to find answers more quickly and put relevant advice into practice.

While there are virtues to being able to communicate faster and more easily with social networking tools, panelists agreed that many organizations are struggling to adjust to the spontaneity and loss of control over information that comes with these tools. Concerned that organizations will eventually clamp down, Weinberger asked, "Will all the fun be stripped out of it? Will people become afraid to Tweet about things that are not strictly business-related?" Fitton, whose consulting firm focuses on helping companies to use micro-blogging in a business environment, suggested that companies may find the "messy and random serendipity" of Twitter and other social networks to be more efficient than lumbering KM systems and processes. "It brings an infusion of humanity to business," she noted, who adding that, in her experiences at Pistachio Consulting, she has observed social networking having an impact on organizations by leveling management hierarchies, accelerating team-building across geographical locations, and improving mentoring. She stated that, in some cases, research to find human expertise that used to take many hours can happen much faster when queries are "flung out into the commons" to catch the attention of people who can provide answers more quickly.

Breadth vs. Depth

One of the advantages social networking tools have over KM systems, experts say, is that they simplify the process of obtaining information that would be useful to a business or employee. Tools such as Twitter provide a sort of "KM in the cloud," allowing users to collaborate with each other and send messages to locate expertise without a company having to build and maintain a complex and expensive system to provide these capabilities internally. Social networking tools provide access to a broad population and employ simple, standardized, techniques to link users to information. But while social networking offers "an enormous amount of horizontal power," Lippe said, "most of the hard collaboration problems are [solved] in vertical domains." His firm, Legal OnRamp, is a collaboration platform for lawyers that allows information to be collected and shared virtually. Membership is by invitation only.

Lippe noted that, in the legal field, "there's already a structure of knowledge, and most knowledge repositories and structures of the collaborative web have existed for multiple generations. So, the question is, how do you tap into them?" One core structure is attorney-client privilege, which Lippe said "has long preceded the information confidentiality and security regime that we all have now. It creates the structure of what you can and cannot share." In the legal universe, he added, the messy serendipity of "horizontal" social networking cannot solve the hardest problems. "Lawyers have some questions they will answer for free, and others that they will figure out a way to get paid to answer."

But the legal field's communication sensitivities are "a very specific case," Shellen pointed out. He noted that companies have built private social networks that feature protected blogs and search engines, and that these tools have proven effective in achieving new forms of collaboration while keeping information secure. Organizations are now incorporating use of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social media into their daily routines, although they are in need of systems that can integrate and update the information being posted across all of the platforms. Shellen's Thing Labs produces a reader called "Brizzly" that can be used to provide that service.

Lippe agreed that, despite the concerns he noted, large legal firms have an opportunity to use social networking to reestablish an intimacy with clients that they may have lost as the businesses grew larger and adjusted to structural changes in the industry. Lippe wrote recently on his Legal OnRamp blog that social networking tools can be used to save attorneys from "e-mail and attachment overload" and to "share existing knowledge or collaborate on new work [including] high volume work like commercial contracts and high complexity work like major case litigation."

Office culture plays a significant role in what platform is used to share information, according to Schultz, a partner with the San Mateo, Calif.-based Altimeter Group, a technology strategy consulting firm. She noted that media companies, for example, may be a better fit for the horizontal nature of social networking. Schultz has been active in social media and networking for many years and has advised organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 50 companies, including Citibank and Procter & Gamble. At P&G, she built the P&G Social Media Lab, a program that enables the company to study the new dynamics of customer relationships in the age of social networking, and to use social media to break the mold of standard marketing measures and approaches that were geared toward older types of media. By encouraging brand managers to pay close attention to what customers were saying on community sites and other social networking places, Schultz said the Lab has helped P&G redefine how it engages, communicates with and uses marketing to influence consumers. "I see the tools making the roles we have more porous," she stated. "As the consumer-driven nature of social networking moves into organizations, the collaboration potential of their use becomes more interesting."

The use of tools like Twitter and Google Wave "definitely make a cultural statement," said Douglas. The Google product marketing manager described how Google Wave has the capabilities for real-time, rolling conversation and collaboration among users that can include messages, links and attachments. Douglas noted that each conversation or "wave" can be modified with different editing and replying privileges so that enterprises can "exercise controls for how people want to lock down content." The Google engineers demonstrated the application on the big screen behind the panelists; they showed how users can comment with links embedded in their messages and also load attachments.

Google Wave could be used effectively for private communication inside the firewall, as well as for working with a diverse community outside an organization, panelists said. Previous KM systems did not easily integrate communication with content management, making it difficult to use existing tools to access and manage information during real time conversations. Google Wave and other social networking tools offer the potential of a much tighter integration between communication and content, meaning conversations can include richer information sharing and easier references to content available across the organization.

To Shellen, the most interesting aspect to how social networking and collaboration tools are used is users' ability to join ongoing conversations. He said his firm is currently building a "data set on top of that engagement, where we ask people to explain trending topics on Twitter." The combination of immediate updates plus access to more in-depth information can enhance knowledge. "Tools like Twitter make me much smarter about you," Schultz noted. "And the 'you' could be an entity or an individual." She said that with the right kind of filtering, people can collaborate and make more effective use of the information available on social networks. "Companies can collaborate in real time with customers on products and even pricing."

But does the 140-character limit for posts to Twitter enable engagement, or is it "a sign of triviality?" asked Weinberger. "Constraints breed invention," replied Shellen. Douglas added that communities using Twitter, Google Wave and other tools are creating their own etiquette. Panelists agreed that both the creation of etiquette for particular conversations and the sheer ability to engage in several discussions at once would be difficult using blogs and older forms of web content sharing programs.

An Open and Vibrant World

Weinberger asked the panelists whether progress toward the real-time collaboration frontier is being driven by new technology or human needs. Speaking to the human needs, Fitton observed that social networking tools such as Twitter "help us overcome human isolation in a way that is not brand new but is happening on a different scale." She said that the collaboration possible on the site is a question of "not just; 'What are you doing?' but, 'What do we have in common?'" Fulfilling that need is what fascinates her about the phenomenon. Shellen added: "There's accountability behind it; we now have modes of identity tied to short bursts of communication that are very much 'you.'"

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on social networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

Organizing your papers and citations from the Web
Sharing and remotely accessing your bookmarks

February 16, 2006 message from Vidya Ananthanarayanan to the faculty at Trinity University

Dear Faculty,

Ever wished your bookmarks in Internet Explorer or other browsers were accessible anytime anyplace? Ever wanted to share your Internet resources with your class, research colleagues, or peers? How would you like to know what information sources other people in your field are using? Perhaps, you simply want to organize all your bookmarks in a manner that is more meaningful and personal to you? How often have you been frustrated by an outdated or broken URL and wished you could have saved the article or paper itself?

Want to find out more about how you can do any or all of the above? Then mark your calendars for the Social Bookmarking: Tag & Share! TEACHnology Seminar in Library Room 103 from 10:00 - 11:15 am tomorrow. We will explore online services like del.icio.us and CiteULike, and discuss ways to leverage them in the classroom and in your research. Refreshments will be served.

Vidya Ananthanarayanan
Instructional Support Manager
Center for Learning and Technology
210.999.7346
vidya@trinity.edu
http://www.trinity.edu/ims

Jensen Comment
The CiteULike cite is at http://www.citeulike.org/

CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special software.

Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer. You can share your library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about.

You're currently looking at a list of the last few papers submitted by all the CiteULike users. Why not register for a free account today and start organising your collection and see just the articles you're interested in? All we need is your email address, a username, and a password. It should take less than fifteen seconds.

The del.icio.us cite is at http://del.icio.us/

» keep your favorite websites, music, books, and more in a place where you can always find them.

» shareyour favorites with family, friends, and colleagues.

» discover new and interesting things by browsing popular & related items.

Free Public Affairs Case Teaching Materials and Sometimes Entire Course Materials from the University of Washington
The Electronic Hallway --- https://hallway.org/

The Electronic Hallway is pleased to announce a unique and progressive new product— Integrated Management: A Complete Core Curriculum — a previously untested venture in presenting an entire course package using online technology. This package represents a 30 week integrated core management curriculum.

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education and training alternatives are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on free online textbooks and learning materials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

From the University of Virginia
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities --- http://www.iath.virginia.edu/

IATH is a research unit of the University of Virginia. Our goal is to explore and develop information technology as a tool for scholarly humanities research. To that end, we provide our Fellows with consulting, technical support, applications development, and networked publishing facilities. We also cultivate partnerships and participate in humanities computing initiatives with libraries, publishers, information technology companies, scholarly organizations, and other groups residing at the intersection of computers and cultural heritage.

