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 with Google Docs 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

Google+ = Google Plus

Ideas for Teaching and Testing

Learning Customization Even in Large Classes

Synchronous Partnering Course Modules in Universities in Different Nations

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)

Flipped (Interactive) Video and Screencasts

Video Conferencing

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, Learning Games, and Gamification (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

April 7, 2012 message from XXXXX

I am currently attending Perkins School of Theology pursuing a Masters of Divinity in preparation for entering the ministry. Perkins is the seminary located at Southern Methodist University. While SMU's main campus is in Dallas, the class I am taking is taught (live) at a satellite campus in Houston. Last Monday, one of the faculty visited the Houston extension to see if the satellite was delivering the same quality of education received at the main Dallas campus.

One of the topics that came up was on-line education. Another Methodist seminary (Asbury) offers on-line courses but Perkins does not. The agency which accredits most main-line seminaries requires for any degree at least 24 hours of credit be earned at the main campus of the seminary (I have already completed 33 hours in Dallas).

The unanimous recommendation by myself and the other students was that Perkins does not offer on-line courses. (The faculty member was surprised by this.) But our reasoning is that ministry is a face-to-face profession. Personal interaction is a critical skill that cannot be simulated by a computer. Another factor is that the way most main-line churches are organized, the clergy are a small group that rely on each other for a great deal of support. The students attending Perkins now will be working with each other professionally for the next 30 years. And, with pastors, there is more emotional investment and a higher priority on personal relationships that might be found in such professions as accounting.

As I said, this recommendation was unanimous among those of us who spoke to the faculty member (there were about a dozen of us or about a third of those who attend the Houston satellite campus). All of us are second-career students. I would guess the average age was about 35 with ages ranging from the upper 20's to about 60. Three of us actually have experience in on-line education (myself as a technician, one as a corporate instructor, one as a course manager for a public university). To be fair, I do know of at least one Houston extension student that does advocate for on-line courses but she was not present at the interview. However, the purpose of the interview was not to discuss on-line education - it was just one of the topics that came up and I know it is something you are interested in.

I guess what I wanted to let you know is that on-line education may not be the "wave of the future" that some pundits say that it is. Since for-profit schools are generally on-line universities, I am wondering if it is the next bubble that will eventually burst.

XXXXX

April 8, 2012 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi XXXXX,

Good to hear from you.

Online education learning, like onsite education learning, depends on many, many variables. The most important variables as a rule, aside from student motivation to learn, are the skills and passion of the teacher.

The best teacher I know is Amy Dunbar at the University of Connecticut. She's won all-university teaching awards at UTSA, the University of Iowa, and UCON. She wins these awards whether teaching onsite or online. She says online education has some key advantages to students, and if done optimally, online learning may be easier for students and harder for teachers ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/Dunbar2002.htm

Some things that are surprising is how shy or easily intimidated students who rarely speak up in class or in face-to-face teams will assert themselves in chat rooms or other online communications, including social networking.

There are of course dark sides of both online learning and education technology in general, and these might lend support to the negativism of your friends toward online courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

If a teacher is not passionate about teaching an online course, the online course is probably doomed from the start. If the teacher is passionate about an online course then some wonderful things might happen for students that cannot happen in a college that only has onsite courses.

Respectfully,
Bob Jensen

Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence --- https://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/

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

Video Conferencing

Zoom.us -- An Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing Posting the AAA Commons by Rick Lillie

Zoom.us -- An Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing...

blog entry posted September 1, 2012 by Rick Lillie, last edited Yesterday , tagged research, teaching, technology, technology tools

103 Views, 3 Comments

title:

Zoom.us -- An Amazing Cloud-based, Video-Conferencing Service (It's free!)

intro text:

Recently, I read about Zoom.us a new free, cloud-based, video-conferencing service. Yesterday, three of us used zoom.us to work on a research project. We are located throughout the U.S. We logged into the video conference call and worked for more than an hour. The audio and video were crystal clear. We shared desktops to work on documents together. Wow! The virtual work session was very productive and enjoyable.
I use Skype to work with colleagues and to offer virtual office hours for my students. Skype offers a free 1:1 video-conference call with desktop sharing. To include more than two people in a Skype video call, you need to subscribe to Skype's premium service. Skype's fee is very reasonable; however, it's difficult to beat "free."

Both Zoom.us and Skype have features that meet specific needs. Therefore, both services are valuable to the teaching-learning experience. The quality of the zoom.us video-conference call was exceptional. Zoom.us versus Skype is not an either/or situation. Using one service or the other is a judgment call regarding features that best fit the need as hand.

Getting started with zoom.us is quick and easy to do. Their support page explanations are easy to follow. The service works with Google and Facebook, iPad, iPhone, Windows and Mac. When I set up zoom.us, I had to download a small file to my computer that includes the zoom.us interface. The download was quick. No problem.

Below is a screenshot from the support page indicating key features of the zoom.us interface screen. Individual members participating in a video call are shown at the top of the screen. When a member speaks, the border of the member's screen turns "green." The speaker's screen displays in the "big screen" section of the interface window. This process works as the conversation switches among participants. Wow! This is amazing and allows each speaker to be the center of attention.

Check out zoom.us. I think you'll like this new video-conference service.

Best wishes,

Rick Lillie (
CSU San Bernardino)

UPDATED INFORMATION: DOWNLOADING ZOOM.US TO YOUR DESKTOP -- IMPORTANT
I talked with the developers of zoom.us this afternoon.  They explained the simple way to download the small zoom.us file to your computer's desktop.
See the picture below.
Log into http://zoom.us/

Click the "Start Video Meeting" button.

Follow-up screen should start the download process. (Allow this to happen.)

zoom.us file should download and the "z icon" should display on your desktop.

Unless you change the "settings" in zoom.us, you will need to double-click on the zoom.us icon on your desktop to start the program. Once the icon displays at the bottom of your monitor screen, click the icon to open the zoom.us screen. Click the Start Video Meeting button. When the screen displays, click the Invite option. Enter the email addresses for participants you wish to invite into the video conference call. Send the email message. Stay logged into zoom.us. Watch participants join the video conference call.

I think you will be amazed by the clarity and crispness of the audio and video call.

Enjoy!

Rick Lillie
(CSU San Bernardino)

"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

iPad App Video (free) : Personalized Feedback With ScreenChomp ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igp7rHZRg4M&feature=youtu.be
Thank you Richard Campbell for the heads up

iPad 3 Video --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8ecN36Ffpc

"The New iPad: It’s in the Apps," by David Pogue, The New York Times, March 7, 2012 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/the-new-ipad-its-in-the-apps/

¶At one of Apple’s trademark press events here, Tim Cook, the chief executive, took to the stage to unveil this year’s iPad — and a few other surprises.

¶I’m calling it “this year’s iPad” because it has no other distinguishing name. Apple says the name is not “iPad 3,” even though the previous model was called the iPad 2. And it’s not “iPad HD,” even though its new retina screen has higher resolution than a high-definition TV screen.

¶I played with it a little Wednesday and I will be doing an extensive review later. For now, here are a few first impressions.

¶In addition to the retina display, it has:
• a faster processor chip
• a better camera (a five-megapixel)
• 1080p hi-definition video recording (with stabilization)
• voice dictation (speak-to-type — not, however, the whole Siri voice-command feature)
• Personal Hotspot (pay your carrier an extra monthly fee; the iPad broadcasts its Internet signal to nearby laptops and other gadgets over Wi-Fi, wherever you are, even in a car)
• 4G LTE, which means super-high Internet speeds in cities where Verizon Wireless and AT&T have installed 4G networks.

¶The prices, storage and battery life are identical to the previous iPads’. Which is impressive — 4G is famous as a battery hog. That’s why this new iPad is a tiny bit thicker and heavier than the last one; it needs a beefier battery.

¶That wasn’t the only news during the unveiling. Apple also revealed that its $100 Apple TV would get a minor upgrade on March 16. It will be able to play movies in 1080p high definition, and it will have a new icon-based software design.

¶Oh — and movies you buy from Apple’s online store are now available in an online iCloud locker, available for viewing on any Apple gadget, just as music and TV shows are.

¶To me, though, the most interesting developments were the new apps that Apple has developed for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

GarageBand, for example, has been blessed with several new music-making features. One of them lets up to four people play different instruments simultaneously. Somehow, their four touchscreen devices stay synchronized over Wi-Fi, and they make a master, perfectly synced four-track recording, ready for mixing, editing (there’s a new note-by-note editing mode) and posting online.

¶My favorite, if Apple’s demo was any indication, will be iPhoto for iOS. (Like GarageBand, it’s a $5 download. GarageBand is a free upgrade if you bought an earlier iOS version..)

¶In some ways, it goes beyond iPhoto for the Mac, in that its editing tools can do more than affect an entire photo in one swoop. It offers brushes that let you dab with your fingers to brighten, darken, saturate, desaturate or otherwise enhance individual parts of a photo. That’s something you can do in Photoshop, but it’s never been possible in iPhoto. Multitouch is used cleverly; for example, with two fingers you can rotate a photo, zoom in and out, adjust the shadowy “vignette” framing, and so on.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I sure would've liked USB and VGA ports.

Humorous iPad Demo --- http://biggeekdad.com/2012/02/ipad-magic-demonstration/
Amazing things you never thought of trying with your iPad.

"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

Styluses for the iPad

"The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Moving Finger versus Stylus
"The iPad Isn't Ready for Working by Hand," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, April 7, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_ipad_isnt_ready_for_working_by_hand.php

Last week's release of Paper for iPad was a huge boon to the cottage industry of third-party iPad styluses. It was hardly the first app for drawing or writing directly on the screen of an iOS device, but it struck a chord. It was just the right blend of skeuomorphic real-world design and familiar iOS gestures. I had never even considered a stylus before, but this seemed like my chance.

I travel the Internet in fairly Apple-obsessed early-adopter circles, so I went with the stylus I'd seen recommended most often: the Cosmonaut by Studio Neat. Studio Neat made the Glif camera mount, one of the most celebrated iPhone peripherals around, so it seemed like a safe bet.

The Cosmonaut arrived in short order in spartan, Space Race packaging. It's fairly wide to hold like a pen. It's black, grippy and dense, the exact same length as an iPhone. The business end exhibits the capacitive properties the touch screen requires: a soft touch that gives way gradually to pressure, just like a fingertip, but more precise.

Continued in article

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

"Make Your Own E-Books with Pandoc, by Lincoln Mullen, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 20, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/make-your-own-e-books-with-pandoc/39067?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"2 New Platforms Offer Alternative to Apple’s Textbook-Authoring Software," by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 17. 2012 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/2-new-platforms-offer-alternative-to-apples-textbook-authoring-software/35495?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

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

Bob Jensen's threads on E-Books are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Ebooks.htm

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.

From the Scout Report on March 16, 2012

PDF to HTML Converter --- http://www.pdftohtml.net/

If you're looking for a way to convert pdf files to html, this helpful application can do just that. Visitors just need to click the browse button here to locate the pdf that they wish to transfer. After doing this, they will supply their own email, and seconds later, they will have the converted file. This version is compatible with all operating systems.

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.

Invent with Python (make your own computer games) --- http://inventwithpython.com/

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.

"Pandoc Converts All Your (Text) Documents." by Lincoln Mullen, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/pandoc-converts-all-your-text-documents/38700?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

For the past few months we ProfHackers have been running an occasional series about using the command line. I got us started with a couple posts explaining why you might want to use the command line and how to get started using it. Konrad followed with a posts about the uniq command and the sort command for working with text and data files. Amy added a post about how the command line let her hack the NOOK Color, and I wrote about using pdftk to manipulate PDFs.

Taking up the command line is easier if you have a specific problem you’re trying to solve. For me, the problem was that I wanted to do all of my writing in a plain text format, like Markdown or LaTeX. But I need to be able to share my writing in a variety of formats: HTML for the web, PDF for printed documents or academic writing, and occasionally RTF or Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.

The best way I’ve found to move between these formats is Pandoc. Pandoc is a command line tool written by a philosophy professor, John MacFarlane. Its general use is to take a document in one format and convert it to another. You can get an idea of the wide variety of formats Pandoc can translate by looking at an enlargement of the header diagram.

Here’s an example of how this works. Suppose that you have a Markdown document like the one we created for the post on Markdown. (View pandoc-example.markdown on GitHub.) You can convert this to a number of text formats with a simple terminal command:

Markdown to HTML (HTML output on GitHub):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.html

Markdown to LaTeX (LaTeX output on GitHub):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.tex

Markdown to DOCX:

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.docx

Markdown to PDF (download PDF):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.pdf

That command calls pandoc, tells it which file to convert (pandoc-example.markdown) and tells it which file to export (e.g., pandoc-example.html). Pandoc figures out what types of files these are from the extension, or you can pass it additional arguments. For some of the formats, you can convert the other way. For example, you could convert LaTex to Markdown or to a Word DOCX, or HTML to Markdown or LaTeX. To convert to PDF, though, you’ll need to have LaTeX installed on your system.

Continued in article

From the Scout Report on March 16, 2012

PDF to HTML Converter --- http://www.pdftohtml.net/

If you're looking for a way to convert pdf files to html, this helpful application can do just that. Visitors just need to click the browse button here to locate the pdf that they wish to transfer. After doing this, they will supply their own email, and seconds later, they will have the converted file. This version is compatible with all operating systems.

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

How to Sign Up for a MOOC

Hi Paul,

Various options are linked at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Although not MOOC complete courses, there are over 2,000 free learning modules at Kahn Academy, including some advanced-learning accounting modules:
Khan Academy Home Page --- http://www.khanacademy.org/
This site lists the course categories but there are more courses than fit undert these categories. It's best to search for a topic of interest.

The Big List of 500+ Free Online Courses from Top Universities (New Additions) --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/new_additions_to_our_list_of_530_free_online_courses_from_top_universities_.html

Most MOOC, EdX, MITx, and Harvardx courses sign ups are only available on designated schedules. The best approach is to go to an elite university Website and look for links to free online courses.

The MITx link is at
http://www.mitx.org/

The EdX link is at
https://www.edx.org/

Note the Great Graphic
"Major Players in the MOOC Universe," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Major-Players-in-the-MOOC/138817/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

There are many more alternatives linked at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

"10 Top Education Companies of 2013," Center for Digital Education, February 14, 2013 ---
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/10-Education-Companies-2013.html

From the Scout Report on March 22, 2013

Massive open online courses move ahead amid support and controversy

Colleges Assess Cost of Free Online-Only Courses
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/education/colleges-assess-cost-of-free-online-only-courses.html?ref=technology&_r=0

The Professors Who Make the MOOCs
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Professors-Behind-the-MOOC/137905/#id=overview

Google Will Fund Cornell MOOC
http://www.cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2013/03/05/google-will-fund-cornell-mooc

California’s Move Toward MOOCs Sends Shock Waves, but Key Questions
Remain Unanswered
http://chronicle.com/article/California-Considers-a-Bold/137903/

UW-Madison to offer free public online courses starting in fall
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/uwmadison-to-offer-free-public-online-courses-starting-in-fall-198rsr2-192186161.html

Who Owns a MOOC?
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/19/u-california-faculty-union-says-moocs-undermine-professors-intellectual-property

"The Idea Makers: Tech Innovators for 2013," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 29, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Idea-Makers-Tech/138823/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

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

"Score One for the Robo-Tutors," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, May 22, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/22/report-robots-stack-human-professors-teaching-intro-stats

Without diminishing learning outcomes, automated teaching software can reduce the amount of time professors spend with students and could substantially reduce the cost of instruction, according to new research.