The research projects, essays, and documentation presented here are the products of a unique collaboration between humanities and computer science research faculty, computer professionals, student assistants and project managers, and library faculty and staff. In many cases, this work is supported by private or federal funding agencies. In all cases, it is supported by the Fellows’ home departments; the College or School to which those departments belong; the University of Virginia Library; the Vice President for Research and Public Service; the Vice President and Chief Information Officer; the Provost; and the President of the University of Virginia.

News Update from Campus Technology on January 11, 2005

Creating the Classroom of Tomorrow

What does it take to successfully integrate all systems across a campus? Planning, communication, flexibility, and more. In a new micro site sponsored by HP, you'll read how several campuses approached their IIS projects and what made them successful. Join a peer forum to discuss implementation and budget issues; read white papers, case studies and articles on the challenges of integration.

http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=11787

December 12, 2006 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Perhaps the most significant new "feature" in the new release is the hook that Adobe is providing to other revenue-enhancing products like Acrobat Connect, which provides web-conferencing capabilities within Reader for a competitive price to www.gotomeeting.com (which I use). Incidentally, I personally believe that such a web conferencing product is an indispensable feature of any Internet-delivered accounting course.

One intriguing new development in the new Acrobat PROFESSIONAL version ( the pdf creation tool), is the ability to create forms that can be filled out and saved by users who have the free Reader. This is a departure from prior practice for Adobe, because they were trying to sell more expensive server software to facilitate that task.

Richard

Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases

This section was moved to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#KnowledgeBases

New and Old Tools

A Must Read
Educause: Emerging Trends in Education Technology --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/09/qt#250713

Educause and the New Media Consortium have released the 2011 Horizon Report, an annual study of emerging issues in technology in higher education. The issues that are seen as likely to have great impact:

Over the next year: e-books and mobile devices.

From two to three years out: augmented reality and game-based learning.

From four to five years out: gesture-based computing and learning analytics.

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

SUNY Albany Guide to Web Resources --- http://libguides.library.albany.edu/content.php?pid=130754&sid=1121460

"Check Out EDUCAUSE 2010 Resources," by Tanya Roscorla, Converge Magazine, October 18, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/training/Check-Out-EDUCAUSE-2010-Resources.html

Question
Why is the annual Educause Conference "weird?"

"Virtual Desktops in Education: Reduce Costs and Support Next-Generation Learning" white paper to find out how desktop virtualization can,"
Cisco, June 2011 --- http://www.cisco.com/web/offer/eduk12/index_a1.html?keyCode=207725_1

4Teachers: Teach with Technology --- http://www.4teachers.org/

Grammar Girl Tips --- http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

The Writing Center at Harvard University --- http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/resources.html

"ProfHacker Goes to Educause," Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/profhacker-goes-to-educause/27941

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

TeacherTube (a video server for teachers) --- http://www1.teachertube.com/

"Microsoft Will Pay for U. of Nebraska’s Switch to Its New Cloud-Based Service," by Jie Jenny Zou, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 7, 2011 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/microsoft-will-pay-for-u-of-nebraskas-switch-to-its-new-cloud-based-service/32121?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

3-D Printer Video--- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw

Technology Student Association --- http://www.tsaweb.org/

Bob Jensen's threads on Education Technology --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

See Edutainment --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

See the online tutorial links at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

Educause Live --- http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?SECTION_ID=34&bhcp=1

From PBS: Touch Table Computing Video --- http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience/video/231-touchtable.html

Social Networking for Education: The Beautiful and the Ugly
(including Google's Wave and Orcut for Social Networking and some education uses of Twitter)
Updates will be at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

Family Learning Forum --- http://familylearningforum.org/
Note the link to videos

Teaching History With Technology --- http://www.thwt.org/

Drawing With Light [Flash Player] http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/youth/dwl/default_e.jsp

More than 100 colleges have set up channels on YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
Search for words like “accounting”

YouTube Education Channels --- http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of work that they are now sharing with us

National Archives: Teachers' Resources --- http://www.archives.gov/education/

"QuickWire: Top 10 Trends in Academic Libraries," by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 16, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-top-10-trends-in-academic-libraries/31796?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

RSS --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
Feed43 --- http://feed43.com/
"How To Turn Any Page into a Feed with RSS Scraping," by Jason B. Jones, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 26, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-turn-any-page-into-a-feed-with-rss-scraping/34942?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Creative Commons Case Studies --- http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies

"Wordle Revisited," by Erin E. Templeton, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 6, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/wordle-revisited/38293?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

ProfHacker first wrote about Wordle back in October 2009, when Julie Meloni called it “the gateway drug to textual analysis.” George Williams followed her post with another in November of 2009 that further considered ways to “[Use] Wordle in the classroom.”

Inspired by a Twitter conversation last week with Caleb McDaniel (@wcaleb), I decided to revisit it here.

I recently used Wordle in an assignment for my January Intercession class (on F. Scott Fitzgerald) and found it very useful for introducing students to close-reading and the basics of textual analysis. As an English professor, textual analysis is one of the most fundamental skills that I teach, and as a result, it can feel like the bane of my existence. The source of my frustration (and that of my students) is trying to get from summary and/or description to analysis. Students are often very good at describing what is happening in a text, but it can be very hard for them to break out of this habit and think about language in other ways.

Enter Wordle.

To me, there are two things that make Wordle invaluable:

It’s free and very easy to use. As an open web-based program, all students with access to a computer can use it. It doesn’t require specific hardware (read: iPad) or charge fees for accessing the site.

It’s fun. Generating a Word Cloud is as simple as clicking on the “Create” link, pasting in “a bunch of text,” and clicking “Go.” Once the Word Cloud is created, students can then play with fonts, color schemes, and other visual variables such as whether they prefer the words to be laid out horizontally, vertically, or a bit of both.

In my class, I first demonstrated how to use Wordle with the novel we were reading (This Side of Paradise), which had the added benefit of being published in 1921, so it is no-longer copyright protected so I could use passages from Project Gutenberg’s edition of the novel rather than having to transcribe them manually. We created a few word clouds together as a class to make sure everyone knew how to do it, and then I asked the students how looking at these passages through the Wordle lens might change their understanding. What did they notice seeing the words rearranged, and in some cases resized (the size of words in the Wordle is directly proportionate to the number of times that the word appears in the initial text block)? By deconstructing and defamiliarizing the passage, Wordle magically freed students from the summary trap and helped them to think about the text analytically beyond the constraints of plot. Word clouds do not have plots, at least not in the linear convention sense that allows easy summary, so analysis was suddenly less confusing.

Finally, I asked students to create a Wordle on their own and post a screenshot of it to the class blog. They could choose any episode from This Side of Paradise that we had not already examined together in class. Once they had their Wordle, they were asked to answer a few questions: “Does this graphic visualization of the text highlight certain themes or issues in the episode? Does it emphasize particular themes or ideas? Do you notice things about the episode that you had previously discounted in your earlier reading?”

Posting the Wordles to the website proved to be a bit tricky for some, but that difficulty stemmed from the screenshot rather than Wordle itself.

My class created some very interesting Wordles, and more to the point, using this tool helped to make the task of literary analysis less daunting, which is often no easy feat! I was left wondering why I don’t use it more often in my classes and am currently trying to figure out ways to incorporate it into other assignments.

Continued in article

"Who Are the Top Technology Innovators in Higher Education?" by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 12, 2011 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/who-are-the-top-technology-innovators-in-higher-education/34638?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

This is only at the nominating stage at this point.
It is, however, informative to read the nominations already listed as comments to the above article.
I liked Paul Miller's nomination and try very hard year after year to serve accounting like Tom Bruce serves law.

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Financial Instruments: Perhaps auditing courses could make use of some of the IAASB resources in
International Auditing Practice Note (IAPN) 1000, Special Considerations in Auditing Financial Instruments
|http://www.ifac.org/publications-resources/international-auditing-practice-note-iapn-1000-special-considerations-auditin

"IFAC Offers Alerts on Tough Audit Issues," by Tammy Whitehouse, Compliance Week, December 29, 2011 ---
http://www.complianceweek.com/ifac-offers-alerts-on-tough-audit-issues/article/221235/

Guidance emerging from the International Federation of Accountants might prove useful even in the United States in the coming weeks as companies close the books on 2011 and plan for the year ahead.

IFAC's International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board has issued a practice note on special considerations that should be taken into account when auditing financial instruments. The alert, titled International Auditing Practice Note 1000, provide some practical assistance to auditors when dealing with valuation and other issues related to financial statement assertions, a touchy and complex area in any entity's financial statements in light of economic pressures and an increasing focus on fair value.