In experiments at six public universities, students assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on “machine-guided learning” software -- with reduced face time with instructors -- did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family background of the students.

The study comes at a time when “smart” teaching software is being increasingly included in conversations about redrawing the economics of higher education. Recent investments by high-profile universities in “massively open online courses,” or MOOCs, has elevated the notion that technology has reached a tipping point: with the right design, an online education platform, under the direction of a single professor, might be capable of delivering meaningful education to hundreds of thousands of students at once.

The new research from the nonprofit organization Ithaka was seeking to prove the viability of a less expansive application of “machine-guided learning” than the new MOOCs are attempting -- though one that nevertheless could have real implications for the costs of higher education.

The study, called “Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities,” involved students taking introductory statistics courses at six (unnamed) public universities. A total of 605 students were randomly assigned to take the course in a “hybrid” format: they met in person with their instructors for one hour a week; otherwise, they worked through lessons and exercises using an artificially intelligent learning platform developed by learning scientists at Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative.

Researchers compared these students against their peers in the traditional-format courses, for which students met with a live instructor for three hours per week, using several measuring sticks: whether they passed the course, their performance on a standardized test (the Comprehensive Assessment of Statistics), and the final exam for the course, which was the same for both sections of the course at each of the universities.

The results will provoke science-fiction doomsayers, and perhaps some higher-ed traditionalists. “Our results indicate that hybrid-format students took about one-quarter less time to achieve essentially the same learning outcomes as traditional-format students,” report the Ithaka researchers.

The robotic software did have disadvantages, the researchers found. For one, students found it duller than listening to a live instructor. Some felt as though they had learned less, even if they scored just as well on tests. Engaging students, such as professors might by sprinkling their lectures with personal anecdotes and entertaining asides, remains one area where humans have the upper hand.

But on straight teaching the machines were judged to be as effective, and more efficient, than their personality-having counterparts.

It is not the first time the software used in the experiment, developed over the last five years or so by Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, has been proven capable of teaching students statistics in less time than a traditional course while maintaining learning outcomes. So far that research has failed to persuade many traditional institutions to deploy the software -- ostensibly for fear of shortchanging students and alienating faculty with what is liable to be seen as an attempt to use technology as a smokescreen for draconian personnel cuts.

But the authors of the new report, led by William G. Bowen, the former president of Princeton University, hope their study -- which is the largest and perhaps the most rigorous to date on the effectiveness of machine-guided learning -- will change minds.

“As several leaders of higher education made clear to us in preliminary conversations, absent real evidence about learning outcomes there is no possibility of persuading most traditional colleges and universities, and especially those regarded as thought leaders, to push hard for the introduction of [machine-guided] instruction” on their campuses.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on the explosion of distance education and training ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DistanceEducation

"‘Free-Range Learners’: Study Opens Window Into How Students Hunt for Educational Content Online," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2012 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/free-range-learners-study-opens-window-into-how-students-hunt-for-educational-content-online/36137?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Milwaukee — Digital natives? The idea that students are superengaged finders of online learning materials once struck Glenda Morgan, e-learning strategist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as “a load of hooey.” Students, she figured, probably stick with the textbooks and other content they’re assigned in class.
Not quite. The preliminary results of a multiyear study of undergraduates’ online study habits, presented by Ms. Morgan at a conference on blended learning here this week, show that most students shop around for digital texts and videos beyond the boundaries of what professors assign them in class.

“It’s almost like they want to find the content by themselves,” Ms. Morgan said in an interview after her talk, which took place in a packed room at the 9th Annual Sloan Consortium Blended Learning Conference & Workshop.

It’s nothing new to hear that students supplement their studies with other universities’ online lecture videos. But Ms. Morgan’s research—backed by the National Science Foundation, based on 14 focus-group interviews at a range of colleges, and buttressed by a large online survey going on now—paints a broader picture of how they’re finding content, where they’re getting it, and why they’re using it.

Ms. Morgan borrows the phrase “free-range learning” to describe students’ behavior, and she finds that they generally shop around for content in places educators would endorse. Students seem most favorably inclined to materials from other universities. They mention lecture videos from Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology far more than the widely publicized Khan Academy, she says. If they’re on a pre-med or health-science track, they prefer recognized “brands” like the Mayo Clinic. Students often seek this outside content due to dissatisfaction with their own professors, Ms. Morgan says.

The study should be welcome news for government agencies, universities, and others in the business of publishing online libraries of educational content—although students tend to access these sources from the “side door,” like via a Google search for a very specific piece of information.

But the study also highlights the challenge facing professors and librarians. Students report relying on friends to get help and share resources, Ms. Morgan says, whereas their responses suggest “much less of a role” for “conventional authority figures.”

They “don’t want to ask librarians or tutors in the study center or stuff like that,” she says. “It’s more the informal networks that they’re using.”

Ms. Morgan confesses to some concerns about her own data. She wonders how much students are “telling me what I want to hear.” She also worries that she’s tapping into a disproportionate slice of successful students.

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on free courses, tutorials, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities and Kahn Academy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

The MOOC Model Revisited
"Massive Open Online Courses: How: 'The Social” Alters the Relationship Between Learners and Facilitators'," by Bonnie Stewart, Inside Higher Ed, April 30, 2012 --- Click Here
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/massive-open-online-courses-how-%E2%80%9C-social%E2%80%9D-alters-relationship-between

We're getting close to the tail end of the 36-week-long experiment called #change11, or “the mother of all MOOCs.”

How can I tell?

First, I'm getting ready to facilitate my week, exploring Digital Identities. I'm second-last in the lineup, so the fact that I'm on deck means the whole undertaking is drawing to a close.

But it's also clear we're winding down because the #change11 conversation hubs have begun to resemble, uh, ghost-towns. Once there were lively debates and intense exchanges. As the winter wore into the spring of the year, though, the tumbleweeds began to tickle.

Note to self: next time you facilitate a MOOC module, pick Week #2, not Week #35.

Any course that runs from September through May requires stamina. When that course is voluntary on the part of both learners and facilitators, and runs as a series of totally separate modules, the drop-off can be fairly significant. Erm, even my own participation as a student has crawled to a stop over the last month or two.

I find myself wondering if the other learners will be keener than I've been? Am I going to throw a MOOC and have nobody show up?

I suppose it doesn't matter. I'm a teacher at heart. I'll put the work into developing my one-week course whether there are going to be 3 students or 300. But as I'm preparing, I'm thinking about what it means to facilitate in a truly social, networked, voluntary environment like #change11.

Or the internet.

As the awareness of the MOOC experiment grows, the term is being increasingly applied to grand-scale enterprises like the Stanford AI course and MITx. While heady, this blurs some very important distinctions.

The MOOC model from which #change11 originates was built on the connectivist learning theory of George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Highly social in format, these courses tend to be experimental, non-linear, and deeply dialogic and participatory. Contributions from participants frequently direct the course of discussion, and the connections and ideas built between learners can be considered as valuable as the knowledge expounded by the facilitator.

On the other hand, the MOOC models offered by the big universities tend towards formalized curricula, content delivery, and verification of completed learning objectives.

Far more embedded in traditional paradigms of knowledge and teaching, these courses only harness the connectivity of social media insofar as they enable masses of people to link themselves to the prestige of a big-name institution. They offer discussion boards, but their purpose is content-focused, not connection-focused.

If I were teaching in an MITx-style course, I'd have a very different module ahead of me, one far more familiar to me as a higher ed instructor.

I've been teaching for eighteen years. I profess to be in favour of learner-centered classrooms. But until this MOOC module, every single course I've taught has on some level obliged the students to be there. I am accustomed to having the institutional powers of status, credentialism, and grading backing me in the classroom.

In the connectivist MOOC model, I don't.

There is no bonus for learners who participate in my week of #change11. They won't get a badge at the end, and there is no certification announcing they completed anything. There's nothing specific for them to complete, unless I design an exit goal as part of the week's activities. But that would be MY exit goal: not theirs. They don't get to put the word MIT on their CV. And while some weeks of the #change11 MOOC have allowed participants to connect with leaders in the learning and technologies field – Howard Rheingold, Pierre Levy – I'm among the less well-known of the 30-plus facilitators in the year's lineup. They won't even get the relational perk of engaging with somebody famous.
Continued in article

April 29, 2012 message from Mark Lewis

This is an interview with Sebastian Thrun, formerly of Stanford and still associated with Google. In my ideal world, every faculty member and a large fraction of the administration and staff would watch the last half of this video. The first half is worth watching if you have an interest in Google Glass, autonomous cars, or Google X projects in general. The second half talks about his views and what he is doing in education. He is the person who taught an AI course online that had 160,000 students enroll and had 23,000 students complete it. In this interview he describes how this impacted him so much that he left his tenured position at Stanford. The lack of personal contact he talks about in his classroom does not apply in most Trinity classrooms, however, a cost of $0 for something that many students find as more personal than a large lecture hall does have the potential to change the economics of higher education.

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12321

Mark

Bob Jensen's threads on these issues are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

Especially note
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MITx

"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

"Meet Jeff Jonas, the Latest IBM Fellow With No College Degree," by David Strom, ReadWriteWeb, April 11, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/04/meet-jeff-jonas-the-latest-ibm.php

This week, IBM announced its next group of IBM Fellows, seven of its employees who share, according to the press release, "a commitment to tackling the world's biggest problems with ingenuity, invention and inspiration." The designation is a big deal for IBM, and over the years only 238 staff members have been so honored.
One of the more interesting choices this time is Jeff Jonas, a 47-year old chief scientist with the company who blogs here. Jonas never graduated from college with any degree but is clearly one of the smarter people you'll ever come across. He is also quite a character.

Unlike many of his fellow Fellows - who have resumes that you might have trouble parsing - Jonas has lived a very interesting life and worked on numerous problems that are easily understood by the rest of us.
Jonas came to IBM through a 2005 acquisition of Systems Research and Development, a company that he founded in 1985 to handle labor reporting, inventory management and other back-office systems consulting. One of his jobs was designing the casino security systems in Las Vegas, where he currently lives. He worked for the surveillance intelligence group of several casinos, and automated various manual processes, adding facial recognition software that was key to slowing down the MIT card counting group. "We built [another] system to immediately identify risk in real time so they could get these people out of the casino quickly." This software is still offered by IBM as its InfoSphere Identity Insight event processing and identity tracking technology.

Jonas is one of these people that look at the world with very careful thinking, always searching for actionable patterns. For example, he helped use his casino risk-management system to track down lost family members after the Katrina flooding of New Orleans. He and his team integrated data across 15 web sites - these web sites were being used by people who said they were seeking family members with those seeking them. I was impressed by how he structured his algorithm so it wasn't going to be used by bill collectors, for example.

He calls this perpetual analytics and sense-making to keep track of data changes and to help advise decision-makers in real time. "As information changes, you want to be able to reconsider earlier decisions. If you want to prevent really bad things from happening, you want to be able to monitor risks and trends while they are happening." You want to monitor the motion of the data, as it were.

His current internal IBM project is called G2. The idea is to "make sense of new observations as they happen, fast enough to do something about it, while the transaction is still happening." His work is looking at how to commingle diverse data and weave them together - especially when things are the same, such as people named Billy and William, who could be the same person. "If you can count things that are the same, you can analyze them better and understand how they are related. It is a bit of a breakthrough technology," he told me in an interview today. "I took what I developed for the casinos and made it more generalized and easier to use." He and IBM plan to offer G2 sometime soon for the paying business public.

Continued in article

Try learning on your own using the free courses, tutorials, lectures, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

"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

The Always-Popular Open Sharing Salmon Khan
"An Outsider Calls for a Teaching Revolution," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/An-Outsider-Calls-for-a/130923/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

In just a few short years, Salman Khan has built a free online educational institution from scratch that has nudged major universities to offer free self-guided courses and inspired many professors to change their teaching methods.

His creation is called Khan Academy, and its core is a library of thousands of 10-minute educational videos, most of them created by Mr. Khan himself. The format is simple but feels intimate: Mr. Khan's voice narrates as viewers watch him sketch out his thoughts on a digital whiteboard. He made the first videos for faraway cousins who asked for tutoring help. Encouraging feedback by others who watched the videos on YouTube led him to start the academy as a nonprofit.

More recently Mr. Khan has begun adding what amounts to a robot tutor to the site that can quiz visitors on their knowledge and point them to either remedial video lessons if they fail or more-advanced video lessons if they pass. The site issues badges and online "challenge patches" that students can put on their Web résumés.

He guesses that the demand for his service was one inspiration for his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to start MITx, its self-guided online courses that give students the option of taking automatically graded tests to earn a certificate.

Mr. Khan also works the speaking circuit, calling on professors to move away from a straight lecture model by assigning prerecorded lectures as homework and using class time for more interactive exercises, or by having students use self-paced computer systems like Khan Academy during class while professors are available to answer questions. "It has made universities—and I can cite examples of this—say, Why should we be giving 300-person lectures anymore?" he said in a recent interview with The Chronicle.

Mr. Khan, now 35, has no formal training in education, though he does have two undergraduate degrees and a master's from MIT, as well as an M.B.A. from Harvard. He spent most of his career as a hedge-fund analyst. Mr. Khan also has the personal endorsement of Bill Gates, as well as major financial support from Mr. Gates's foundation. That outside-the-academy status makes some traditional academics cool on his project.

"Sometimes I get a little frustrated when people say, Oh, they're taking a Silicon Valley approach to education. I'm like, Yes, that's exactly right. Silicon Valley is where the most creativity, the most open-ended, the most pushing the envelope is happening," he says. "And Silicon Valley recognizes more than any part of the world that we're having trouble finding students capable of doing that."

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

Thousands of 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

"Treating Higher Ed's 'Cost Disease' With Supersize Online Courses," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Treating-Higher-Eds-Cost/130934/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Oh my God, she's trying to replace me with a computer.

That's what some professors think when they hear Candace Thille pitch the online education experiment she directs, the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University.

They're wrong. But what her project does replace is the traditional system of building and delivering introductory college courses.

Professors should move away from designing foundational courses in statistics, biology, or other core subjects on the basis of "intuition," she argues. Instead, she wants faculty to work with her team to put out the education equivalent of Super Bowl ads: expensively built online course materials, cheaply available to the masses.

"We're seeing failure rates in these large introductory courses that are not acceptable to anybody," Ms. Thille says. "There has to be a better way to get more students—irrespective of where they start—to be able to successfully complete."

Her approach brings together faculty subject experts, learning researchers, and software engineers to build open online courses grounded in the science of how people learn. The resulting systems provide immediate feedback to students and tailor content to their skills. As students work through online modules outside class, the software builds profiles on them, just as Netflix does for customers. Faculty consult that data to figure out how to spend in-person class time.

When Ms. Thille began this work, in 2002, the idea was to design free online courses that would give independent novices a shot at mastering what students learn in traditional classes. But two things changed. One, her studies found that the online system benefits on-campus students, allowing them to learn better and faster than their peers when the digital environment is combined with some face-to-face instruction.

And two, colleges sank into "fiscal famine," as one chancellor put it. Technological solutions like Ms. Thille's promise one treatment for higher education's "cost disease"—the notion, articulated by William G. Bowen and William J. Baumol, that the expense of labor-heavy endeavors like classroom teaching inevitably rises faster than inflation.