According to IAASB Chairman Arnold Schilder, the practice note can help auditors understand the nature of and risks associated with financial instruments as well as the different valuation techniques and types of controls entities may use in relation to them. The guidance also highlights audit considerations that should be taken into account throughout the audit process. IAASB Technical Director James Gunn said through a statement that the exercise of developing the guidance was informative even to the board, which will further inform the board's work as it develops future auditing standards.

In a separate release, IFAC's Professional Accountants in Business Committee has proposed some best practices guidance on evaluating and improving internal controls to help organizations benchmark their work in maintaining effective controls. The committee says the guidance is intended to be useful to any organization, regardless of the internal control framework it uses, to help deal with internal control issues that are often problematic because of poor design or implementation.

Vincent Topoff, the committee's senior technical manager, says the guidance would be meaningful even to U.S. companies where internal controls are more closely scrutinized because it was developed in part by U.S. experts who have spent many years working to improve internal controls. “Together, they have identified in this guidance those areas where the application of good practice guidance often goes wrong,” he says. “This guidance considers the areas organizations need to continuously improve and the issues they need to address.” The guidance is not meant to replace any existing framework that is in use, he says.

Finally, the IAASB also refreshed its warnings to auditors to keep economic conditions and pressures in mind as they consider whether disclosures are adequate and whether there is reason to doubt an entity can continue as a going concern. Companies continue to face volatility in capital markets and exposure to debt in distressed countries, leading to uncertainty that puts pressure on cash flow and access to credit, the board advises. Those factors complicate the audit process, and therefore must be considered closely, the board says.

Continued in artilce

Bob Jensen's threads on auditing professionalism are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001c.htm

How can your students watch you dance across Excel cells?

While reading this I kept thinking of how an instructor might use this same technology to be immersed in an Excel spreadsheet or a MS Access database.

Seeing Green Video Trick: This Will Also Work for Still Photographs Edited in Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, or Other Picture Editing Software
"Hollywood-Style Tricks on the Cheap," by David Pogue, The New York Times, December 29, 2011 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/hollywood-style-tricks-on-the-cheap/

A couple of weeks ago, my 12-year-old daughter sought my advice about a video she wanted to make. Her concept was so elaborate and involved so many scenes, I doubted it was even doable — unless she used a green screen and filmed the whole thing in the basement.

A green screen, of course, is the oldest trick in the movie-making book. You name the “how did they film that?” movie — “Mission Impossible,” “Avatar,” “The Matrix,” whatever — and I’ll show you scenes that they shot using the old-fashioned green screen technique.To make it work, you film your actor in front of a bright green background — either a green cloth or a painted wall. Then you import the video into the computer, and its software elves cleverly replace every pixel of green with a background you’ve selected, like a photograph or a video you shot at another place or time. If it is done properly, the audience never suspects that the actor was not, in fact, right there at the Eiffel Tower, the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro or the moon.

¶The key word, though, is “properly.” Getting green screen shots to look right is fiendishly difficult. If the green dropcloth has wrinkles, if the actor casts a shadow on it, if the actor’s lighting doesn’t match the substituted video background, then the illusion is ruined. (Ever see the final scene of “The Hunt for Red October”? The green screen setup is so crude, it almost looks as if there are crayon lines around Sean Connery’s head.)

¶So as you can imagine, my success at using home green screen kits has been pretty mixed. Just hanging a green cloth usually doesn’t work very well. You have to light the green cloth perfectly evenly, which requires at least two lights on stands, to prevent shadows. Then you have to light the actor, which usually requires a third light. And if you want your actor to walk, you need a second green cloth on the ground (or you have to paint the floor).

¶After years of fiddling around with amateur kits, I decided to see what a pro green screen kit might cost. My daughter’s project needed one, and there have been many times over the years when I’ve wished I had one for my own video projects.

¶So I poked around on photo-video Web sites like bhphotovideo.com and adorama.com. As I figured, the pro kits, containing both screen and lights, cost $1,300 and up. (A 6-by-6 cloth with frame by itself costs $675.) But there, nestled among all the high-priced kits, I saw something that I thought must be a misprint: a complete green screen setup — 9-by-10-foot green screen, a second 5-by-7-foot cloth, two 500-watt lights with 20-inch “softboxes” (diffusing screens for even light), two collapsible seven-foot light stands, software to teach you green screen techniques and perform the actual actor extraction — for $250.

¶But the customer reviews were overwhelmingly glowing. All of them seemed shocked that a rig this good could cost so little.

¶So I ordered one.

¶It’s called the Westcott uLite Green Screen Lighting Kit. It comes in a surprisingly tiny box, but everything was compactly folded inside. In our basement, I hung the 9-by-10-foot screen by its grommets from a water pipe along the ceiling. The light stands were easy to set up, sturdy and extremely easy to position and adjust. With one on each side of the green screen, I had a huge, perfectly evenly lit, wrinkle-free background.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
A popular application of this green backdrop filming is in weather forecast videos where the broadcaster is not really standing in front of a weather map.

While reading this I kept thinking of how an instructor might use this same technology to be immersed in an Excel spreadsheet or a MS Access database.

Facing Up to Ugly
"Forget PIN Numbers, Apple Wants to Let You Unlock Your iPhone With Your Face," by John Paul Titlow, ReadWriteWeb, December 29, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/apple_iphone_facial_recognition.php

Compared to how things used to be done with desktop computers, accessing your smartphone seems as instantaneous as it gets. You just pick up the device, tap a button, slide a finger to the right, enter (or Swype) your passcode and you're in. The whole process takes about two seconds and requires virtually no physical energy on your part. Piece of cake.

As quick and painless as this seems, Apple wants to simplify things even further for owners of its iPhones, iPads and other iOS devices. Imagine walking up to your phone or tablet in its dock and seeing the screen light up with a greeting. You pick it up and pull it a few inches closer to your face, and voilà! the screen is unlocked and the digital universe is instantly at your finger tips.

This reality is not too far off, according to a patent filed recently by Apple. The company wants to build presence and facial recognition into its device so that users can simply approach and peer into a device in order to activate it. No more PIN numbers or button-pressing.

This is a feature already available on jailbroken iPhones, but one that works very slowly and can easily be hacked using a photograph.

Update: As some of our diligent commenters have pointed out, facial recognition unlock feature is also available in Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android. That implementation, however, has been shown to be easily fooled and Google has acknowledged that its not as secure as a traditional passcode.

The technology required to get this type of feature to work effectively is pretty sophisticated and, as Patently Apple describes it, "computationally expensive." The trade-off for using an alternative method is weaker security, which defeats the purpose.

In a somewhat jargon-loaded post, the Apple patent-watching blog describes how the company plans to overcome the challenges associated with implementing such technology. Their method would use a two-dimensional analysis of the placement of facial features as well as skin tone and check those details against "target images" previously captured by the device. This patent comes about a month after news of Apple's acquisition of a patent for advanced 3D object recognition, which could be used in a similar fashion.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This technology might have a tremendous future in online and onsite academic integrity. Firstly, it might discourage students from hiring smart people to take entire courses for them. Secondly, it might discourage students from hiring smart people from taking examinations for them. Thirdly, it might discourage fraudulent students from being admitted to universities or to pretend they were admitted like the guy who keeps pretending he's a Harvard Student.

And it may have tremendous possibilities in crime prevention. For example, a pedophile with a long rap sheet might find it harder to get a job teaching in pre-school or K-12 schools.

Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm

Learning Management System (LMS) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system

"New Course-Management Software Promises Facebook-Like Experience," by Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 29, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-course-management-software-promises-facebook-like-experience/34488?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Three University of Pennsylvania students who recently dropped out to start an upstart course-management system today unveiled their software, called Coursekit, after having raised more than $1-million in venture capital.
The trio, frustrated with the systems offered by universities, such as Blackboard, decided to team up and design their own online course platform, which emphasizes social networking and an easy-to-use interface. By May, the founders, Joesph Cohen, Dan Getelman, and Jim Grandpre, had raised so much start-up cash, from sources including the Founder Collective and IA Ventures, that they decided to quit school to focus on developing Coursekit.

Thirty universities tested Coursekit this fall, including Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.

Coursekit offers a platform for hosting discussions, posting grades and syllabi, sharing calendars and links, and creating student profiles. The company has hired 80 student ambassadors to introduce the new course-management system to students at colleges across the country.

The software is one of several new challengers to Blackboard, which is used by a majority of U.S. colleges. In October, Pearson announced OpenClass, a free course-management system, and last year a Utah company called Instructure unveiled Canvas, which is available under an open-source license.