For years, educational-technology innovations led to more costs per student, says Mr. Bowen, president emeritus of Princeton University. But today we may have reached a point at which interactive online systems could "change that equation," he argues, by enabling students to learn just as much with less "capital and labor."

"What you've got right now is a powerful intersection between technological change and economics," Mr. Bowen tells The Chronicle.

Ms. Thille is, he adds, "a real evangelist in the best sense of the word."

Nowadays rival universities want to hire her. Venture capitalists want to market her courses. The Obama administration wants her advice. And so many foundations want to support her work that she must turn away some would-be backers.

But the big question is this: Can Ms. Thille get a critical mass of people to buy in to her idea? Can she expand the Online Learning Initiative from a tiny darling of ed-tech evangelists to something that truly changes education? A Background in Business

Ms. Thille brings an unusual biography to the task. The 53-year-old Californian spent 18 years in the private sector, culminating in a plum job as a partner in a management-consulting company in San Francisco. She earned a master's degree but not a doctorate, a gap she's now plugging by studying toward a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.

She has never taught a college course.

Ms. Thille wasn't even sure she'd make it through her own bachelor's program, so precarious were her finances at the time. Her family had plunged from upper middle class to struggling after her father quit his job at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. But with jobs and scholarships, she managed to earn a degree in sociology from Berkeley.

After college, Ms. Thille followed her fiancé to Pittsburgh. The engagement didn't last, but her connection to the city did. She worked as education coordinator for a rape-crisis center, training police and hospital employees.

She eventually wound up back in California at the consultancy, training executives and helping businesses run meetings effectively. There she took on her first online-learning project: building a hybrid course to teach executives how to mentor subordinates.

Ms. Thille doesn't play up this corporate-heavy résumé as she travels the country making the case for why professors should change how they teach. On a recent Tuesday morning, The Chronicle tagged along as that mission brought Ms. Thille to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was meeting with folks from the university and two nearby community colleges to prepare for the development of a new pre-calculus course.

It's one piece of a quiet but sweeping push to develop, deploy, and test Open Learning Initiative courses at public institutions around the country, led by an alphabet soup of education groups.

The failure rate in such precalculus courses can be so bad that as many as 50 percent of students need to take the class a second time. Ms. Thille and her colleagues hope to improve on that record while developing materials of such quality that they're used by perhaps 100,000 students each year. Facing Skepticism

But first the collaborators must learn how to build a course as a team. As Ms. Thille fires up her PowerPoint, she faces a dozen or so administrators and professors in Chicago. The faculty members segregate themselves into clusters—community-college people mostly in one group, university folks mostly in another. Some professors are learning about the initiative in detail for the first time. There is little visible excitement as they plunge into the project, eating muffins at uncomfortable desks in a classroom on the sixth floor of the Soviet-looking science-and-engineering building.

By contrast, Ms. Thille whirls with enthusiasm. She describes Online Learning Initiative features like software that mimics human tutors: making comments when students go awry, keeping quiet when they perform well, and answering questions about what to do next. She discusses the "dashboard" that tells professors how well students grasp each learning objective. Throughout, she gives an impression of hyper-competence, like a pupil who sits in the front row and knows the answer to every question.

But her remarks can sometimes veer into a disorienting brew of jargon, giving the impression that she is talking about lab subjects rather than college kids. Once she mentions "dosing" students with a learning activity. And early on in the workshop, she faces a feisty challenge from Chad Taylor, an assistant professor at Harper College. He worries about what happens when students must face free-form questions, which the computer doesn't baby them through.

"I will self-disclose myself as a skeptic of these programs," he says. Software is "very good at prompting the students to go step by step, and 'do this' and 'do that,' and all these bells and whistles with hints. But the problem is, in my classroom they're not prompted step by step."

Around the country, there's more skepticism where that came from, Ms. Thille confides over a dinner of tuna tacos later that day. One chief obstacle is the "not-invented-here problem." Professors are wary of adopting courses they did not create. The Online Learning Initiative's team-based model represents a cultural shift for a professoriate that derives status, and pride, from individual contributions.

Then there's privacy. The beauty of OLI is that developers can improve classes by studying data from thousands of students. But some academics worry that colleges could use that same data to evaluate professors—and fire those whose students fail to measure up.

Ms. Thille tells a personal story that illustrates who could benefit if she prevails. Years ago she adopted a teenager, Cece. The daughter of a drug user who died of AIDS, Cece was 28 days' truant from high school when she went to live with Ms. Thille. She was so undereducated, even the simple fractions of measuring cups eluded her. Her math teacher told Ms. Thille that with 40 kids in class, she needed to focus on the ones who were going to "make it."

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
In a way we already have something like this operating in colleges and universities that adopt the Brigham Young University variable speed video disks designed for learning the two basic accounting courses without meeting in classrooms or having the usual online instruction. Applications vary of course, and some colleges may have recitation sections where students meet to get help and take examinations ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

Although BYU uses this no-class video pedagogy, it must be recognized that most of the BYU students learning accounting on their own in this manner are both exceptionally motivated and exceptionally intelligent. For schools that adopt the pedagogies of Me. Thile or BYU, the students must be like BYU accounting students or the pedagogy must be modified for more hand holding and kick-butt features that could be done in various ways online or onsite.

Perhaps Ms. Thille is being somewhat naive about turf wars in universities. Certain disciplines are able to afford a core faculty for research and advanced-course teaching with miniscule classes because teaching large base courses in the general education core justifies not having to shrink those departments with almost no majors.

Where Ms. Thille's pedagogy might be more useful is in specialty courses where its expensive to hire faculty to teach one or two courses. For example, it's almost always difficult for accounting departments to hire top faculty for governmental accounting courses and the super-technical ERP courses in AIS.

Bob Jensen's threads on courses without instructors ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#NoInstructors
Of course Ms. Thille is not exactly advocating a pedagogy without instructors. There are instructors in her proposed model.

Bob Jensen's threads on competency-based learning and assessment ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#ECA

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

"Using Google Docs to Check In On Students’ Reading," by Brian Croxall, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 8 ,2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/using-google-docs-to-check-in-on-students-reading/38405?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Last semester I taught my favorite book, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. With nightly reading assignments that take three to four hours, I expect students to fall behind. So I wasn’t surprised when, a few days in, I asked if everyone had done all the reading and the majority of the class avoided looking at me. Such are the occupational hazards of teaching.

We’re only a few weeks into the semester, but experience shows that it’s never too early for students to get behind in their reading—even if you’re not teaching amazing post-print fiction. While students clearly have the right to choose what they will and will not read, when a significant portion of the class falls behind it can make it very difficult to lead a class discussion.

Last semester, I heard a strategy from my friend and colleague Alyssa Stalsberg-Canelli for dealing with exactly this problem: have the students write down the page number they’ve reached in their reading on a scrap of paper and pass it up to the front. Students can then tell you, more or less anonymously, how far they’ve come in their reading. Taking the class’s temperature in this manner allows you to adjust your strategy for leading the class and saves you from asking questions that no one will be able to answer, resulting in the not-so-golden silence.

For just one more turn of the screw, I decided to forego the pieces of paper and instead used Google Docs. (You want posts about Google Docs? We got ‘em!) First, I created a spreadsheet. As I’ve said before, I use spreadsheets for everything! Then I clicked the “Share” button in the upper right corner.

Continued in article

"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

Bob Jensen's threads on Google Docs are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#GoogleApps

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 (now defunct) --- 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/

Oh my God, she's trying to replace me with a computer.

That's what some professors think when they hear Candace Thille pitch the online education experiment she directs, the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University.

They're wrong. But what her project does replace is the traditional system of building and delivering introductory college courses.

Professors should move away from designing foundational courses in statistics, biology, or other core subjects on the basis of "intuition," she argues. Instead, she wants faculty to work with her team to put out the education equivalent of Super Bowl ads: expensively built online course materials, cheaply available to the masses.

"We're seeing failure rates in these large introductory courses that are not acceptable to anybody," Ms. Thille says. "There has to be a better way to get more students—irrespective of where they start—to be able to successfully complete."

Her approach brings together faculty subject experts, learning researchers, and software engineers to build open online courses grounded in the science of how people learn. The resulting systems provide immediate feedback to students and tailor content to their skills. As students work through online modules outside class, the software builds profiles on them, just as Netflix does for customers. Faculty consult that data to figure out how to spend in-person class time.

When Ms. Thille began this work, in 2002, the idea was to design free online courses that would give independent novices a shot at mastering what students learn in traditional classes. But two things changed. One, her studies found that the online system benefits on-campus students, allowing them to learn better and faster than their peers when the digital environment is combined with some face-to-face instruction.

And two, colleges sank into "fiscal famine," as one chancellor put it. Technological solutions like Ms. Thille's promise one treatment for higher education's "cost disease"—the notion, articulated by William G. Bowen and William J. Baumol, that the expense of labor-heavy endeavors like classroom teaching inevitably rises faster than inflation.

For years, educational-technology innovations led to more costs per student, says Mr. Bowen, president emeritus of Princeton University. But today we may have reached a point at which interactive online systems could "change that equation," he argues, by enabling students to learn just as much with less "capital and labor."

"What you've got right now is a powerful intersection between technological change and economics," Mr. Bowen tells The Chronicle.

Ms. Thille is, he adds, "a real evangelist in the best sense of the word."

Nowadays rival universities want to hire her. Venture capitalists want to market her courses. The Obama administration wants her advice. And so many foundations want to support her work that she must turn away some would-be backers.

But the big question is this: Can Ms. Thille get a critical mass of people to buy in to her idea? Can she expand the Online Learning Initiative from a tiny darling of ed-tech evangelists to something that truly changes education? A Background in Business

Ms. Thille brings an unusual biography to the task. The 53-year-old Californian spent 18 years in the private sector, culminating in a plum job as a partner in a management-consulting company in San Francisco. She earned a master's degree but not a doctorate, a gap she's now plugging by studying toward a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.

She has never taught a college course.

Ms. Thille wasn't even sure she'd make it through her own bachelor's program, so precarious were her finances at the time. Her family had plunged from upper middle class to struggling after her father quit his job at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. But with jobs and scholarships, she managed to earn a degree in sociology from Berkeley.

After college, Ms. Thille followed her fiancé to Pittsburgh. The engagement didn't last, but her connection to the city did. She worked as education coordinator for a rape-crisis center, training police and hospital employees.

She eventually wound up back in California at the consultancy, training executives and helping businesses run meetings effectively. There she took on her first online-learning project: building a hybrid course to teach executives how to mentor subordinates.

Ms. Thille doesn't play up this corporate-heavy résumé as she travels the country making the case for why professors should change how they teach. On a recent Tuesday morning, The Chronicle tagged along as that mission brought Ms. Thille to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was meeting with folks from the university and two nearby community colleges to prepare for the development of a new pre-calculus course.

It's one piece of a quiet but sweeping push to develop, deploy, and test Open Learning Initiative courses at public institutions around the country, led by an alphabet soup of education groups.

The failure rate in such precalculus courses can be so bad that as many as 50 percent of students need to take the class a second time. Ms. Thille and her colleagues hope to improve on that record while developing materials of such quality that they're used by perhaps 100,000 students each year. Facing Skepticism

But first the collaborators must learn how to build a course as a team. As Ms. Thille fires up her PowerPoint, she faces a dozen or so administrators and professors in Chicago. The faculty members segregate themselves into clusters—community-college people mostly in one group, university folks mostly in another. Some professors are learning about the initiative in detail for the first time. There is little visible excitement as they plunge into the project, eating muffins at uncomfortable desks in a classroom on the sixth floor of the Soviet-looking science-and-engineering building.

By contrast, Ms. Thille whirls with enthusiasm. She describes Online Learning Initiative features like software that mimics human tutors: making comments when students go awry, keeping quiet when they perform well, and answering questions about what to do next. She discusses the "dashboard" that tells professors how well students grasp each learning objective. Throughout, she gives an impression of hyper-competence, like a pupil who sits in the front row and knows the answer to every question.

But her remarks can sometimes veer into a disorienting brew of jargon, giving the impression that she is talking about lab subjects rather than college kids. Once she mentions "dosing" students with a learning activity. And early on in the workshop, she faces a feisty challenge from Chad Taylor, an assistant professor at Harper College. He worries about what happens when students must face free-form questions, which the computer doesn't baby them through.

"I will self-disclose myself as a skeptic of these programs," he says. Software is "very good at prompting the students to go step by step, and 'do this' and 'do that,' and all these bells and whistles with hints. But the problem is, in my classroom they're not prompted step by step."

Around the country, there's more skepticism where that came from, Ms. Thille confides over a dinner of tuna tacos later that day. One chief obstacle is the "not-invented-here problem." Professors are wary of adopting courses they did not create. The Online Learning Initiative's team-based model represents a cultural shift for a professoriate that derives status, and pride, from individual contributions.

Then there's privacy. The beauty of OLI is that developers can improve classes by studying data from thousands of students. But some academics worry that colleges could use that same data to evaluate professors—and fire those whose students fail to measure up.

Ms. Thille tells a personal story that illustrates who could benefit if she prevails. Years ago she adopted a teenager, Cece. The daughter of a drug user who died of AIDS, Cece was 28 days' truant from high school when she went to live with Ms. Thille. She was so undereducated, even the simple fractions of measuring cups eluded her. Her math teacher told Ms. Thille that with 40 kids in class, she needed to focus on the ones who were going to "make it."

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on competency-based learning and assessment ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#ECA

Apple does not have a corner on the market for innovations in textbook authoring
"2 New Platforms Offer Alternative to Apple’s Textbook-Authoring Software," by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 17. 2012 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/2-new-platforms-offer-alternative-to-apples-textbook-authoring-software/35495?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Apple’s recent release of free software to build e-textbooks has brought attention to custom publishing of academic materials. But Apple’s software, called iBooks Author, lacks easy tools for multiple authors to collaborate on a joint textbook project. Since most books aren’t written in isolation, two new publishing platforms seek to make that group collaboration easier.

The first, Booktype, is free and open-source. Once the platform is installed on a Web server, teams of authors can work together in their browsers to write sections of books and chat with each other in real time about revisions. Entire chapters can be imported and moved around by dragging and dropping. The finished product can be published in minutes on e-readers and tablets, or exported for on-demand printing. Booktype also comes with community features that let authors create profiles, join groups, and track books through editing.

Inkling Habitat, the other new offering, appears to have even greater ambitions. Where iBooks Author is designed mostly for would-be amateur publishers, Inkling Habitat creates a cloud-based platform for the professional market. Matthew MacInnis, Inkling’s chief executive, said the company’s tool is designed to give the global teams who work on professionally published textbooks a single outlet to publish interactive material for the iPad and the Web. Mr. MacInnis said hundreds of users can access the same textbook content at once, and the software will keep track of each step in the editing process.

Inkling Habitat also automates some of the editing process that is unique to e-textbooks, like checking for broken links between special terms and their definitions in a glossary. Those automatic functions, Mr. MacInnis said, will allow e-textbook publishing to get easier without requiring additional staff. “You can’t build the industry up around digital content if you’re going to throw people at every problem,” he said.

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

Learning Customization Even in Large Classes

"Customization Is the Future of Teaching, Harvard Researcher Says," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 25, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Future-of-Teaching-/132493/

Jensen Comment
I'm reminded of Steve Hornik at Central Florida who stands in front of a classroom of over 1,000 students. The above article presents Chris Dede's ideas on how to customize large lecture and case courses to the varying needs of individual students.

By the way Steve was an early adopter of Second Live 3-D learning technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Synchronous Partnering Course Modules in Universities in Different Nations

"Frontiers in Higher Education: A Procedural Model," Ruth Sesco, The International HETL Review, Volume 2, June 9, 2012 ---
http://hetl.org/

The paper describes a procedural model implemented at Ohio State University that shares similar content and interaction among international partner classes for a short time, usually 3-5 weeks. The model is flexible and adaptive to any discipline at both the graduate and undergraduate levels and includes expertise from both partnering instructors. Technologies are embedded to integrate a variety of structured opportunities for interaction and to utilize different teaching and learning strategies. There is no exchange of credits or funding, and all instructors are individually responsible for grading their own students, thus allowing subject expertise and peer interaction from around the world at no extra personal cost. The model can be implemented to internationalize an entire curriculum to a broad spectrum of learners world-wide with a significantly reduced carbon footprint, at minimal cost, and in direct response to the needs of higher education.

Jensen Comment

I suspect that Ruth Sesco independently developed a model that was invented for an international accounting course by a San Diego State University accounting professor years ago when the most advanced online technology was rudimentary.

You can read about this remarkable international accounting professor and what she accomplished with almost no budget by going to ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255light.htm

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/

CGMA Portfolio of Tools for Accountants and Analysts ---
http://www.cgma.org/Resources/Tools/Pages/tools-list.aspx
Includes ethics tools and learning cases.

Teaching Channel --- https://www.teachingchannel.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

"The Idea Makers: Tech Innovators for 2013," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 29, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Idea-Makers-Tech/138823/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

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

"Up in the Cloud: Hype and High Expectations for Cloud Computing," Knowledge@Wharton, January 16, 2013 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3171

From Carleton College (Interactive Simulation Role Play by Residents (students) of a Town Alongside an Active Volcano
The Sleeping Mountain --- http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/roleplaying/examples/sleepmtn.html

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

Education: Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City --- http://www.kansascityfed.org/education/
Note the Financial Fables section --- http://www.kansascityfed.org/education/fables/index.cfm

Bob Jensen's threads on financial literacy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers

"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

125 technology quick tips from the AICPA, by J. Carlton Collins, June 2012 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2012/Jun/20114845.htm

3-D Printer Video--- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy --- http://plato.stanford.edu/

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

The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies (creative ideas in writing, art, and photography) --- http://www.salt.edu/

Technology in the Arts --- http://www.technologyinthearts.org/

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”

Wiley Teams Up With TED to Create Lecture Materials for Big-Idea Videos ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/wiley-teams-up-with-ted-to-create-lecture-materials-for-big-idea-videos?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Warning: Watch out for some TED speakers who know the difference between causation and correlation but don't reveal what they know in the videos.
Many of these videos are more suited to debate seminars than lecture courses.

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

Experiment in Ultra Learning (some amazing stories) --- Click Here
http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/10/26/mastering-linear-algebra-in-10-days-astounding-experiments-in-ultra-learning/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StudyHacks+%28Study+Hacks%29

MITx, EdX, and MOOCs
Bob Jensen's threads on free courses, tutorials, video, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

"Turn Your Phone Into a Scanner," by Natalie Houston, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 29, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/turn-your-phone-into-a-scanner/45757?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Arts at the Core --- http://advocacy.collegeboard.org/preparation-access/arts-core

Invent with Python (make your own computer games) --- http://inventwithpython.com/

Computer Science for Dummies
Computer Science Unplugged --- http://www.youtube.com/csunplugged

"Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: Data and Learning Analytics," by Audrey Watters, Inside Higher Ed, December 20, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/hack-higher-education/top-ed-tech-trends-2012-data-and-learning-analytics

"How to Wipe Personal Info from Electronics," by Eric Escobar, Tech Talker, January 30, 2013 ---
http://techtalker.quickanddirtytips.com/how-to-wipe-personal-info-from-electronics.aspx

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

Innovation 20/20 Series (from the University of Georgia College of Education) --- http://www.coe.uga.edu/itt/2020-2/

The aim of the Innovation 20/20 Series is to showcase teaching innovations in the College of Education, and share ideas about how the “Big I” and “little i” innovations are taking place at the largest College of Education in the nation. Recognizing how important a commodity time is in our lives, each session consists of a focused presentation of only 20 minutes sharing a specific innovation, followed by 20 minutes of discussion and interactive engagement with the topic. If your schedule does not allow to be present during the talks, please visit the links below to view the video archive of the presentations.

November 1, 2012 Respondus message from Richard Campbell

Is the student taking your class the same one who is taking your exams??

Keep an eye on www.respondus.com

"Before And After Pics From Pixtr, The Photo App That Erases Your Flaws," by Julie Bort, Business Insider, May 4, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/before-and-after-pics-from-pixtr-the-photo-app-that-erases-your-flaws-2013-5

Bob Jensen's threads about online cheating ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#OnlineCheating

Software for online examinations and quizzes ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#Examinations

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

"Student Engagement in the Online Classroom," by Errol Craig Sull, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 31, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Student-Engagement-in-the/136897/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"Genesis of an Online Course," by Amy Dunbar* June 2003 Revised November 2003 ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/Dunbar2002.htm

"Choose Your Own Classroom Adventure with Inklewriter," by Anastasia Salter, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 7, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/classroom-adventure-with-inklewriter/45873?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Most eBooks are still pretty boring as objects: text, pictures, maybe a video or interactive visualization in a more experimental work. But that landscape may be changing, thanks in part to the number of cool free tools for building interactive books. One of these platforms, inklewriter, has some great potential for use with students in the classroom or for creating interactive stories or texts.

Last week, Inkle Studios released “Future Voices,” a curated collection of stories produced with its interactive story development tool. This slick iPad app features the tech behind Frankenstein, an interactive adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel by Dave Morris. Play through any of these stories for a while and you’ll see everything from straightforward choices of action to complex moral dilemmas and experiments. You can also check out many experiments on the web, including Emily Short’s Holography–she’s also written some thoughts on inklewriter as a platform.

While Inform 7 (as discussed last week) uses a parser interface based on interpreting a broad range of user actions (get lamp, open door, look at book, etc.), Inklewriter uses an interaction model similar to ’80s Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks, which recently came back into print and made the transition to eBooks. However, it goes beyond any of the simple page-shuffling models of those past books in part because it can keep track of decisions and variables from the user’s actions.

Inklewriter has a great tutorial “story” to introduce writers to the platform. The interface, shown below, is mostly free of distractions and built around creating story nodes and choices:

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Ebooks.htm

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning

"Kentucky Moves 173 School Districts to Cloud-Based ERP," by Leila Meyer, T.H.E. Journal, April 4, 2013 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/04/04/kentucky-moves-173-school-districts-to-cloud-based-erp.aspx?=THENU

"Preparing for Launch: Avoiding Browser Hell with BrowserStack," by Joanna Swafford, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 9, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/preparing-for-launch-avoiding-browser-hell-with-browserstack/48341?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

March 11th saw the pre-release of my digital project, Songs of the Victorians, an archive of parlor and art song settings of Victorian poems, and also a scholarly tool to facilitate interdisciplinary music and poetry scholarship. I had been building it for the last two years with the help of fellowships from NINES and the Scholars’ Lab, and it was a great experience to finally make the site public.

It was also a surprisingly challenging experience, as I had to figure out how to make the site display properly on a wide variety of browsers, operating systems, and iOS devices (iPad, iPod, etc.).

Before I jump in with details about the trials and tribulations of testing website compatibility, I’ll first explain a little more about my site and the programming and design challenges it presents. It is a part of the final chapter of my dissertation on Victorian poetry and music, and it will contain four songs: Michael William Balfe’s and Sir Arthur Somervell’s settings of “Come into the Garden, Maud” (both based on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s monodrama, Maud), Sir Arthur Sullivan’s version of Adelaide Procter’s “A Lost Chord,” and Caroline Norton’s “Juanita,” although for the limited release, it only includes “Juanita.” The site contains two components for each work: an archive of high-resolution images of the first edition printing with an audio file, and an article-length analysis of the song’s interpretation of the poem, with playable excerpts of relevant musical phrases to support the argument. When the song is played on either component, each measure of the score is highlighted in time with the music so that everyone, regardless of their ability to read music, can follow the score and the thread of the argument.

To incorporate audio, I needed to use a comparatively new feature of html, namely, the <audio> tag, which lets you embed an audio file and player in a website. I was disappointed to discover that no two browsers handled it in precisely the same way: Internet Explorer won’t recognize it at all in versions 8 and earlier (and inexplicably won’t render it in version 10), ios devices will only play the audio file if it is triggered by a user event, and Firefox will only play ogg vorbis, not mp3 files.

Such compatibility difficulties are often colloquially (and aptly) referred to as “browser hell.” I learned about some of these problems from researching the <audio> tag as I was developing Songs of the Victorians, but I learned most from an incredibly useful site for testing website compatability: BrowserStack.

Continued in article

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

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

"Free Spreadsheet-Based Form 1040 Available for 2012 Tax Year," by David H. Ringstrom, AccountingWeb, February 1, 2013 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/article/free-spreadsheet-based-form-1040-available-2012-tax-year/220959?source=technology

Jensen Comment
This might be a great application (using hypothetical taxpayers) for students learning spreadsheets as well as basics of income tax reporting.

I used a similar approach when teaching students how to use Webledger software ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Webledger.htm

For example, the term project report for a team of my students is available at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5342/projects/Netledger.pdf
This project was conducted when students could get free WebLedger accounts. I don't think that's possible these days.

Ubiquitous computing --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing

"PC makers hope that new ways of interacting with computers will boost sales" PC makers hope that new ways of interacting with computers will boost sales," by Tom Simonite. MIT's Technology Review, January 10, 2013 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509751/pc-makers-bet-on-gaze-gesture-voice-and-touch/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130111

"Touch Screens that Curve, Bend, and Even Touch Back: New technology could let the screens on future devices wrap around corners, act like paper, and sense touch on the rear as well as the front," by Tom Simonite, MIT's Technology Review, January 11, 2013 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509761/touch-screens-that-curve-bend-and-even-touch-back/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130111

Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology

"MILLIONS OF LESSONS LEARNED ON ELECTRONIC NAPKINS," by Rick Lillie, AAA Commons, January 2, 2013 ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/6040b395eb
Most AAA Commons postings are only available to AAA members. However, this may be one of the freebies

Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm

Can't we sing about accounting as well?

Math and Science Sing Along Experiments
Sing About Science & Math: Lesson Plans (oceanography sing along) --- http://singaboutscience.org/wp/lesson-plans/

"Episode 100: How Colleges Talk About (Tech) Reinvention," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 31, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/techtherapy/2012/10/31/episode-100-how-colleges-talk-about-reinvention/

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

"Touch Screens that Curve, Bend, and Even Touch Back: New technology could let the screens on future devices wrap around corners, act like paper, and sense touch on the rear as well as the front, by Tom Simonite, MIT's Technology Review, January 11, 2013 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509761/touch-screens-that-curve-bend-and-even-touch-back/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130111

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology

"EDUCAUSE WEEK," by Tracy Mitrano, Inside Higher Ed, November 10, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/law-policy-and-it/educause-week-0

In addition to short summaries of leading presenters, you may want to just note what speakers were given the great honor of speaking at plenary sessions. You can then do Google and other searches on these speakers.

For example, look up Clay Shirky --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky

"Microsoft Introduces Office 365 for Higher Ed," by George Williams, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 23, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/office-365-for-higher-ed/43588?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Here at ProfHacker, we’ve written several posts over the years about cloud computing and collaboration. Most of our focus has been on GoogleDocs and collaborative authorship (see my “GoogleDocs and Collaboration in the Classroom,” for example).

Not to be outdone by the cloud services offered by Google and others, Microsoft has been working on offerings like Office Live (which I wrote about in 2010) and Office 365 (which the New York Times covered in 2011). These services are designed to let users access and edit cloud-based documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from any device with a connection to the Internet and to collaborate on these files simultaneously with other users. And as Microsoft attempts to stay competitive with its mobile devices, introduces a new operating system (or two), and starts selling a new tablet device, cloud-based tools are going to be more and more important.

Last week, Microsoft announced Office 365 University, a cloud-based service to be made available to students, faculty, and staff at colleges and universities. The company says that the service is scheduled to become “[a]vailable in the first quarter of 2013,” and will be free for higher ed users who have purchased Office University 2010 or Office University for Mac 2011. (However, later in that same announcement a price of $1.67 per month is specified, which is still pretty good, but not as good as free).

Continued in article

The Chronicle’s 2012 Digital Campus Microsite ---
http://chronicle.com/section/The-Digital-Campus/519/?cid=dl_dcmtxt_h4

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

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

"Website update," by J. Carlton Collins, Journal of Accountancy, September 2012 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2012/Sep/Website-update.htm

Q: I have been tasked with reviewing and updating our firm’s website content, and I want to go about it as efficiently as possible. Can you help me get started?

A: I find that I can review content better on a printed page with pencil in hand. Adobe Acrobat Standard X ($139) provides the ability to produce a single document containing your entire website. To use this feature, from the Acrobat X menu, select Create, Create PDF from Web Page, and enter the website’s URL (URL is an acronym for uniform resource locator, which is the site’s home page web address) in the URL box. Click the Capture Multiple Levels button, select the Get entire site radio button, and then click Create

From the Scout Report on August 17, 2012

ShowOrHide 1.0 --- http://www.deprez.org/folio_0028_en.html

Many Mac users have hidden files located on their computers that they might not know about. ShowOrHide is a utility designed to locate invisible files and folders so that users will have more knowledge about such items. This program is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

Lucidchart: Diagramming --- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/apboafhkiegglekeafbckfjldecefkhn

For all those who have wrestled with creating charts and diagrams in word processors, the Google Chrome application Lucidchart may be a long-awaited answer. Users can start using the intuitive drag-and-drop interface right away, although a free signup is required to save diagrams. By sharing a link with coworkers, project collaborators can work on the same diagram at the same time. This application is compatible with all computers running Google Chrome.

The number of wildfires in the West are down, but the effect on lives and tourism revenue remains significant Wildfires Have Burned Nearly 7 Million Acres So Far, Up 6 Percent From Last Year
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/08/22/159748679/wildfires-have-burned-nearly-7-million-acres-so-far-up-6-percent-from-last-year

Northwest Wildfires Could Become More Common
http://www.kuow.org/northwestnews.php?storyID=159774757

Wildfires strain outdoor tourism business in western U.S.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-18/news/sns-rt-us-usa-wildfires-tourismbre87h088-20120818_1_frank-church-river-middle-fork-colorado-blazes

National Interagency Fire Center ---
http://www.nifc.gov/prevEdu/prevEdu_main.html

Wildfire: Are You Prepared? ---
http://www.usfa.fema.gov/citizens/home_fire_prev/wildfire/

Smokey Bear --- http://www.smokeybear.com/

R Project --- http://www.r-project.org/
Free Download for Windows --- http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/

“R is really important to the point that it’s hard to overvalue it,” said Daryl Pregibon, a research scientist at Google, which uses the software widely. “It allows statisticians to do very intricate and complicated analyses without knowing the blood and guts of computing systems.”
Ashley Vance, "Data Analysts Captivated by R’s Power," The New York Times, January 6, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?_r=0

"You Too Can Be Nate Silver ," Bloomberg Business Week, November 9, 2012 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-09/you-too-can-be-nate-silver

Well, it would seem we have identified the week in which being a big data wonk became cool. After all, there’s Nate Silver—the Electoral College Oracle—being feted on The Daily Show and across the Web for collecting polling data and then massaging it with a clever algorithm. Now everyone wants to hang out with the skinny, kinda nervous dude who knows his way around R. (R? Look it up. You’ll need this for cocktail parties from here on out.)