"Freeing the LMS," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, October 13, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/13/pearson_announces_free_learning_management_system

Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of the trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Course Management Systems (CMS) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

December 3, 2011 message from Rick Newmark

For collaboration tools, we used Sharepoint in our intro to MIS course, which is required for all business students. Since we adopted Pearson products, Pearson provided with the full version of Sharepoint and 200 access codes. Students can rent the ebook for 180 days on Coursesmart for $24 (list price of hard copy is $56). My techphobic students struggled with learning Sharepoint, and all of us, I included, did take some time to get the hang of it. I think Sharepoint makes a great tool for an AIS course because students have to make many security/control/access decisions for their own group sites. For example, what kind of permissions do you grant to various people/groups? How are you going to control access to documents? Are you going to use check-out/check-in for documents or are you going to let multiple people edit simultaneously?

I am going to use it in my graduate AIS course next semester for the reasons stated above and because they will likely use Sharepoint or some other set of collaboration tools in their professional careers.

Rick Newmark

Library of Online Technology Articles --- http://www.techcast.org/Library.aspx

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

"Why Spotify Will Kill iTunes," by Maxwell Wessel, Harvard Business Review Blog, July 22, 2011 --- Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/why_spotify_will_kill_itunes.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

For another look at the Spotify launch, see "Why I'm Not Going Near Spotify (and Why You Shouldn't Either)."

iTunes as we know it is over. It is walking, talking, and continuing to pretend it's alive, but Spotify, Europe's outrageously successful streaming music product, has just shown us the future.

Though you might not even be aware of the competitor that is attacking the music titan of the past decade, that iTunes business model is about to be blown up completely and swiftly. And it could even be thought of as fitting; iTunes accomplished the exact same thing during its early-2000s attack on the bricks-and-mortar retail music industry. Apple set the stage to decimate Tower Records and Sam Goody before either had a clue their industry was about to revolt. But innovation theory can provide a crystal ball; theory could have predicted iTunes' success and it's currently predicting Spotify's success.

To appreciate the truth of this claim, it's vital to understand one of Clayton Christensen's theories on marketing and product development: Jobs-to-be-done. Jobs-to-be-done suggests that in order to predict how to develop, compare, and position our products, we should be driven by a fundamental understanding of what that product is hired to do. For example, every day I hire a Coke to be a wake-me-up mid-afternoon break in my workday. To get the Coke, I walk from my building to a store next door and pay $1.25. I could substitute a free cup of coffee from my own office, which would provide my much-needed caffeine at no cost. But because the job is to break up the afternoon, I value both the caffeine in the product and the distance I walk to pick up the product. I am happy to pay for the Coke because it completes the job I hire a mid-day beverage to complete. To disrupt the purchase of my afternoon Coke, a product would has to be fundamentally advantaged in one of the two areas I value for that product; caffeine and time away from my desk.

When it comes to the music industry, I used to hire Tower Records to deliver my music. For that job, I valued Tower's music selection, the store's convenient locations, the fact that its music was compatible with my Discman, and the low prices. When I compared Tower to other options to fulfill that job, it was pretty well positioned.

Enter iTunes. After iTunes was introduced, its online model beat Tower in selection, convenience, and price. As an online storefront it had a fundamental advantage. It was in your home, had no shelf space limiting its inventory, and could beat Tower on price because of its lower fixed costs. The only thing that might have kept Tower treading water at first was its ability to be compatible with Discmen, which we know now disappeared quickly. With a basic grasp of technology innovation trends, Tower should have known as much and immediately begun running around with its hair on fire.

Now, a decade later, enter Spotify (at least, enter the U.S. market). Based on the job of delivering music, Spotify completes the job of delivering music in much the same way as iTunes does. Spotify is conveniently located, has a wonderful selection, is compatible with my computer, smartphone, and tablet (which are in turn compatible with my stereo and car), and is backward-compatible to play music from my existing iTunes library.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

"How to Use Barcodes at Conferences (and Why You Might Want To), by George Williams, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 21, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-use-barcodes-at-conferences-and-why-you-might-want-to/34209?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Audiences for oral presentations and poster sessions at academic conferences often want more information about a particular topic. One way to provide this, obviously, is to create printed flyers or brochures and hope that you’ve brought enough copies for everyone who’s interested. But what if your printed handout doesn’t make it all the way back on your audience member’s trip home?

During the 2011 Digital Humanities conference at Stanford University (currently underway) some people are making use of QR codes, a specific kind of two-dimensional bar code (also known as a matrix code).

For example, Peter Organisciak gave a talk entitled “When to Ask For Help: Evaluating Projects For Crowdsourcing,” and on one of his presentation slides–as you can see in the photo at the start of this post–he displayed this QR code:

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

"8 Simple Ways To Share Data Online," by David Strom, ReadWriteWeb, June 17, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2011/06/8-simple-ways-to-share-data-on.php

If you have to jointly author a spreadsheet with a colleague, what is the first thing that you do? Email it back and forth. This can be painful, particularly as you try to keep track of your partner's changes and hope the emails transit back and forth across the Internet. Add a third or fourth person, and things get worse. Luckily, there is a better way, and a number of Web-based service providers have stepped up with tools to make spreadsheet sharing a lot easier than sending attachments.

We've written about a few of them, including Longjump and Hyperbase (one of our products of the year for 2008), but I have tried a bunch others, and will show you what is involved and how they stack up.

The process is very straightforward: you either copy and paste data or take your spreadsheet and upload it to the service, after creating accounts for you and your collaborators. Then you can make changes via your Web browser, no other software is required. Some of the services allow for more bells and whistles. Setup time is minimal; your data is properly protected by the service and safe from harm. And you don't need to learn any Web/database programming skills either.

For many people, the spreadsheet is still one of the most popular low-end database applications. The rubric of a table of rows and columns is easily understood and can easily be used as a way to view records and fields of a database. Plus, you don't need to design special reports to view your data entries, and you can easily sort your data without having to create data dictionaries or other database structures, just use the appropriate Excel commands. Having a specialized service that can share this data makes it easier to collaborate too, whether your partners are across the office or on the other side of the world. As long as they have an Internet connection, they are good to go.

There are eight different services currently available, in order of increasing cost:

Online Spreadsheet Sharing Services

Service

Price

Storage limits

Pagos Spreadsheetlive.com

Free (for now)

1 MB

Google Docs

Free

Really unlimited

Microsoft Live

Free

50 MB

Smartsheet.com

$10/mo for up to 10 spreadsheets

30 MB

Longjump Database

$19/mo for two users

3 MB

HyperBase

$175 setup plus $44/mo for 5 users

1.25 GB

TrackVia.com

$250/mo for 10 users

4 GB for entry plan

Intuit QuickBase

$299/mo for 10 users

1 GB for entry plan

Pricing and support

When you decide on the particular service, it pays to read the pricing fine print. There are discounts for annual subscriptions on most services, and some such as Smartsheet offer additional discounts for non-profit and educational institutions. All of these services have 14 day or 30 day free trials to get started, so you can get a feel of what is involved in manipulating your data and how easy it is to make changes, produce reports, and receive notifications.

Continued in article

June 18, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar

I find Google docs great for small spreadsheets, but cumbersome for large files.

I set up Dropbox folders for each of my groups in my online class (3-5 students in a group). They post their project spreadsheets in the group folders, and if a student has a question, I can quickly open the spreadsheet to see what is going on. Students contact me by AIM and we discuss the spreadsheet via AIM. Works like a charm for me.

Amy Dunbar

UConn

Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL): Learning Spaces Collaborative --- http://www.pkallsc.org/

"Thanks to Google Plus, Picasa Gets Unlimited Storage for Photos & Videos, Also Better Tagging," by Sarah Perez, ReadWriteWeb, July 1, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/thanks_to_google_plus_picasa_gets_unlimited_storage_for_photos_and_videos.php

With the launch of Google Plus, there may be some confusion as to how the photos uploaded to the social network (Google+) integrate with Google's online photo-sharing service (Picasa), especially in terms of storage limits. The answer provides some great news for Google Plus users - nearly everything you upload to Google Plus won't count towards your storage limits on Picasa, with the only exception being videos longer than 15 minutes.

And there's another nifty feature involving photo-tagging, too - your Google+ friends can now tag your Picasa photos.

Thus far I past my photographs on two Web servers at Trinity University:

Server One
Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Server Two
More of Bob Jensen's Personal History in Pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/

Bob Jensen's threads on sending large files across the Internet ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles

I think it would be great if some of the faculty who teach large classes (say over 50 students) would share some of their teaching tips on the AECM.

"Teaching Extra-Large Classes and the Role of Technology," by Mark Sample, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 24, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-extra-large-classes-and-the-role-of-technology/30046?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
At this point Mark really does not offer answers in the above article. And I never taught a large class on campus or online so I don't have a lot to offer.

It is important to discuss what is meant by a large class. Over 30 years ago I had an economist friend who taught economics via television piped into basements of dormitories at Michigan State University. His classes always had over 1,000 students. But these were not all "his" classes. Students were also part of relatively small recitation sections where they could personally identify with a teaching assistant in Al's television course.

I think a large class is a class of 90 like you find in the Harvard Business School when there are no recitation sections that are also part of the course. I never could figure out how case-method instructors could grade case discussion participation when each student on average got less than one minute of air time in a 90-minute class. I don't think we turn to the Harvard Business School to seek out technology ideas for large classes.

Barry Rice had large basic accounting classes at Loyola College in Maryland. Over 20 years ago his technology of choice was ToolBook and HyperGraphics hand-held clickers (response pads) where he flashed student names on the screen and asked them to recite in front of the class ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads

Steve Hornik teaches extremely large accounting classes at Central Florida and is a pioneer in 3-D Second Life virtual world teaching ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Probably the pedagogy of choice for large courses is video where students outside the classroom can learn asynchronously at their own learning paces and styles. At BYU the basic accounting courses rarely meet face-to-face. The technical learning all takes place via variable-speed video (faculty at other colleges can adopt the specially-recorded BYU DVD disks) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

I think it would be great if some of the faculty who teach large classes (say over 50 students) would share some of their teaching tips on the AECM.

"Most-Popular Education-Technology Articles of 2010," by Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 3, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/most-popular-education-technology-articles-of-2010/28758

We thought we’d begin a new year of Wired Campus with a quick look back at the biggest tech stories of 2010, as voted by you. Items concerning Facebook, iPads, and cheating ranked high in page views. Here are the top 10 headlines from our tech blog:

1. East Stroudsburg U. Suspends Professor for Facebook Posts
2. Seton Hill to Offer iPads to Full-Time Students
3. Colleges ‘Freaking Out’ Over New Facebook Community Pages
4. Hacker Makes the 5th of November One to Remember
5. Students Lack Basic Research Skills, Study Finds
6. What if We Ran Universities Like Wikipedia?
7. Bill Gates Predicts Technology Will Make ‘Place-Based’ Colleges Less Important in 5 Years
8. Cheaters Never Win, at Least in Physics, a Professor Finds
9. Students Retain Information in Print-Like Formats Better
10. Woodbury U. Banned From Second Life, Again

On Tech Therapy, our monthly technology podcast, an interview with Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales scored the most listeners. Here are the three most popular tech podcasts from 2010:

1. Wikipedia’s Co-Founder Calls for Better Information Literacy
2. How Librarians and IT Officials Can Get Along
3. The Case for Digital Scholarship

As for our longer, feature articles about technology, a story about a one-man university on YouTube drew the most readers. Here are the top five technology articles from The Chronicle:

1. A Self-Appointed Teacher Runs a One-Man ‘Academy’ on YouTube
2. High-Tech Cheating Abounds, and Professors Bear Some Blame
3. Is Technology Making Your Students Stupid?
4. To Save Students Money, Colleges May Force a Switch to E-Textbooks
5. Teachers Without Technology Strike Back

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

The OpenScout Tool Library is a social network of individuals and collectives who are developing or using learning resources and want to share their stories and resources from different countries.

The OpenScout Tool Library is currently hosting the activities of the COLEARN community of research in collaborative learning and educational technologies in the Portuguese language. This group is run by Alexandra Okada (The Open University UK) and consists of learners, educators and researchers from academic institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Their interests focus on collaborative participation through social media, colearning (collaborative open learning) using Open Educational Resources (OER), Social Media and Web 2.0 research. There are 26 research groups from Brazilian and Portugal universities - 115 people currently registered in the Tool Library.

At the moment, this community is developing a book project called "Web 2.0: Open Educational Resources in Learning and Professional Development". From January to February 2012, three workshops will be run in the Tool Library for improving OER skills: image, presentation and audio/visual material. These collaborative activities and workshops aim at engaging people in developing their skills and discussing concepts as well as preparing themselves to be OER users who are able to produce, remix and share open resources and open ideas.

Related Links:

The OpenScout Tool Library --- http://openscout.kmi.open.ac.uk/tool-library/

Video clip of the Tool Library --- http://youtu.be/Z1Z-fpRrbDg

The OpenScout project --- http://www.openscout.net/

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Problem-Based Learning at the University of Delaware --- http://www.udel.edu/inst/

"Do Podcasts Help Students Learn?" by Tanya Roscorla, Converge Magazine, November 3, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Podcasts-George-Washington-University.html

Before George Washington University renewed its iTunes U contract, the administration wanted to know how the podcasts impacted student learning and engagement.

In fall 2009, the university's Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning studied a world history class of 262 students to find the answer.

But the answer isn't yes or no — the answer depends on the student's learning style, gender and motivation.

“If your goal is to find a magic bullet that makes all students better, this isn’t it," said Hugh Agnew, a professor from the Elliott School of International Affairs who taught the course. "But If your goal is to reach some students better that maybe you aren’t reaching so terribly well, then I think this is worth trying.”

6 interesting results He created 10-minute podcasts with graphics and audio, as well as a text transcript of the podcasts with visuals to supplement his lecture class. In the first research run, half of the class used the podcasts, and the other half used the text. In the second run, they switched.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on learning and memory are at the following two sites:

A few weeks after a handful of colleges gave away iPads to determine the tablet's place in the classroom, students and faculty seem confident that the device has some future in academe.

But they're still not exactly sure where that might be.

At those early-adopter schools, iPads are competing with MacBooks as the students' go-to gadget for note taking and Web surfing. Zach Kramberg, a first-year student at George Fox University, which allowed incoming students to choose between a complimentary iPad or MacBook this fall, said the tablet has become an important tool for recording and organizing lecture notes. He also takes the device with him to the university's dimly lit chapel so he can follow along with an app called iBible. "The iPad's very easy to use once you figure them out," he said.

Still, Mr. Kramberg said the majority of students rely on bound Bibles in chapel and stick to pen and paper or MacBooks in the classroom.

Greg Smith, chief information officer at George Fox, said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask and print, and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on their notebooks. "That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent device," he said.

Mr. Smith said that the 67 students—10 percent of the freshman class—that opted for iPads over MacBooks are really excited about the technology but have not been "pushing the capabilities" of the device.

Caitlin Corning, a history professor at George Fox, said it's been hard to meld iPads into the curriculum because only a small subset of her students has the device. Ms. Corning used the iPad as a portable teaching tool during a student art trip to Europe this summer, flashing Van Gogh works on the screen when they were in the places he painted them. Translating that portable-classroom experience into her classroom back in Oregon, however, has not been easy. "It's still a work in progress," she said. "It's a little complex because only some of the freshmen have iPads."

Faculty members at Seton Hill University, which gave iPads to all full-time students, are working with the developers of an e-book app called Inkling to come up with new ways to integrate the iPad into classroom instruction. The textbook software—one of many in development—allows students to access interactive graphics and add notes as they read along. Faculty members can access the students' marginalia to see whether they understand the text. They can also remotely receive and answer questions from students in real time.

Catherine Giunta, an associate professor of business at Seton Hill, said the technology has changed the way students interact with their textbooks and how she interacts with her students. While reviewing the margin notes of a student in her marketing class, Ms. Giunta was able to pinpoint and correct a student's apparent misunderstanding of a concept that was going to be covered in class the next day. "The misunderstanding may not have been apparent until [the student] did a written report," Ms. Giunta said. "I could really give her individualized instruction and guidance."

As students and faculty members around the country feel around for new ways to integrate the iPad into academic life, a handful of programs are taking a more formal approach to finding its place in the classroom. Students in the Digital Cultures and Creativity program at the University of Maryland at College Park will turn a critical eye on the iPad as a study tool while integrating it into their curriculum. "I think [students are] taking a sort of wait-and-see approach," said Matthew Kirschenbaum, the program director and an associate professor of English.

Similarly, the faculty at Indiana University has formed a 24-member focus group to evaluate iPad-driven teaching strategies. The groups have started meeting this month to assess how their iPad experiments are going, with a preliminary report due in January. "It's meant to be a supportive, collaborative, formalized conversation," said Stacy Morrone, Indiana's associate dean of learning technologies. "We don't expect that everything will go perfectly."

Although not entirely related to the substance of the iPad educational debate, a pilot program at Long Island University was thrust into the spotlight over the weekend in an animated e-mail exchange between a college journalist and Apple's founder Steve Jobs. As Gawker reports it, complaints about a few unreturned media inquiries from a deadline-stressed reporter led to a curt "leave us alone" response from the Apple chief executive.