If you don’t have time to attend the soon-to-be-planned Nate Silver’s Datapalooza, you can still have a crack at becoming the big data star around the office. That’s because the data fiends in Silicon Valley have been hard at work creating software that lets mere mortals run complex information analysis jobs. Some of the best examples of this type of technology can be seen at the Alteryx Analytics Gallery, where you can find ready-made apps for poring over data ranging from census figures to how a merger between two companies may play out.

Alteryx’s main business revolves around selling software that helps people submit big data sets and then choose from a menu of analytical operations to perform on the information. The idea is to remove some of the coding grunt work that has surrounded data analysis jobs for decades. “This has been the world of statisticians and Ph.D.s and not the people on the front lines trying to make good business decisions,” says George Mathew, the president and chief operating officer at Alteryx. “We wanted to change that.”

Customers using Alteryx’s software will find some huge, preloaded data sets like information from the 2010 Census and marketing services company Experian’s consumer profiling data. Then you can literally drag and drop analysis functions such as regression models from a menu to apply them to the data and receive a pretty report at the end. Companies can, of course, supply their own data, making it possible for, say, an executive at a retailer to take data from 900 million point of sale transactions, 2.5 million loyalty cards, and 500,000 Likes on Facebook (FB) and try to determine what the value of Facebook Likes might be on a given store.

The Analytics Gallery is a spot where people can find prepackaged data analytics apps and have some fun poking around on the information. Ahead of the presidential election, for example, there were models available that let you see how particular zip codes might vote based on polling numbers and things like census data. The Presidential Election App predicted Obama’s win with Silver-like accuracy.

One of the newer apps has been tuned for Facebook employees trying to cash in on the company’s initial public offering. It helps you find the ideal house based on how many Facebook shares you’re willing to sell, how close you want to live to the company headquarters, and the usual bedrooms and bathrooms desired.

Alteryx’s Mathew hopes these types of apps will prove that more people can become data analysis whizzes if they’re given the right tools. He says there are 200,000 so-called data scientists in the world, who regularly command more than $200,000 per year in salary. These are your Nate Silvers. Then, there are 2.5 million people in the workforce that have enough statistics, business, and math knowledge to do some serious data crunching with a bit of technological help. “I think there’s a tremendous arbitrage opportunity here,” Mathew says.

Hear that, Silver?

Jensen Comment
To my knowledge, Nate Silver is not a collector of raw data. He is a data aggregator using databases collected by others. As such he's totally dependent upon the depth and quality of data points in those databases. He's best known for aggregating baseball and political poll databases ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver

Insider Trading Issues
Another issue is whether Nate's findings are self-serving in some way in the sense that players fare better or worse as a result of Nate's predictions. This seems to be less likely in baseball than in political polls. There are various degrees of insider trading in life. To the extent that inside players of a game can alter the databases upon with aggregators like Nate depend, the more dysfunctional highly publicized predictions such as those of Nate Silver become.

"Mechanical Turk and the Limits of Big Data: The Internet is transforming how researchers perform experiments across the social sciences," by Walter Frick, MIT's Technology Review, November 1, 2012 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/506731/mechanical-turk-and-the-limits-of-big-data/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20121102

Herein lies Nate's problem.
Baseball databases are pretty independent, reliable, and very deep about collecting almost everything about professional baseball games apart from personal data of players such as most medical data and other very personal data on players and managers. Players cannot fudge most baseball statistics in a self-serving way.

But with political poll databases, it's a whole new ballgame.

This is my thread with David Johnstone reported at:
My Free Speech Political Quotations and Commentaries Directory and Log ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Political/PoliticalQuotationsCommentaries.htm

The dates and messages are in reverse order.

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 4:01 PM, David Johnstone <david.johnstone@sydney.edu.au> wrote:

Dear Bob, I did not know any of this background, so thank you for putting things into clear perspective.

One technical point (that does not answer your criticisms totally) is that the Bayes mechanism of using likelihood p(signal|event) to find p(event|signal) is that built-in bias in the signal is accounted for logically in determining just how strong it is.

I didn’t forward the message to AECM because I did not think the crowd is keen for more Bayesian spruiking from me, and because I did not know too much about this Silver man. Your points make it clear that caution was justified.

I did know that you would be a good barometer though!

One thing I will say on another point, accounting as a discipline does not properly understand Bayes theorem, despite the amount of Bayesian argument/modelling. This is remarkable given that accounting is a signalling discipline. Foster was right when he started his Fin Stmt Analysis text with Ch.1 on Bayes and the value of info. I am just finishing up a couple of papers on this, so will send soon.

All the best, david

"Cheating in Online Courses," Dan Ariely, August 2012 ---
http://danariely.com/2012/08/10/cheating-in-online-courses/

Jensen Comment
f there is more cheating in online courses, the fault lies with the internal controls of the online system rather than the difference between online versus onsite systems per se. Cheating is largely the fault of the online and onsite instructors and their universities. There are controls (not costless) to reduce online cheating to levels below those of onsite courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus
For example, observing a student taking an online test can be more one-on-one observation with the proper Webcam procedures or with hiring the Village Vicar to or a Sylvan Systems to proctor the examination.

From the Scout Report on July 13, 2012

Bundlenut --- http://www.bundlenut.com/

Have you ever wanted to create a bundle of links to share with friends, colleagues, and others with simpatico interests? Bundlenut makes this possible with just a few easy steps. Visitors can use the site to create a bundle of links and give the bundle a title. There's a "bundle browser" as well, and it's easy to share them. Some of the sample bundles on the site include "Food from Scratch," "West Coast Road Trip Itinerary," and "Mrs. Comstock's 11th Grade Reading List." This version is compatible with all operating systems.

Tilt 3D 1.0.1 --- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tilt/

Have you ever wanted to see a website in 3D? Well, this is now possible with Tilt3D 1.0.1. Created by Victor Porof, the tool is "layers each node based on the nesting in the tree, creating stacks of elements, each having a corresponding depth and being textured according to the webpage rendering." It's a pretty fun little tool and it is compatible with all operating systems running Mozilla Firefox.

"A Pile of Products Worth Looking At," by David Pogue, The New York Times,, July 18, 2012 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/a-pile-of-products-worth-looking-at/

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, there are too many new tech products and services for one man to review in a single lifetime.

Here, then, for your summertime skimming, is another batch of interesting-looking tech developments. Again, I haven’t tried these and don’t endorse them — I just think they’re cool ideas worth noting.

Onavo Extend By compressing data, Onavo Extend can increase the power of your data plan by up to 500 percent. Avoid overage charges, roaming fees, data throttling and poor performance, without draining your battery. Also provides a breakdown of your data usage. Free. (www.Onavo.com)

OptimumCS-Pro This app finds the lens settings that minimize the blurring caused by defocus and diffraction, so that you can get the sharpest images from your D.S.L.R. that the laws of optics will allow. For iPhone, $7. (www.georgedouvos.com)

YouVisit This app offers prospective students GPS-guided tours of college campuses and academic programs. Offers news, weather, photos and contact info for each college. Free for iPhone/Android. (www.youvisit.com)

SproutConverter You know all those distorted and blank sections on your home video tapes that remain after you transfer them to your computer? SproutConverter gets rid of them automatically. Import your videos to your computer using whatever device you choose, then drag and drop. $30, for Mac. (www.gearsprout.com.)

Addressgate Ever wanted to contact a neighbor you don’t know? Sign up to this specialized social network with your home address, then communicate with neighbors privately, or view/post neighborhoodwide alerts, news and events. Free. (www.addressgate.com)

Gogobot This app lets friends and like-minded travelers, rather than anonymous strangers, provide tips for coming trips. Online/iPhone/iPod Touch, free. (www.gogobot.com)

Novatel MiFi 4620L Mobile Hotspot No larger than a stack of cards, this self-powered pocket 4G WiFi hot spot has an interactive OLED screen and five-hour battery life. Connects up to 10 Wi-Fi devices. $50 with two-year Verizon contract. (www.verizonwireless.com/verizon-jetpack-mifi-4620l.shtml)

FlightView This app offers push alerts on flight status changes, visibility into nationwide airport delays, directions to the airport and social integration for sharing your flight’s status with the people picking you up from the airport. (j.mp/SEUePI)

YouMail Visual voice mail on steroids. Customized greetings, smart and social caller ID, call blocking and the ability to save your messages. Free. For Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone. (Voice mail transcription services, performed by people instead of software, is available for $5 to $40 a month. (www.youmail.com)

Continued in article

Update on Portable Scanning

August 22, 2012 message from Scott Bonacker

I deleted the extraneous material from this marketing email - it describes a scanner that could be useful for onsite work like I do - and maybe someone else as well – scan student papers at your desk at the front of the room?

Scott Bonacker CPA - McCullough and Associates LLC - Springfield, MO

1. A SCANNER THAT GIVES DUPLEX A WHOLE NEW MEANING

The secret to success in the technology world is to solve a problem. Here's one. Mobile scanners can handle documents, but not bound materials. Wand scanners can handle bound materials but not documents. You can "scan" anything by snapping a photo with your smartphone, but positioning your smartphone perfectly wastes time, the lower quality makes optical character recognition more challenging, and you risk looking dorky. A new scanner attempts to solve this problem.

MobileScan Pro 100 ... in One Sentence

Shipping in September, Ambir's MobileScan Pro 100 is a portable scanner with document and wand functionality.
http://www.technolawyer.com/r.asp?L29119&M59355

The Killer Feature

The MobileScan Pro 100 consist of two components -- a dock and a wand scanner with an LCD display. When the scanner is docked, it functions like a typical sheet-fed simplex scanner with speeds of up to 10 pages per minute in black and white (it can also scan in color).

However, you can detach the scanner from the dock, thus transforming it into a wand scanner for bound materials not to mention fabric and other items that you cannot feed.

Other Notable Features

The entire docked unit measures 12.4 x 2 x 1.7 inches and weighs 12.6 ounces. You can power it with the included USB cable or a battery (the battery resides inside the scanner component). The LCD screen enables you to adjust settings without the need for a computer.

The MobileScan Pro 100 scans at 300, 600, or 900 dpi, and saves your documents in JPEG or PDF format via the bundled PageManager 9 software. You can save scans to an attached computer or to the included 4 GB microUSB card that resides inside the scanner. The scanner can encrypt your scans on the microUSB card for security in the event of loss or theft.

What Else Should You Know?

The MobileScan Pro 100 costs $149.95. It works with Windows PCs and Macs. Learn more about MobileScan Pro 100.
http://www.ambir.com/MobileScan-Pro-100

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology

Question
How can you capture part of a screen such a a text phrase in a document that would let you select that phrase as text to copy?

Answer
There are many screen capturing alternatives. I ten dot use PaintShop Pro or SnagIt, neither of which are free programs.

From the Scout Report on July 6, 2012

Kwout --- http://kwout.com/

What is "kwout"? Basically, it's a tiny application that allows users to "quote" a part of a web page as an image with an image map. It is easy to use, as all users have to do is add the kwout bookmarklet to their favorite browser. Visitors can then grab a screenshot, cut out the area of inte

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

"3 Reasons You'll Buy Google's Nexus 7 Tablet," by Eliot Weisberg, ReadWriteWeb, June 28, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/video-3-reasons-youll-buy-googles-nexus-7-tablet.php

"Google Nexus 7 Makes Amazon Kindle Fire Irrelevant," by Dan Rowinski, ReadWriteWeb, June 28, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/06/google-nexus-7-makes-amazon-kindle-fire-irrelevant.php

"Will Google’s New Nexus Q Kill Google TV?" by Mark Hachman, ReadWriteWeb, June 28, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/will-googles-new-nexus-q-kill-google-tv.php

Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm

"How Compatible Are Rival E-Readers?" by David Pogue, The New York Times, May 10, 2012 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/how-compatible-are-rival-e-readers/

The mail is still coming in about my review of Barnes & Noble’s latest e-book reader, the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight.

Very little of the mail is actually about the reader, though. Most of it challenges the statements I made when I characterized the state of the e-book world right now.

Here’s a summary — and a few clarifications.

• What I wrote: “When you buy an e-reader, you’re committing to that one company’s catalog of books forever, because their book formats are mutually incompatible.”

Sample reader pushback: “Why do you write about things you don’t know anything about? Apparently, you haven’t heard of the free app called Calibre. It converts any e-book format into any other format. If I want to switch from a Kindle to a Nook, I just let Calibre convert my current Kindle library. It’s that simple.”

My reply: It’s actually not, for one towering reason: Calibre can’t convert copy-protected books. It doesn’t even try. And that rules out most of the books people want to read these days: best sellers. Current, commercial fiction and nonfiction. Books by people who are still alive.

I mean, if all you want to read is old, expired-copyright books like “Moby Dick” and “Little Women,” then — great! You don’t need Calibre at all, because these books are available free online in any format you like (or in formats that any reader can display, like text files or PDF files).

But when it comes to more recent books, my statement still stands. If you buy a bunch of modern books for the Nook and then one day switch to the Kindle, you’ll have to kiss your entire investment goodbye.

• What I wrote: “You can’t read a Kindle book on a Nook, or a Nook book on a Sony Reader, or a Sony book on an iPad.”

Sample reader pushback: “Your remark about not being able to read various book types on rival readers is disingenuous at best. I can read all of my Kindle books and all of my Nook books on my laptop or my iPad, thanks to reader apps made by those companies.”

My reply: Yes, that’s true. There are Kindle and Nook reading apps for tablets, phones and computers, so that you can read your purchased books without actually owning an e-book reader at all!

To be technically complete, therefore, I could have written this: “You can’t read a Kindle book on a Nook or Sony Reader, or a Nook book on a Sony Reader or Kindle, or a Sony book on an iPad, Kindle or Nook, or an iBooks book on a Nook, Kindle or Sony Reader. With a special app, you can read a Kindle book or Nook book on an iPad, laptop, iPhone, iPod Touch or Android phone.”

But my point was not to create a Wikipedia entry on e-book compatibility. I was just trying to make the point that if you are thinking of buying a dedicated e-book reader — and since this was a review of an e-book reader, I think that’s a reasonable assumption — then you’ll be locked into books from its manufacturer.

• What I wrote: “Once you buy the gadget, you’ve just married its company forever. If you ever want to change brands, you have to give up all the books you’ve ever bought.”

Sample reader pushback: “Your article contains an error. If you buy a Nook, you are not tied to Barnes & Noble’s bookstore. They use the ePub format, and accept the Adobe Digital Editions DRM [copy-protection] scheme, so you can buy books from a number of vendors. I have purchased books from B&N as well as Kobo, the Sony bookstore, and a couple other sites.”

My reply: I’ve always known that the Sony, Nook and Kobo readers all read standard ePub files. But it was my impression that, here again, the only books you can exchange freely among readers are the old, public-domain ones — not the copy-protected modern best sellers that most people are interested in.

It appears that I’m wrong. With some effort, you can, in fact, move copy-protected books among those three e-book readers. When I asked that reader how he does it, he sent along the instructions:

Say I bought “My Man Jeeves” from Kobo. I copy it to my Kobo e-reader. Now, to copy it to my Sony reader, I must manually download the acsm file that controls my license for this book. Kobo allows this, but not through their desktop application — only on their Web site. I simply use my Kobo account credentials to log on to the site. I go to “My library.” Beside each of my purchases is a Download button (it may be called “Adobe DRM ePub/PDF”). I click this button, and the acsm file is downloaded.

Now I “open” the acsm file using the Sony Reader desktop application. (On Windows, I do that by right-clicking the file, then selecting “Open with Sony eReader.”) My book is now copied-downloaded into my Sony Reader desktop app. I can then connect my Sony reader by its cable to my PC to copy that book as usual.

Wow. I’m not entirely convinced that average consumers would be willing, or even able, to wade through all of that for every book in their libraries.

But technically, I was wrong, and you’re right. If you’re technically adept, you can transfer your purchased books among Nook, Sony and Kobo readers — and any others that offer ePub compatibility.

The only big-name reader that doesn’t is the Kindle. Once you buy a Kindle book, you really are stuck with Kindles and Kindle reading apps forever.

Continued in article

Whispersync for Voice --- http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kics_hp_dp_lm?ie=UTF8&docId=1000827761

"3 Ideas to Improve Amazon's / Audible's Whispersync," by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, September 23, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/3-ideas-improve-amazons-audibles-whispersync

Whispersync is Amazon's new feature that allows for Kindle e-books and Audible audiobooks to sync up. This makes perfect sense, as Amazon owns Audible, and can leverage common platforms and accounts to provide a seamless reading experience across e-book and audiobook reading methods.

The idea is that we can get more reading done if we can easily move between platforms, listening to our books while multitasking (driving, exercising, cleaning etc.), and then reading the e-book during those times in which it is rude to have earbuds stuck in our ears.

I love the option of switching back and forth between audio and e-paper (or paper). Most of my reading is done via my ears, but most of my pleasure reading comes through my eyeballs.

The genius of syncing up the e-book and the audiobook is that the technology gives to us the thing that is most valuable - more time to read.
All of us would read more books if we had more time to read.

By syncing a book across platforms, including a Kindle smart phone app, a dedicated Kindle reader, and the audio version, we can read more by reading in smaller chunks. We can get a bit of reading done whenever we have a few minutes. And then we can transition to longer stretches of pleasure reading with our dedicated Kindle reader.

Whisperync is a terrific concept, but in execution Amazon has fallen a bit short. I'm hoping that we are in the early days of cross-method / cross-platform book syncing - and that Amazon will rapidly evolve this service.

3 ideas for Whispersync:

1. Allow Kindle Book Purchases via Audible: The way it works now is that you purchase the "Whispersync Voice-Ready" Kindle book first from Amazon, and then you are given the option to buy the audiobook. For example, you can buy the Kindle edition of Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics for $9.55. You are then given the option of buying the Audible audio version for $7.95. On Audible, this book costs $19.59 or 1 credit for members. There is no way to go the other way, to buy the audiobook from Audible and add on the Kindle book. Most audiobook shoppers get our audiobooks from Audible, not from Amazon. For audiobook fans, the audiobook is the primary means of reading. The e-book is an "add on." By requiring Whispersync purchases to go through the Amazon.com website, Amazon is making it more difficult to find and purchase books.

2. Bundle Kindle Books in with Audible Credits: The bigger problem with the Amazon/Kindle centric Whispersync system is that the program does not work well for Audible subscribers. I'm a longtime Audible Platinum subscriber, a program that gives me 24 books (really credits) for $229.50. This works out to $9.56 a book. The Whispersync program is a bad deal for me (and all Platinum subscribers), as the typical cost of a book would jump from under $10 bucks (for the audio version) to around $18 bucks. What Audible should do is come out with a "super credit" - one that buys both the audio and the Kindle version of the book. I would pay $12 a super credit, as having the book in both formats is valuable, but not so valuable that I want to double pay for the book. This seems like a good deal for the authors, the publishers, and Amazon - as delivering the digital audio and e-book file does not cost Amazon or the publishers anything extra. My guess is that making a dual format book affordable would drive book sales.

3. Introduce A Dedicated AudioBook Device: The idea of reading audiobook and e-books, with everything seamless syncing, is wonderful in theory. In reality, the hardware makes syncing across audio/e-book formats somewhat challenging. I listen to my audiobooks books on an iPod Nano. Since the Nano is not WiFi enabled syncing is impossible. Syncing only works when listening to the book on an iPhone, or a Kindle device. Amazon should come out with a dedicated audiobook reader. Call it the Kindle Spark, or the Kindle Ember. A small device that works well for exercising, and that is WiFi enabled so syncing works. A small screen would even allow for Kindle reading, and for purchases of digital books right from the device.

"Amazon Lights the Fire With Free BooksL Today, Amazon unveiled something radical: the Kindle Lending Library," by David Pogue, The New York Times, November 2, 2011 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/amazon-lights-the-fire-with-free-books/

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

"Take a Note: Typing With No Hands," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303772904577335792574509780.html

I am writing this paragraph on an iPhone. But I am not typing it on the phone's virtual keyboard. I am dictating it using a little-known feature that allows you to employ your voice, instead of your fingers, wherever text entry is possible on the device.

So, on the suspicion that dictation on smartphones might prove useful for others as well, I've been testing it heavily over the past week. I used a top phone with Google's Android software, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and an Apple iPhone 4S. In general, I found that, while dictation could occasionally fail badly, it worked surprisingly well in a wide variety of environments and applications.

On both leading smartphone platforms, I found that relatively short dictation—such as emails, texts, tweets, Facebook posts and notes—was at least as accurate, and often more, as typing on a glass screen. It was better in quiet environments, but did OK even in most noisy places like grocery stores, coffee shops and carwashes. It was also faster, since, as long as you don't have to correct numerous errors, speaking is usually faster than typing on glass.

For this review, I am not mainly referring to Siri, the widely publicized, voice-controlled feature on the new iPhones, which can do things like tell you the weather, or stock prices. Nor am I discussing the "voice actions" on Android, which can perform Web searches and other tasks. Both can also help with some text dictation. I concentrated on a much simpler feature of both platforms: a small microphone key that's included right in the phones' on-screen keyboards.

Android phones have had this microphone key for a couple of years, and Apple added it to the latest iPhone, the 4S, last fall, and to the new iPad, when it came out last month. But I'm guessing that many users of these phones either haven't used this special key, or haven't even noticed it.

While the microphone keys work a bit differently on the two platforms, they are basically similar. When the keyboard appears, ready for you to type, you can instead hit the microphone key and simply dictate what you want to say. The phones then send your spoken words to a remote server, which rapidly translates them into text and sends them back to the phone's screen. If corrections are needed, you make them by typing, though both platforms make this easier by indicating the likeliest errors, and suggesting alternatives.

A couple of caveats are in order. I didn't compare dictation to typing on a phone with physical keys, whose devotees are often speedy and accurate. Instead, I thought the apt comparison was with a virtual keyboard, which is becoming the norm on phones, but is still a source of frustration for many users. [PTECHjump1]

But Android was more reliable.

I also didn't try dictating a long document, like this column, because phones are rarely used for lengthy composing.

I found that both platforms' dictation systems worked well enough for me to recommend them. In case after case, both phones got it right, or close enough to require little correcting.

But there are differences. Android has an advantage in that, in the newest version of its operating system, it displays the dictated text almost in real time, lagging just slightly behind your spoken words. On the iPhone, the system only reveals its rendering of your dictation after you've tapped on a "Done" button.

Android's dictation system also supports many more languages than Apple's—40 languages and dialects, including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Hebrew. On the iPhone, only English, French and German are currently supported, though Apple says Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Spanish will be added later this year.

However, I found the iPhone 4S worked better than the Galaxy Nexus in noisier environments. For instance, in a crowded shopping-mall food court, while neither phone was perfect, the iPhone understood me to say: "I am dictating this email from the very noisy Court at Montgomery Mall on the iPhone"—missing only the word "food" and capitalizing "Court." The Android phone mangled a very similar sentence as: "I am dictating this email on droid phone from the bearing noise for it montgomery mall."

Continued in article

"Projects Aims to Build Online Hub for Archival Materials," by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 13, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Building-a-Digital-Map-of/131846/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

In death, as in life, people don't always leave their papers in order. Letters, manuscripts, and other pieces of evidence wind up scattered among different archives, leading researchers on a paper chase as they try to hunt down what they need for their work.

"It can be hugely frustrating—especially when you make a journey cross-country to an archive, and then discover the piece you really wanted must be somewhere else (or, God forbid, rotting away in a landfill)," says Robert Townsend, deputy director of the American Historical Association, in an e-mail interview. Chasing after distributed historical records is so common that "any historian who has not suffered from that problem can't be working very hard," he wrote.

The Internet has made the hunt easier, as more archives post finding aids for their collections online. "Scholars have at least gotten to the point where they can search over the Internet for these materials," says Daniel V. Pitti, the associate director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, or IATH, at the University of Virginia. But what he calls "hunting and gathering" persists for document-seekers, who "a priori have to have some idea, some hunch, of where to go, because the access systems are distinct and not integrated any way."

Now imagine a central clearinghouse for those records, an online hub researchers could consult to find archival materials.

That vision drives a project of Mr. Pitti's called the Social Networks and Archival Context Project, or SNAC. It's a collaboration between researchers and developers at IATH, the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information, and the California Digital Library. The project recently finished its pilot stage with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Another grant, from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will support the project through another two years as it adds millions more records and begins beta testing with researchers.

Some people have already found the prototype, which is up and running although not yet widely promoted. The site allows visitors to search for the names of individuals, corporate entities, or families to find "archival context records" for them.

"So if I'm interested in a particular person," Mr. Pitti says, "I can find where all the records are that would be required to understand them." For instance, a search for Robert Oppenheimer turns up a link to a collection of the physicist's papers housed at the Library of Congress, plus links to other collections in which he is referenced, a biographical timeline, and a list of occupations and subjects related to his life and work.

A researcher can explore a person's social and cultural environment with SNAC's radial-graph feature. It creates a web, which can be manipulated, of a subject's connections as revealed in archival records. The radial graph of Oppenheimer's network, for instance, includes George Kennan, Linus Pauling, Bertrand Russell, and Albert Schweitzer, among many other names represented as nodes on the graph.

Not yet fully developed, the radial-graph feature supports one of the project's main goals: to visualize the social networks within which archival records were created. "What you're trying to do is put together the puzzle, the fabric of someone's life, the people that influenced them and the people they influenced," Mr. Pitti says. "One could certainly, in an analog context, piece this together, but it would take years and years of work. What we're demonstrating is that we can go out there and gather all that information and present it to you, which would liberate scholars." Connecting archival data can reveal patterns of association hidden in disparate collections.

Data Quality Important

To work well, SNAC requires good data. Its first phase drew on thousands of finding aids—encoded with a standard known as Encoded Archival Description, or EAD—from the Library of Congress, the Northwest Digital Archives, the Online Archive of California, and Virginia Heritage. A newer standard for encoding archival information, referred to as EAC-CPF, for Encoded Archival Context-Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families, was then applied to those records, making them easier to find and connect.

Archives are idiosyncratic, and it's not always easy to tell whether a name refers to a particular individual or to different people with identical or similar names. One of Mr. Pitti's main collaborators is Ray R. Larson, a professor in the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley. He concentrates on what Mr. Pitti calls the "matching and merging" required to winnow out duplicate names, find variants of the same name, and so on. To do that Mr. Larson has tested several approaches, including machine learning, in which a computer is programmed to recognize, for example, common variations in spelling.

The job is about to get much tougher, though, because SNAC is about to get much bigger. As part of the second phase of the project, supported by the Mellon grant, 13 state and regional archival consortia and more than 35 university and national repositories in the United States, Britain, and France will contribute records. The British Library "is giving me 300,000 names associated with their manuscript collections," going back to before the Christian era, says Mr. Pitti.

The project will also ingest as many as 2 million standardized bibliographic records, in the widely used MARC format, from the online OCLC collaboration in which libraries exchange research and cataloging information. OCLC has its own centralized archival search function, called ArchiveGrid; Mr. Pitti describes it as complementary to SNAC. Unlike SNAC, though, "ArchiveGrid does not foreground the biographical-historical data, nor does it reveal the social networks that interrelate the archival resources," he says.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on archived databases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic literature ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

"4G or Not 4G: A Guide to Cut Through All the 'Fast' Talk," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577307630825596396.html

Of all the confusing technology terms used in consumer marketing today, perhaps the most opaque is "4G," used to describe a new, much faster generation of cellular data on smartphones, tablets and other devices. It sounds simple, but there are many varieties of 4G and conflicting claims.

AT&T T -0.30% claims "The nation's largest 4G network," and T-Mobile says it has "America's largest 4G network." Verizon Wireless boasts "America's fastest 4G network," and Sprint S -0.17% says it had the first 4G network.

Yet the technology used by T-Mobile, and mostly comprising AT&T's 4G network, isn't considered "real" 4G at all by some critics, and the one used by Sprint has proven to be a dead end and is being abandoned. The flavor being used by Verizon is now being adopted by its rivals, but won't be interoperable among them.

It's a headache for consumers to grasp. So here's a simplified explainer to some of the most common questions, based on interviews with top technical officials at all four major U.S. wireless carriers.

What is 4G?

It's the fourth and latest generation technology for data access over cellular networks. It's faster and can give networks more capacity than the 3G networks still on most phones. There's a technical definition, set by a United Nations agency in Europe, and a marketing definition, which is looser, but more relevant to most consumers.

Who needs 4G?

It's mostly for people with smartphones, tablets and laptops who often need fast data speeds for Web browsing, app use and email when they're out of the range of Wi-Fi networks. It can give you the same or greater data speeds as home or office Wi-Fi when you're in a taxi. In hotels and airports, it's often faster than public Wi-Fi networks.

How does 4G differ from another term being advertised, 'LTE'?

LTE, which stands for "Long Term Evolution," is the fastest, most consistent variety of 4G, and the one most technical experts feel hews most closely to the technical standard set by the U.N. In the U.S., it has primarily been deployed by Verizon, which offers it in over 200 markets. AT&T has begun deploying it, offering LTE in 28 markets so far. Sprint and T-Mobile are pivoting to LTE, though they have no cities covered by it yet.

What are these other versions of 4G?

Sprint uses a technology called WiMax. T-Mobile and AT&T deployed a technology called HSPA+, a faster version of 3G that they relabeled as 4G, and which many technical critics regard as a "faux 4G." Sprint will begin switching to LTE later this year, and T-Mobile in 2013.

How fast is 4G?

Claims vary and performance depends upon the type of device, location, and time. In my tests, 4G phones, tablets and data modems for laptops typically deliver from three to 20 times the download speeds of 3G devices. The speed king is LTE. The LTE devices I've used have typically averaged download speeds of between 10 and 20 megabits per second, with frequent instances of over 30 megabits per second. The other forms of 4G have generally produced download speeds well under 10 mbps in my tests. But all of these are better than 3G, which in my tests on all networks and many devices, averages download speeds of under 2 mbps. The Digital Solution

How does LTE compare with common wired home Internet speeds?