In the e-mail chain, Mr. Jobs said, "Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade."

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm

Cutting-Edge Social Media Approaches to Business Education: Teaching with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, and Blogs, by Charles Wankel ---
http://management-education.net/rmed9/

February 12, 2011 reply from Jagdish Gangolly

Bob, Steve,

The forensic practices at the Big 4 are WAY ahead of the accounting academia in using the technology to cover the dark side of social networking in e-discovery. We in the accounting academia have been too busy regressing to take note.

I know of at least two who used it extensively in fraud examination as far back as 2008. They demonstrated its use to me while I was designing our fraud examination course.

One commercial product that is popular is attenex. See http://www.jurinnov.com/attenex.asp

Jagdish

Reader Poll: Tech Tool You're Most Excited to Take into the Classroom," by Julie Meloni, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 10, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Reader-Poll-Tech-Tool-Youre/26127/

I'm not sure I've ever said this out loud, but ReadWriteWeb is my absolute favorite blog in all the blogosphere, and has been since they began covering all things technology-related in 2003 or so—it's the emphasis on critical thinking and analysis rather than knee-jerk "first!" responses to news and events that makes me respect them so.

Recently, my most favorite RWW author (Audrey Watters) asked educators for input via Twitter: what's the tech tool you're most excited to take into the classroom with you this fall?. Audrey is collecting responses for use in an upcoming RWW story, so between now and August 15th feel free to help her out.

However, I'm interested in your answers as well. No, I don't aim to write a similar story as Audrey, but I do wonder about the different answers based on the different audiences. Audrey's readership comes from the already highly-technologically-inclined, often found on Twitter. The ProfHacker audience in the CHE is not necessarily so. In fact, I think it is safe to say that the majority of the ProfHacker readership is not on Twitter and is more technology-curious than technology-embedded (or invested).

So, I'd like to hear from you as well. In the comments, please let us know what's the tech tool you're most excited to take into the classroom with you this fall? (anything hardware or software "counts," and I'll even accept analog technologies as valid answers)

Hopefully, given your responses and Audrey's own article from (predominantly) her own audience, there will be some interesting food for thought on the state of technology in higher ed.

Jensen Comment
“Taking into the classroom” is a rather ambiguous phrase that should probably read “taking into the course.” In the latter case, something Camtasia is still on my list of important priorities for things to add to virtually any course whether onsite or online ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

Camtasia --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camtasia
Camtasia can be used by students as well as instructors.

Videos Illustrating How to Make Videos Using Camtasia Version 7.1

October 13, 2011 message from Rick Newmark

Here are three videos that I made to show my colleagues how to use Camtasia to make a class video for when you go out of town, or to create a tutorial for your class. I figured that some of you might be interested, so here they are. Please note that these are not Richard Campbell-quality videos. I shot these quickly and without any script. I made only a couple of minor edits.

Also, please note I used Screencast-O-Matic to make the first part of Part 1 so that I could capture setting up Camtasia Recorder. Pay attention to before and after I press the Record button to see the differences between the two applications.

How to record a class using Camtasia 7

http://youtu.be/PdSsVcLBsMM Part 1 - Setting up Camtasia Recorder and recording a class video.

http://youtu.be/aqUd8kD4VM8 Part 2 - Producing your Camtasia recording for posting in BlackBoard.

http://youtu.be/4KLNlxZOleE Part 3 - Posting your video in BlackBoard.

FYI, In Part 1, I used the following to demonstrate different ways to use Camtasia

1.       Running virtual machines on your PC using Virtual Box

·         Apple Snow Leopard 10.6

·         Linux Ubuntu 11.04

2.       Creating a two-table query in Access 2010

3.       Demonstrating how to use Windows Journal with a Tablet PC—also applies to using the Sympodium on a classroom computer.

·         I showed how to use the REA Enterprise Ontology, t-accounts, and journal entries to explain the following

                                                               i.      The nature of accounts receivable and unearned revenue, including the duality imbalance that creates them

                                                             ii.      How to use t-accounts to design database queries to compute accounts receivable and unearned revenue.

Rick

----------------------------------------

Richard Newmark
Professor, School of Accounting and Computer Information Systems
Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business
2004 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Winner
University of Northern Colorado
Campus Box 128, Kepner Hall 2095D
Greeley, CO 80639
(970) 351-1213 (office)
(970) 351-1068 (fax)
http://PhDuh.com/unc

Bob Jensen's threads on Camtasia are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Note that I find the F9 toggle key very useful for pausing for periods of rest and preparation during the recording of a relatively long video.

Many of my old videos will not run in Windows 7 because Microsoft dropped an an audio codec.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Reader-Poll-Tech-Tool-Youre/26127/

Update on Lanny Arvan: From SCALE Experiments to Blogs

Years ago economics professor Lanny Arvan directed the famous in a controlled SCALE experiments comparing resident full-time students at the University of Illinois taking onsite versus online courses from the same instructors using common grade assessment procedures. Thirty courses across multiple disciplines were examined across five years of experimentation ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois
In spite of some technology glitches in those olden days, many students tended to prefer taking the courses online. Typically, many more students moved from B grades to A grades in online courses. However, there tended to not be much difference for D and F students, indicating that lack of motivation and aptitude cuts across online and onsite pedagogies in mostly the same way.

In one of my technology workshops Dan Stone (then from the University of Illinois) gave us an overview that I still serve up his PowerPoint and audio files ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

"Teaching With Blogs, by Lanny Arvan, Inside Higher Ed, July 27, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/07/27/arvan

“It is my impression that no one really likes the new. We are afraid of it. It is not only as Dostoevsky put it that 'taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most.' Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.”
--Eric Hoffer, Between The Devil And The Dragon

I tried the new in fall 2009, teaching with student blogs, (look in sidebar and scroll down) out in the open where anyone who wanted to could see what the students were producing. The blogging wasn’t new for me. I’d been doing that for almost five years. Having students blog was a different matter. I had no experience in getting them to overcome their anxieties, relaxing in writing online, learning to trust one another that way. Normally I believe what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If I could blog comfortably and get something from that, so could they. On reflection, however, I was very gentle with myself when I started to blog. As an experiment to prove to myself whether I could do it, for three full weeks I made at least one post a day, 500 to 600 words, a couple of times 1,100 to 1,200 words. I didn’t tell a soul I was doing this. There was no pressure on me to keep it up. It was out in the open, yet nobody seemed to be watching. After those three weeks I felt ready. In the teaching, however, at best I could ask the students to blog once a week. I gave the students weekly prompts on the readings or to follow up on class discussion. (See the class calendar for fall 2009. The prompts are in the Friday afternoon entries.) If I let them blog quietly to get comfortable as I had done, the entire semester would expire before they were ready to go public. There seemed no alternative but to have them plunge in.

The uncertainty about how best to assist the students once they had taken the plunge created an important symmetry between the students and me; we both were to learn about how to do this well, often by first doing it less well. Though it was an inadvertent consequence, of all my teaching over the past 30 years I believe this course came closest to emulating the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education by Chickering and Gamson. I learned to comment on the student posts, not with some pre-thought-through response based on what I anticipated they’d write, but rather to react to where they appeared to be in their own thinking. (This post provides a typical example. The student introduced time management as a theme. My comment aimed to make her think more about time management.) As natural as that is to do in ordinary conversation, I had never done it before when evaluating student work. Indeed, I didn’t think of these comments as evaluation at all. I thought of them as response. In the normal course of my non-teaching work I respond to colleagues all the time and they respond to me. This form of online interaction in the class made it more like the rest of my interactions at work.

Most of the students were quite awkward in their initial blogging. Good students all, the class was a seminar on "Designing for Effective Change" for the Honors Program, but lacking experience in this sort of approach to instruction, the students wrote to their conception of what I wanted to hear from them. I can’t imagine a more constipated mindset for producing interesting prose. For this class there was a need for them to unlearn much of their approach which had been finely tuned and was quite successful in their other classes. They needed to take more responsibility for their choices. While I gave them a prompt each week on which to write, I also gave them the freedom to choose their own topic so long as they could create a tie to the course themes. Upon reading much of the early writing, I admonished many of them to "please themselves" in the writing. I informed them that they could not possibly please other readers if they didn’t first please themselves. It was a message they were not used to hearing. So it took a while for them to believe it was true. In several instances they tried it out only after being frustrating with the results from their usual approach. This, as Ken Bain teaches us, is how students learn on a fundamental level.