Although it is wireless, LTE is often faster than most Americans' wired home Internet service. According to Akamai, a large Internet company, the average broadband speed in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2011 was a mere 6.1 mbps.

How does LTE compare with Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi is usually a wireless broadcast of a wired Internet service, so, if the average U.S. broadband speed is 6.1 mbps, that's around what the average Wi-Fi speed is. But, in public places, the shared Wi-Fi is often much, much slower than LTE. In tests I did this week at Dulles Airport near Washington, and at a hotel outside Boston, the public Wi-Fi networks delivered well under 1 mbps on the new iPad. But the Verizon LTE cellular network on the iPad averaged over 32 mbps in both places.

Continued in article

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

"Students Endlessly E-Mail Professors for Help. A New Service Hopes to Organize the Answers," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 1, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Students-Endlessly-E-Mail/131390/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Meet the Ed-Tech Start-Ups

It's a golden age for educational-technology start-ups. The past three years have seen a spike in venture-capital investment in upstart companies, many founded by entrepreneurs just out of college. Last month The Chronicle outlined the trend ("A Boom Time for Education Start-Ups"), but we wanted to dig deeper.

Below are short features on three such companies, focusing on the problems they hope to solve and the challenges they face in selling their unusual ideas. To get a sense of the emerging field, we've included a list of a dozen other start-ups competing for a piece of the action.

Pooja Sankar may eliminate the need for professors to hold office hours, or to endlessly respond to student questions by e-mail.

Ms. Sankar, a recent graduate of Stanford University's M.B.A. program, leads a start-up focused on finding a better way for college students to ask questions about course materials and assignments online. Her company, Piazza, has built an online study hall where professors and teaching assistants can easily monitor questions and encourage students who understand the material to help their peers.

At first blush, the service seems unnecessary. Students can already e-mail questions to professors or fellow students, and most colleges already own course-management systems like Blackboard that include discussion features. But Ms. Sankar feels that such options are clunky. She says professors are finding that Piazza can save them hours each week by allowing them to post answers to a single online forum rather than handle a scattershot of student e-mails.

Piazza is a Web site that refreshes with updates as new questions or answers come in. Professors simply set up a free discussion area for their course on the service at the beginning of the term and invite their students to set up free accounts to participate. Ms. Sankar says that students typically keep Piazza open on their screens as they work on homework, often staying on the site for hours at a time.

Ms. Sankar, who is 31, was inspired to create the service based on her own experience as an undergraduate in India, where she studied at the highly selective Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur. She says she was a shy student, and one of only three women majoring in computer science, so she often found herself watching from the wings as more social students collaborated on homework assignments. She felt there had to be a way to recreate a study hall online, in a way that made it easy for shy students to ask questions anonymously.

After graduating, she got a master's degree in computer science at the University of Maryland at College Park, and then worked as an engineer for Facebook and other companies for a few years. When she decided to head to Stanford to study business, she was sure she would not try to start a company of her own, since she found the prospect "too scary." But a course on entrepreneurship made her realize that the path to a company was simply a series of "baby steps," and that she wanted to bring her vision of a better "question-and-answer platform" to life.

She wrote the original version of Piazza herself, after teaching herself the programming language Ruby on Rails from a book. By the time she first sought investors, she already had hundreds of students using the service. She raised an initial round of $1.5-million last year from the venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital, and raised an additional $6-million from investors in November.

As of yet, the site has no plans to generate revenue—the service is free and does not carry advertisements. Ms. Sankar said that she didn't write a business plan for the site, because she doesn't believe in them, and that she believes that once a critical mass of students and professors are signed up, revenue models can emerge. When pressed, she says that in the future the company may charge for advanced analytics for professors or other extra features.

She spends much of her time seeking feedback from users and obsessively tinkering with the service in hopes of improving it. "I am an engineer at heart," she explains.

To spread the word about the site, she has taken an unusually personal approach. She sends e-mail messages to professors telling her story and the goal of the site, and asking them to try it.

Greg Morrisett, a computer-science professor at Harvard University, got one of those e-mails. He said he was curious, but he was concerned that the site's policy noted that it claimed ownership over comments posted on the site, which Mr. Morrisett felt violated Harvard's policies. So he wrote back to Ms. Sankar and said he wasn't able to use it. "Ten minutes later she wrote back and said, 'We fixed the policy,'" the professor recalls. (Users now own their own posts.) So he gave it a shot.

Continued in article

Students Evaluating the Lecture Pedagogy
"Lecture Fail?" by Jeffrey Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 24, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Lecture-Fail-/130085/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

PowerPoint is boring. Student attention spans are short. Today many facts pop up with a simple Google search. And plenty of free lectures by the world's greatest professors can be found on YouTube.

Is it time for more widespread reform of college teaching?

This series explores the state of the college lecture, and how technologies point to new models of undergraduate education.

Last month, we began inviting students across the countries to fire up their Web cameras or camera-phones to send us video commentaries about whether lectures work for them. Below are highlights from the first batch of submissions, which are full of frustration with “PowerPoint abuse” – professors’ poor use of slide software that dumps too much information on students in a less-than-compelling fashion.

Continued in article

Some Earlier Papers

Creative Computers Replacing Writers and Composers
And the frightening thing about this is that what might be "cheating" becomes possible with zero chance of being caught for plagiarism of things stories and songs written by Hal.

"30 Clients Using Computer-Generated Stories Instead of Writers," by Jason Boog, Media Bistro, February 17, 2012 ---
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/forbes-among-30-clients-using-computer-generated-stories-instead-of-writers_b47243

Forbes has joined a group of 30 clients using Narrative Science software to write computer-generated stories.

Here’s more about the program, used in one corner of Forbes‘ website: “Narrative Science has developed a technology solution that creates rich narrative content from data. Narratives are seamlessly created from structured data sources and can be fully customized to fit a customer’s voice, style and tone. Stories are created in multiple formats, including long form stories, headlines, Tweets and industry reports with graphical visualizations.”

The New York Times revealed last year that trade publisher Hanley Wood and sports journalism site The Big Ten Network also use the tool. In all, 30 clients use the software–but Narrative Science did not disclose the complete client list.

What do you think? The Narrative Science technology could potentially impact many corners of the writing trade. The company has a long list of stories they can computerize: sports stories, financial reports, real estate analyses, local community content, polling & elections, advertising campaign summaries sales & operations reports and market research.

Here’s an excerpt from a Forbes earnings preview story about Barnes & Noble, written by the computer program:

While company shares have dropped 17.2% over the last three months to close at $13.72 on February 15, 2012, Barnes & Noble (BKS) is hoping it can break the slide with solid third quarter results when it releases its earnings on Tuesday, February 21, 2012.

What to Expect: The Wall Street consensus is $1.01 per share, up 1% from a year ago when Barnes & Noble reported earnings of $1 per share.

The consensus estimate is down from three months ago when it was $1.42, but is unchanged over the past month. Analysts are projecting a loss of $1.09 per share for the fiscal year.

The company originated with two electrical engineering and computer science professors at Northwestern University. Here’s more about the company: “[It began with] a software program that automatically generates sports stories using commonly available information such as box scores and play-by-plays. The program was the result of a collaboration between McCormick and Medill School of Journalism.  To create the software, Hammond and Birnbaum and students working in McCormick’s Intelligent Information Lab created algorithms that use statistics from a game to write text that captures the overall dynamic of the game and highlights the key plays and players. Along with the text is an appropriate headline and a photo of what the program deems as the most important player in the game.”

Many of you probably never even heard of the popular "I've Got a Secret" ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ve_Got_a_Secret

More of you have probably read about artificial intelligence expert Ray Kurzweil (an expert on computer music composition) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

Futurist Ray Kurzweil, 17 Years Old, Appears on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1965) --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/02/futurist_ray_kurzweil_17_years_old_appears_on_ive_got_a_secret_1965.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

"Professor Hopes to Support Free Course With Kickstarter, the ‘Crowd Funding’ Site," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 29, 2012 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professor-hopes-to-support-free-course-with-kickstarter-the-crowd-funding-site/35864?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Free online courses for the masses are all the rage—and many are being run by start-ups hoping to profit by selling related materials and services. Jim Groom thinks that’s too commercial, so he’s raising money for the online course he co-teaches at the University of Mary Washington using Kickstarter, the popular “crowd funding” service.

In a campaign released today, the professor makes his plea in an irreverent video that mixes in clips from a 90s true-crime show, and video interviews with students and professors shot from unusual angles. He explains that last year he ran the course, which is on digital storytelling and is called DS106, using his own equipment. But the class has grown so large that he needs a new server to keep it going, and he estimates that will cost him $2,900.

He’s asking for contributions ranging from $1 to $3,000, and those who give will get what he describes as “DS106 schwag”—a T-shirt, a bumper sticker, or a desk calendar with a different creative assignment for each day. Some of the rewards reflect the quirky nature of the course itself: For $100 you can have one of the course assignments named after you.

The campaign will run for a couple of weeks. If he hasn’t met his goal of $4,200 (a price that figures in the server cost and the price of the schwag), then the project gets nothing and all of those who pledged keep their money. If the target is met, the deal is on. If the goal is exceeded, he says he will use the extra money to add other enhancements to the course.

In an interview this week, Mr. Groom stressed that the course is “not about him,” and he criticized the way some massive online courses rely on what amounts to a celebrity professor to attract students. He used the word “community” frequently to describe the group of professors and students involved in the course.

The idea for the campaign came from Tim Owens, another instructional technologist at Mary Washington. “I’ve wanted to do a Kickstarter for so long, but I’ve never been able to think of what could we do,” he said. When he heard Mr. Groom wondering where they could come up with $2,900, he suggested the crowd-funding site.

Mr. Groom argues that crowd funding could be a model for other free online-education projects. Even some of the largest, such as MIT’s OpenCourseWare effort, have mostly relied on grants for support and have struggled to find a long-term way to stay afloat.

“It’s like a PBS model” of pledge drives, Mr. Groom said.

The Chronicle asked the folks at Kickstarter whether other educational efforts have used the site to raise money. A representative from the company pointed us to these five campaigns, all of which succeeded:

—SmartHistory: Raised $11,513 for a Web site created by two art historians.

—Punk Mathematics: Raised 28,701 for a book of mathematical stories.

—Open Educational Resources for Typography: Raised $13,088 to develop teaching materials for courses on typography.

—Trade School: Raised $9,133 to run a program that turns storefronts into temporary trade schools.

—Brooklyn Brainery: Raised $9,629 to set up a collaborative school whose courses would cost $25 for four weeks.

Bob Jensen's threads on the growth of distance education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DistanceEducation

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

For the past few months we ProfHackers have been running an occasional series about using the command line. I got us started with a couple posts explaining why you might want to use the command line and how to get started using it. Konrad followed with a posts about the uniq command and the sort command for working with text and data files. Amy added a post about how the command line let her hack the NOOK Color, and I wrote about using pdftk to manipulate PDFs.

Taking up the command line is easier if you have a specific problem you’re trying to solve. For me, the problem was that I wanted to do all of my writing in a plain text format, like Markdown or LaTeX. But I need to be able to share my writing in a variety of formats: HTML for the web, PDF for printed documents or academic writing, and occasionally RTF or Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.

The best way I’ve found to move between these formats is Pandoc. Pandoc is a command line tool written by a philosophy professor, John MacFarlane. Its general use is to take a document in one format and convert it to another. You can get an idea of the wide variety of formats Pandoc can translate by looking at an enlargement of the header diagram.

Here’s an example of how this works. Suppose that you have a Markdown document like the one we created for the post on Markdown. (View pandoc-example.markdown on GitHub.) You can convert this to a number of text formats with a simple terminal command:

Markdown to HTML (HTML output on GitHub):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.html

Markdown to LaTeX (LaTeX output on GitHub):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.tex

Markdown to DOCX:

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.docx

Markdown to PDF (download PDF):

pandoc pandoc-example.markdown -o pandoc-example.pdf

That command calls pandoc, tells it which file to convert (pandoc-example.markdown) and tells it which file to export (e.g., pandoc-example.html). Pandoc figures out what types of files these are from the extension, or you can pass it additional arguments. For some of the formats, you can convert the other way. For example, you could convert LaTex to Markdown or to a Word DOCX, or HTML to Markdown or LaTeX. To convert to PDF, though, you’ll need to have LaTeX installed on your system.

Continued in article

Apple’s recent release of free software to build e-textbooks has brought attention to custom publishing of academic materials. But Apple’s software, called iBooks Author, lacks easy tools for multiple authors to collaborate on a joint textbook project. Since most books aren’t written in isolation, two new publishing platforms seek to make that group collaboration easier.

The first, Booktype, is free and open-source. Once the platform is installed on a Web server, teams of authors can work together in their browsers to write sections of books and chat with each other in real time about revisions. Entire chapters can be imported and moved around by dragging and dropping. The finished product can be published in minutes on e-readers and tablets, or exported for on-demand printing. Booktype also comes with community features that let authors create profiles, join groups, and track books through editing.

Inkling Habitat, the other new offering, appears to have even greater ambitions. Where iBooks Author is designed mostly for would-be amateur publishers, Inkling Habitat creates a cloud-based platform for the professional market. Matthew MacInnis, Inkling’s chief executive, said the company’s tool is designed to give the global teams who work on professionally published textbooks a single outlet to publish interactive material for the iPad and the Web. Mr. MacInnis said hundreds of users can access the same textbook content at once, and the software will keep track of each step in the editing process.

Inkling Habitat also automates some of the editing process that is unique to e-textbooks, like checking for broken links between special terms and their definitions in a glossary. Those automatic functions, Mr. MacInnis said, will allow e-textbook publishing to get easier without requiring additional staff. “You can’t build the industry up around digital content if you’re going to throw people at every problem,” he said.

Hi Richard,

Are iBooks superior to ToolBooks that will run on the other 99% of the market?
You don't seem to mention your ToolBooks anymore.
Have you stopped writing ToolBooks?
http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/products/content-creation/toolbook_overview.html

I did not know that iBooks were superior to all eBooks (including ToolBooks) on the market.
Is that what you're trying to tell us?

Does this justify having to pay Apple a huge royalty on every iBook an author sells?

I'm sorry, but I despise eBook vendors that do not support open standards. Apple shot itself in the 1980s with the Mac operating system. Now it's shooting itself in the other foot by trying to be an iBook hardware monopoly. The tech world resists vendors that do not support open standards. Excellent authors trying to make money on iBooks will pay a price!

Windows still has about 92% of the PC Market. Add to this the other alternatives that won't run iBooks like Linux. The last time I looked Kindle still had the overwhelming share of the eBook reader market. Seems like an aspiring author should consider market share.

Personally, at think at this stage of technology, a textbook author should still focus on eBook and hardcopy open standard alternatives and provide multimedia supplements. Eventually, hard copy books will have something like a USB port to a multimedia chip embedded in the binding.

Respectfully,
Bob Jensen

Bob Jensen's threads on eBooks are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Ebooks.htm

"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

"Building Programming Tutorials with Codecademy," by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 8, 2012 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/building-programming-tutorials-with-codecademy/38378?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

For those learning to code this year, either for professional reasons or to expand personal horizons, Codecademy has been a popular tool. Jason has written about Codecademy as a platform for code-literacy, and I discussed the Codeyear “new year’s resolution” initiative the site launched in January. Now the platform has expanded even further with the addition of tools that allow any user to create new courses and projects in JavaScript, Python and Ruby.