I'm crustier now than I was as a younger faculty member. Nonetheless, I find it difficult to deal with the emotion that underlies giving feedback to students when that feedback is less than entirely complimentary to them. Yet given their awkward early attempts at writing posts that’s exactly what honest response demanded. It’s here where having the postings and the comments out in the open so all can see is so important, before the class has become a community, before the students have made up their minds about what they think about this blogging stuff. Though both the writing and the response are highly subjective, of necessity, it is equally important for the process to be fair. How can a student who receives critical comments judge those comments to be fitting and appropriate, rather than an example of the insensitive instructor picking on the hapless student? Perhaps a very mature student can discern this even-handedly from the comments themselves and a self-critique of the original post. I believe most students benefit by reading the posts of their classmates, making their own judgments about those writings and then seeing the instructor’s comments, finally making a subsequent determination as to whether those comments seem appropriate and helpful for the student in reconsidering the writing.

A positive feedback loop can be created by this process. The commenting, more than any other activity the instructor engages in, demonstrates the instructor’s commitment to the course and to the students. In turn the students, learning to appreciate the value of the comments, start to push themselves in the writing. Their learning is encouraged this way. Further, since the blogging is not a competition between the students and their classmates, those who like getting comments begin to comment on the posts of other students. The elements of the community that the class can become are found in this activity.

Since on a daily basis I use blogs and blog readers in my regular work, one of the original reasons for me taking this approach rather than use the campus learning management system was simply that I thought it would be more convenient for me. Also, given my job as a learning technology administrator, I went into the course with some thought that I might showcase the work afterward. Openness is clearly better for that. However in retrospect neither of these is primary. The main reason to be open is to set a good tone for the class. We want ideas to emerge and not remain concealed.

Yet there remains one troubling element: student privacy. Is open blogging this way consistent with FERPA? As best as I’ve been able to determine, it is as long as students “opt in.” (I did give students the alternatives of writing in the class LMS site or writing in the class wiki site. No student opted for those.) My experience suggests, however, that is not quite sufficient. If most students opt in, peer pressure may drive others to opt in as well. More importantly, however, students choose to opt in when they are largely ignorant of the consequences. Might they feel regret after they better understand what the blogging is all about?

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on blogs are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

You may want to liven up your accounting, math or history courses by illustrating the art and science of the Abacus Calculator

Abacus: The Art of Calculating with Beads --- http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/index.html

Contents

Introduction
Construction · Basics · Java Applet · Technique · The Abacus Today

History
Timeline · Salamis Tablet · Counting Board · Roman Hand Abacus · Suan Pan · Soroban · Schoty · Nepohualtzitzin · Khipu · Lee Abacus

Interactive Abacus Tutor
Sarat Chandran and David A. Bagley's incredible Java abacus with a built-in tutor for counting, addition and subtraction.
Calculations
Addition · Subtraction · Multiplication & Division · Square Roots · Cube Roots

The Lee Abacus
The manual for the Lee Abacus, c. 1958 is available as Text · Images

The Abacus as Art
Michael Mode builds exotic abaci as art objects.

Abacus: Mystery of the Bead
Abacus Techniques by Totton Heffelfinger & Gary Flom.

Articles, Excerpts and Analysis

The Abacus vs.The Electric Calculator
In 1946, a contest held in Tokyo, pitted an abacus against an electric calculator; the abacus won, of course.

Feynman vs. The Abacus
Richard Feynman battles against the abacus; the result is not surprising (if you know Feynman).

Comparing the Chinese and the Mesoamerican Abacus
An analysis contributed by David B. Kelley.

The Roman Hand-Abacus
An analysis contributed by Steve Stephenson.

The Incan Khipu
String, and Knot, Theory of Inca Writing by John Noble Wilford.
Talking Knots of the Incas by Viviano and Davide Domenici.

Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge
An article about the dangers of forgetting knowledge learned from the past, by Eugene Linden.

All Things Abacus

Additional Abacus Resources
Purchase or build an abacus · An abacus for your Palm · Books about the abacus · Java applet source code · The Mesoamerican abacus

Resources For Teachers
The abacus in the classroom · Abacus lesson plan · Math and science resources for teachers

Photos
High-resolution photos of my abacus collection.

Bob Jensen's threads on early accounting history are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory

Browser Readability Tool and Sunlight Designs

July 16, 2010 message from Bill Ellis [bill.ellis@FURMAN.EDU]

If you want your web pages to only display what you want to read, this is an incredible tool. It strips a web page of all but what you want to read. Go to this web site, check the settings you desire, and drag the Readabiity box to your browser toolbar. When you are viewing a page click on the Readabiity box on your browser toolbar and the page you are viewing is cleaned of all but what you want to read.
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

I found Readabiity at:
http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/

Sunlight is a site promoting cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable.

You’ll enjoy their design contest. I particularly thought the IRS web page redesign, US Passport application redesign and How Laws are made to be excellent examples of clear communications.

http://sunlightlabs.com/contests/designforamerica/

Bill Ellis, CPA, MPAcc
Furman University
Accounting UES
864-908-4743

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled
Plutarch

From the Scout Report on July 23, 2010

Quizlet --- http://quizlet.com/

The school year isn't so far away, and educators may want to take a close look at this most helpful web application. Quizlet allows students and teachers to create flashcard sets with little fuss, and they can also share their flashcards with friends via email, Facebook, or MySpace. The site has a great "How do I??" section that provides many answers to how to best use the program. Quizlet is compatible with all operating systems.

Wallwisher http://www.wallwisher.com/

Want to make an online notice board? It's never been easier than with Wallwisher, which is a new application that offers a number of excellent features. Visitors can use the application to put up just about any item on their wall, including video clips, audio files, drawings, photographs, and so on. "Walls" can be set so only certain individuals can have access to them, and visitors do not need to sign up an account to get started. This version is compatible with all operating systems.

"Ed Tech Trends to Watch in 2010," by Converge Staff," Converge Magazine, June 14, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/2010-Ed-Tech-Trends.html

School districts and college campuses across the country are trying to grab students' attention and teach them in ways they learn best. That means they're adding social media features to learning management systems, offering more online and blended courses, and taking advantage of mobile devices.

Check out the top trends in learning management systems, online learning and mobile computing identified in a 2010 Software & Information Industry Association report released this month.

Learning management systems

In 2008, 35 percent of the K-12 schools surveyed said they had no plans to buy a learning management system, but lower prices and higher federal accountability requirements will change their minds, according to the report. And when they do change their minds, they'll be looking for digital content and professional development to go along with the systems.

They'll also be looking for tools including curriculum planning and lesson management. These tools allow them to create detailed lesson plans for individual students and assign digital curriculum lessons to students.

In higher education, professors increasingly rely on digital content and use social media to teach their students. They're also adding more online classes and reducing administrative costs. As a result, learning management systems should be incorporating rich Internet applications, social media, user-generated content, mobile devices, Software as a Service and business process management systems.

Faculty members expect to do a number of tasks in learning management systems:

Post grades, access class rosters

Set up class chats to answer questions

Hold electronic office hours

Add course assignments to student calendars

Send announcements to the class

Access enhanced learning management and course management systems

Online learning

The e-learning market has been expanding steadily, and over the next four years, forecasters predict that K-12 online learning will advance at a compound annual growth rate of 17 percent, while higher education will grow at 8 percent.

In online learning, blended or hybrid classes that combine face-to-face and online instruction are popping up, particularly in higher education. And the expansion of open source content on sites such as Flatworld Knowledge, Curriki and CK12 give teachers and professors more options to potentially save money.

Mobile devices, WiMAX technology, podcasts and software tools allow students to learn any time, anywhere. And that mobile computing experience is what they're looking for.

Mobile computing

In the past two years, netbooks have arrived on the scene, but their sales are already growing more than 200 percent per year. K-12 schools adopt them at a higher rate because many of them provide devices for their students. Netbook trends include 10-inch screens, faster processors, longer battery life and built-in wireless wide area networks.

Laptop use is still growing steadily, but not as fast as it was previously. Laptop trends include LED backlights, backlit keyboards, more rugged mechanical designs, larger hard drives, newer processor designs and increased availability of 3G/4G wireless wide area network support.

Meanwhile, tablet computers are becoming more popular in postsecondary education, and companies are creating smartbooks that have long battery lives of about two days.

More people view Web pages through smart phones and cell phones than through computers. Cell phones have become widely accepted in postsecondary education, while many K-12 districts still ban them in the classroom.

As far as operating systems go, Microsoft Windows leads the pack on desktop and laptop systems. But Mac OS X from Apple, Windows Mobile, iPhone OS, Symbian, Linux and Android have entered the mobile market.

On the connectivity side, most postsecondary campuses have robust WiFi, but less than 30 percent of K-12 classrooms have robust WiFi access. While WiFi has been around for more than 10 years, WiMAX is coming on the scenes as a 4G wide area data service in the U.S. And don't forget the cellular 3G and 4G data services for smart phones.

While these are some trends that are happening now and in the next year or two, the report also forecasts what education technology will look like in the future. In the next five years, the report predicts that cloud computing, cell phone use and 3G and 4G data plans will become mainstream in education.

Will these forecasts come true?

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

The dark side of education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

Evernote --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evernote

"A Brief Word from an Evernote Convert," by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 6, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/A-Brief-Word-from-an-Evernote/25291/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

I take notes. A lot of notes. I take notes when I read, when I'm in meetings, when I'm listening to lectures, when I'm figuring out what I need to do any given day. In fact, if I ever tell you that I'm going to do something, but you don't see me make myself a note about it, don't believe me.

Notes are the key to remembering, for me. Or, more precisely: the act of taking notes is the key to remembering. Something about the act of taking notes helps make an idea, or an issue, or a plan more real to me.

I used to take these notes longhand, in various notebooks, some devoted to particular projects, some to more general notetaking. Several years back, though, I began shifting my notetaking to the computer, so that those notes would be more easily searchable and repurposeable.

Originally, I used Word for this purpose, but after one MS Office upgrade too many, requiring that all of my documents be converted (and thus become unreadable to the older version of the software), I decided that I wanted something more lightweight. The purpose of these notes, after all, was the text that went into them, and not their formatting; plain vanilla ".txt" files were likely to remain highly flexible into the future.

But those .txt files started proliferating on my machine, and so did the folders I used to organize them. And while Mac OS X's search capabilities via Spotlight aren't all that bad now, that wasn't always the case. So when I stumbled across Steven Johnson's post about how he used DEVONthink, I was sold.

DEVONthink is an extraordinarily powerful information management system -- a bit too powerful, quite honestly, for what I needed it to do. So back in May, when Shawn Miller guest-posted here on ProfHacker about how he uses Evernote, I was persuaded to give it a try.

One might begin to think I'm too easily swayed, but honestly, I test out a lot of software that doesn't stick with me long. I've been using Evernote for just shy of two months now, though, and I'm fairly sure I'll be using it for a while. A few reasons why:

1. Automatic. I have Evernote installed on my office desktop, my home desktop, my laptop, my iPad, and my iPhone. And each of those instances automatically connects to the Evernote server to keep my notes synchronized across all my devices. I've had one incident in which I accidentally overwrote a more recent version of a note by editing an old version before my iPhone had finished downloading the most recent updates to my notebooks, but now I'm more cautious to be sure everything has synchronized before I start typing in an existing note.

2. Web accessible. My notes are also of course directly accessible from the Evernote server, should I not have one of those five devices with me.

3. Lightweight. The Evernote application itself has a very small footprint, using the teeniest amount of memory and disk space. It's also quite nice in terms of response time. And as most of my notes are just plain text, the database doesn't take up much in the way of space.

4. Flexible. Of course, I don't have to confine my notes to text with Evernote: I can easily capture entire web pages with the Chrome (or other browser) extension, I can import images and PDFs, and any number of other things I haven't even tried yet. And, as Shawn pointed out, images are OCRable, so that the text within them becomes searchable just like the rest of my notes.

5. Free. As I was just experimenting with Evernote over the last two months, I haven't committed to the paid version as yet. But the free version is thus far everything I need. I've never come anywhere near using all of the monthly data allowance of the free version, and the little ad in the corner of the application is inoffensive. At some point, I'll probably upgrade to the paid version, partially for a bit more flexibility in the kinds of files I can attach to notes, and partially to support the team developing a really great project.

I do perhaps wish that my text files were really stored as text files (Evernote saves them in its own proprietary XML-based format, as well as in HTML format), but for what I'm doing, just being able to find and copy the notes is enough. And overall I've had a great experience with Evernote so far, which is allowing my notetaking habit to become more productive and more organized than before.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

"Ed Tech Trends to Watch in 2010," by Converge Staff, Converge Magazine, June 14, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/2010-Ed-Tech-Trends.html
Bob Jensen's education technology threads
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

"Special Education Students Beat the Odds With Technology," by Converge Staff, Converge Magazine, June 16, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Special-Education-Students-Beat-the-Odds-With-Technology.html
Bob Jensen's threads on technology aids for handicapped learners are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

"iZepto: Timesheets Made Human," by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog, July 5, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/izepto-timesheets-made-human/

For anyone who spent time in public practice, the “timesheet” was both a good thing and a bad thing! It helped you keep track of what you accomplished (and what you didn’t). I have often wondered whether maintaining a timesheet would be a useful exercise for a faculty member.

A couple of years ago, I discovered a personal timesheet program called iZepto developed by Shine Technologies, an Australian company. I started using iZepto to keep track of my time. iZepto is particularly useful when preparing my annual faculty activitity report.

iZepto is a Web 2.0 hosted software service. There is nothing to download except reports that you setup and print periodically. It is easy to tailor to personal needs. Classify your activities in ways that make sense to you.

iZepto is free for 1 to 3 users. Great price! For iPhone users, there is a free iPhone application that you can download from the iPhone App Store. What could be more useful?

iZepto is a great personal productivity tool. Take a look. Give it a try.

Rick Lillie
(CalState, San Bernardino)

Bob Jensen's on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

"Pulse Smartpen by Livescribe," Rick Lillie's Thinking Outside the Box Blog, May 9, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/pulse-smartpen-by-livescribe/

While attending a recent accounting education conference, I played with Pulse Smartpen by Livescribe. The Pulse Smartpen records and links audio to what you write. It provides an interesting way to take notes and capture information that can be played back later for review, study, and/or sharing with others.

I was curious about ways the Pulse Smartpen might be used to create course materials and share them with students. Livescribe’s website includes a variety of illustrative recordings. Click this link to view a demo lecture entitled “Crossing the Chasm.” The demo shows how to use the Pulse Smartpen to record and share a lecture that includes drawing a picture or diagram and supporting the drawing with audio. [NOTE: In order to make the viewing screen easier to see, you may wish to click the icon in the upper right-corner of the playback screen to enlarge the viewing screen.]

I see how the Pulse Smartpen can capture a drawing and audio explaining the drawing. This could be particularly useful for creating a walk-through explanation of a problem or process. Note that you need to draw the picture from scratch as you put together a walk-through explanation.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of the trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Google Voice (via telephone) --- http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html

Video Summary of Google Voice --- http://www.youtube.com/googlevoice

"Google Voice Helps Students Learn Spanish," by Tanya Roscorla, Converge Magazine, March 1, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/Google-Voice-Helps-Students-Learn-Spanish.html

At Holmdel High School in New Jersey, students speak Spanish in front of their class, but they also practice their language skills on the phone.

This year, Spanish 2 teacher Katy Taylor wanted to find a different way to assess their progress in addition to listening to oral presentations in class. So, she asked them to call her Google Voice number and leave a message.

On their own time, the students read something in Spanish or create a dialogue, which could take up to 1 1/2 minute. Google Voice captures the audio and sends her an e-mail with the recording attached. Then she listens to their recordings and e-mails them feedback — and it's all free.

Google Voice, a telecommunications service by Google launched in March 2009, provides a U.S. phone number, chosen by the user from available numbers in selected area codes, free of charge to each user account.

“It was kind of just fun to experiment and see how it works in the classroom," Taylor said, "and the kids respond really well to it.”

Instead of taking up clas time, they dial in to her phone number, and then she can go online that evening to hear what they've done.

Many students are afraid to make mistakes in front of their peers, so when they do receive a recording assignment, they're more apt to take risks because they have some privacy.

“I’m hoping that the end result will be that students are speaking more and getting feedback," Taylor said. "Every time I think it gets a little better.”

March 11, 2010 message from XXXXX

Bob,

I am wondering if you know of any websites where I can gain access to watch camtasia-style (or narrated powerpoints) videos/lectures of upper level accounting instruction?

My Dean asked me to look into creating an asynchronous, distance/hybrid accounting program. I want to get an idea of what is out there. I think the classes I need are:

Service	Price	Storage limits
Pagos Spreadsheetlive.com	Free (for now)	1 MB
Google Docs	Free	Really unlimited
Microsoft Live	Free	50 MB
Smartsheet.com	$10/mo for up to 10 spreadsheets	30 MB
Longjump Database	$19/mo for two users	3 MB
HyperBase	$175 setup plus $44/mo for 5 users	1.25 GB
TrackVia.com	$250/mo for 10 users	4 GB for entry plan
Intuit QuickBase	$299/mo for 10 users	1 GB for entry plan