Codecademy may not be a substitute for more traditional forms of programming instruction, but this new platform does offer possibilities for shaping hybrid learning or building coding familiarity into a course dedicated to another topic, as customized tutorials could supplement face to face instruction. Julie Meloni makes some great points about the pedagogical problems of Codecademy and the question of results: “…it is not teaching you how to code. It is teaching you how to call-and-response, and is not particularly helpful in explaining why you’re responding, why they’re calling, or—most importantly—how to become a composer.” I share a number of these concerns, particularly when Codecademy is the only source of knowledge–and I hope that this new tool affords Codecademy the opportunity to crowdsource new approaches to pedagogy.

There are some great examples of instructional programming tools available for free on the web, such as Scratch, MIT’s young-learner friendly code “building blocks.” (Scratch is just one kid-targeted programming tool: there are other great suggestions at Digital Humanities Q&A.) But these are often starter languages that don’t directly apply to web development or other applications, and thus require additional investment before literacy in more widely-used languages is achieved.

The choice of languages in Codecademy’s toolset focuses on utilitarian scripting languages with a range of potential applications. As Ryan Cordell noted in Ruby for Humanists, Ruby is a great starting language and its inclusion is particularly promising. As Ryan mentioned, there’s already a site for learning programming basics through Ruby tutorials: Hackety Hack. But Codecademy moves a step further with an easy system for building and sharing interactive tutorials.

Continued in article

4Teachers: Teach with Technology --- http://www.4teachers.org/

"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

"What Google+ (Google Plus) Should Have Been: Bing's Linked Pages," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, February 28, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_google_should_have_been_bings_linked_pages.php

Here's one we missed. Bing launched Bing+ last week, it just skipped all the unnecessary stuff. (It's not really called Bing+.) There's a new feature called Linked Pages that allows Bing users (U.S. only, for now) to connect their various websites and profiles to their Bing identities, using Facebook for authentication. You can also link your Facebook friends to their pages.

Thanks to its relationship with Facebook, Microsoft has the advantage of not needing to build its own identity provider or social network. Everyone's already on Facebook. To build good results for people, Bing will use the same technique Facebook Groups use: get friends to draw their own graph. Just like with Facebook Groups, if a friend connects you to something you don't want, you can remove it permanently. We all thought that feature would suck for Groups, but it worked just fine. Facebook Groups build themselves, and Bing can build identities the same way.

Social Network Overkill

The interesting thing is, this is exactly what Google+ is for, but the product isn't being pitched that way. Google's social layer is all about establishing the Google-presence for people and brands, so they can appear across Google-land, especially in Search, plus Your World. But Google+ is spun as a place for "sharing." It has all these pieces of a social network, but people aren't using them.

It's a shame, because some of these features are absolutely wonderful. What could be more social than Hangouts? Google+ is full of great ideas, but it is struggling to bring them together. The user experience isn't there. And that's all because Google felt the need to build a full-blown social network itself in order to act as an identity service.

Couldn't Hangouts have just been a Gmail feature?

Social Search Is All We Needed

There's no need for a new social network, but there is a reason to put personal identities in search. Searching for people has always been a terrible experience. It's nearly impossible to find the person you're looking for, unless they're famous. Search engines need an identity layer.

Bing is just being honest about that. If you want to control the way you appear in search, you can connect the sites and pages that matter to you via Facebook. Your friends can do it, too. When you use Bing to search for people, now you'll be able to find the content that's related to them. That's what Search, plus Your World does for Google, but Bing does it without requiring this new, extra place to waste time online.

Google could have done that. The Google+ profile works exactly the way Bing's Linked Pages does, allowing users to link their outside sites and pages to themselves. It could have just made a Facebook app, and boom, there are your social search results. But that's not how the business works. Google and Facebook can't cooperate. They have to compete for eyeballs around social content, and Facebook is winning.

Jensen Comment
I've previously written about why I think Bing Maps is superior to Google Maps. Sometimes (horrors) Microsoft really does do a better job when it comes late onto the scene ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Travel

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.

"Skitch Finds New Life At Evernote With iPhone Version," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, September 19, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/skitch-finds-new-life-at-evernote-with-iphone-version.php

"6 Awesome Evernote Apps That We Guarantee You've Never Seen," by Jon Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, July 27, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/evernote-announces-6-awesome-apps-as-2012-devcup-finalists.php

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools 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:

AIS Cost Intermediate 1 and 2 Tax Auditing Advanced GNP or NFP Any other advanced accounting, like advanced cost.

Thank you,

XXXXX

March 11, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Firstly, I would begin with the asynchronous way basic accounting is taught at BYU almost entirely with variable-speed videos even to resident students living on campus ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo
BYU sells these video CDs to the public at a reasonable price.

Next I would enter a number of search terms into YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/
Examples include:
Accounting Information Systems
Accounting Ethics
Intermediate accounting
Advanced accounting
Governmental accounting
Hedge accounting
Cost Accounting
Managerial Accounting
Fair Value Accounting
Auditing
SAP or ERP
XBRL

"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.

Camtasia --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camtasia
Camtasia can be used by students as well as instructors.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Reader-Poll-Tech-Tool-Youre/26127/

You can search video and start the video when a particular word crops up
YouTube's Interactive Transcripts --- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/youtubes-interactive-transcripts.html

YouTube added a cool feature for videos with closed captions: you can now click on the "transcript" button to expand the entire listing. If you click on a line, YouTube will show the excerpt from the video corresponding to the text. If you use your browser's find feature, you can even search inside the video. Here's an an example of video that includes a transcript.

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

I have a few accounting theory Camtasia videos at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/
Links to my other online materials (including PowerPoint presentations) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm

My PowerPoint presentations and Excel workbooks are linked at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/Calgary/CD/

I suggest you contact my good friend Amy Dunbar about how she uses Camtasia videos in her online tax courses ---
Amy.Dunbar@business.uconn.edu

In the future U.S. accounting programs will be building in more and more IFRS. Here there’s a heck of a lot of free educational material available ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#IFRSlearning
There are some good cases available, especially from the Big Four.

There is also a lot of free XBRL material, including some good videos --- http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
Click on “Education and Training”

The AICPA has a library of both fee and free videos --- http://www.aicpa.org/
Enter the search term “video”

Other organizations have some deals on videos for courses, including the IIA, Certified Fraud Examiners, etc.

There’s a ton of free material on ethics and fraud.

Pete Wilson provides some great videos on how to make accounting judgments ---
http://www.navigatingaccounting.com/

The OKI --- http://www.okiproject.org/view/html/site/oki
MIT’s Open Courseware Links --- http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
Click on the Sloan School for accounting, finance, and other business open courseware materials

MIT’s Video Lecture Browser (better for the sciences than business) --- http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/

"MIT's Management School Shares Teaching Materials (Cases) Online," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, 2009 ---
Click Here

Though some business schools charge for the “case studies” they develop as teaching aids, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced today that it is making a set of teaching materials available free online.

MIT’s Sloan School of Management has unveiled a set of case studies, videos, interactive teaching tools, and teacher’s notes on a new Web site called MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources --- https://mitsloan.mit.edu/MSTIR/IndustryEvolution/Pages/default.aspx

The announcement comes eight years after MIT created its OpenCourseWare project, which makes instructional materials for courses available online for free.

Other open sharing materials provided by prestigious universities can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Oh my Gosh!

I forgot to mention the AAA Commons where there’s now a great deal of available, including syllabi, tutorials, course materials, videos, and textbook recommendations --- http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home

Soon many of the AAA Commons pages will be available to the world in general and not just AAA members. Among other things this makes the resources available to all of your students

Bob Jensen

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

Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

How to Create 3-D Popup Books

May 21, 2010 message from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

Fun for the weekend? I just came across an interesting site that enables creations of short (up to 10 pages currently) pop-up books. Whether or not this is useful for delivering basic concepts to our students is debatable but is certainly another technique to try. It also has the added fun of being an augmented reality book, so you can use the website to read your 3-D pop book as if its resting on your hand - neat in a very geeky way, but pedagogically I'm not so sure.

The website is at: http://alpha.zooburst.com/index.php and is currently in Alpha stage testing, I wrote up a blog article on it replete with pictures, a video and of course an accounting pop-up book:

http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2010/05/21/zooburst-3d-augmented-reality-story-telling/

Let me know what you think,

Dr. Steven Hornik
University of Central Florida
Dixon School of Accounting
407-823-5739
Second Life: Robins Hermano
Twitter: shornik
http://mydebitcredit.com
yahoo ID: shornik

Jensen Comment
Steve Hornik is a pioneer in the use of Second Life in his accounting courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

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

Digital Animators --- http://animators.digitalmedianet.com/

"Replay Telecorder for Skype: Unique way to bring guest speakers to class," by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside of the Box Blog, May 21, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/replay-telecorder-for-skype-unique-way-to-bring-guest-speakers-to-class/

Watch the Video showing how easy it works
I use Skype with all of my classes (i.e., face-2-face, blended, and online). At the beginning of each term, I ask students to set up a Skype account and add me to their contacts list. I then add them to my Skype contacts list. Using Skype changes the nature of how I connect with students. We audio and video conference. Skype messaging archives all messages received and sent throughout a course. I subscribe to Skype Voicemail which allows me to send voicemail message to students. Likewise, students can send me a voicemail message. Skype recently added a new screen sharing featuring, which works great for one-on-one tutoring sessions. All of these Skype features (and more) changes the nature of instructor-student interaction.

Now, Applian Technologies has created a software tool that takes Skype to a whole new level. Replay Telecorder for Skype makes it possible to record Skype audio and video calls. This provides a unique way to bring “guest speakers” to the teaching-learning experience, especially to the blended and online learning environment. Click the picture below to view a short You Tube recording that demonstrates how to record a Skype call that displays in a side-by-side format. The presentation is a little silly, but illustrates what you can do with the program.

Continued in article

From the Scout Report on March 12, 2010

WinUtilities Free Edition 9.44 --- http://www.ylcomputing.com/content/view/327/135/

Installing and uninstalling various programs can leave behind annoying detritus on a computer, and WinUtilities can help out with this predicament. The application brings together a number of tools designed to free up disk space and improve overall system performance. The application includes a "One-Click Maintenance" feature, and visitors can also use the application to shred files, locate duplicate files, and schedule various maintenance tasks. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2003 and newer.

Courseware 1.1.2 --- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/scholarpress-courseware/

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University is always working on new projects, and their Courseware plug-in for Word Press is worth a look. Visitors can use this latest version of Courseware to publish class schedules, assignments, and bibliographies. Courseware is primarily intended for use by the higher education community, but it could easily be used in high school classrooms or other collaborative environments. This version is compatible with all operating systems, including Linux.

February 23, 2010 message from Ramsey, Donald [dramsey@UDC.EDU]

JAXWORKS.COM FREE EXCEL TEMPLATES

INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACCESSING AND RUNNING

This may vary a bit depending on what version of Excel you have.

You will need to enable macros in your Excel software.

1. Click on the Office button

2. Click on Excel Options at the bottom of the screen

3. Click on Add-ins

4. Manage: Excel Add-ins (should be in view); GO

5. Check Analysis Tool Pak; Check Analysis Tool Pak VBA

6. You might want to also check Solver in case you need it some day

7. Click OK

====================================

8. Go to www.Jaxworks.com

9. On the menu, pick DOWNLOADS.

10. Scroll down to NeoCalc™ Comprehensive Break-Even Analysis

11. Click on Download

12. Choose Save if you wish.

13. You might also want to try their Dynamic Charting download (just above the Neo-Calc).

Best,
Don

Socratic Method According to Hoyle (proudly one of our best and open sharing accounting teachers)

"An Epiphany," by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Financial Accounting Blog, February 10, 2010 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2010/02/epiphany.html

By now, everyone who reads this blog probably understands that I teach by means of the Socratic Method. I give a list of 3-8 questions one day which serve as “conversation starters” for the next class. In addition, our brand new Financial Accounting textbook (published by FlatWorldKnowledge) is written entirely in a Socratic Method fashion. A question is posed followed by an answer followed by the next logical question and so on.

When this process works perfectly, it is because of the questions. You must ask the proper question in order to create an environment for discovery. How do you develop those questions? Don’t the questions have to be something more than “when did Columbus discover America?” or “who won the Civil War?”

I had never thought much about the creation of questions until a few years ago. Then, I had an epiphany. I was reading the wonderful book “What the Best College Teachers Do” by Dr. Ken Bain. Dr. Bain and his team selected a group of outstanding college teachers from around the country and shadowed them for a period of time to discover their secrets. I was reading along and came to page 40 where I found this marvelous passage: “One professor explained it this way: ‘It’s sort of Socratic . . . You begin with a puzzle—you get somebody puzzled, and tied in knots, and mixed up.’ Those puzzles and knots generate questions for students, he went on to say, and then you begin to help them untie the knots.”

You get somebody puzzled, and tied in knots, and those puzzles and knots generate questions for students and then you begin to help them untie the knots.

I cannot think of a better description of what I think a teacher should strive to do. Puzzle students, tie their thinking into knots, and then help them untie the knots.

College teachers often view themselves as conveyors of knowledge/information. If that is the case, then a pure lecture works fine. You convey knowledge; students try to catch it as it flies by. However, if you want understanding, curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm, you have to go beyond that. And, I think the “secret” to working on a higher level is in the idea of puzzling the students, tying their thinking into knots, and then helping them to solve those puzzles.

Let me give you an example. Next week, in my Financial Accounting class, I will start talking about accounts receivable. As far as I can tell, most accounting teachers tell their students to read the chapter and assign one or more problems to work. The students then search (often desperately) through the chapter for a reasonable facsimile and try to duplicate that process to solve the homework assignment. In class, the problem is worked and the students make corrections. How do you rate the learning that occurs? Is it much different than learning to change the oil in your car? Ask yourself: does that process generate understanding, curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm?

Here’s how I might go about starting a discussion about reporting accounts receivable. (My quick answers are included in parenthesis. I obviously don’t give the answers to the students.)

1 – Your company sells 1,000 toasters near the end of December 2009, for $60 each. All $60,000 of these sales are made on account and collection will be in three or four months. A balance sheet is produced on December 31, 2009. What do outside decision makes really want to know about those accounts receivable? (The amount of cash the company will collect.) 2 – What is the problem with what the decision makers want to know in the above question? (Uncertainty—the accountant can only guess at the amount of cash that will be collected.) 3 – Accountants are known for being obsessively accurate. Will the reported number be accurate? (It is only an estimate; no one expects an estimate to be accurate. Things like exactness fly out the window when you start making guesses.) 4 – If the number is not accurate, what is it? (A fair representation according to US GAAP. In other words, the reporting follows the rules.) 5 – If there are $60,000 in accounts receivable, how can you report any other number on the balance sheet? Doesn’t it have to be $60,000? (The company sets up an allowance account to reduce the asset by the amount that is anticipated as being uncollectible.) 6 – Assume you know that $2,000 of the $60,000 will prove to be uncollectible in 2010. Two customers will die, leave town, go bankrupt, or the like. That is an expense for the company. Should the $2,000 expense be recognized in 2009 or 2010? (In 2009. Expenses are recognized according to the matching principle. Revenues from the sale of toasters are recognized in 2009 so any related expenses [such as the bad debts] must also be recognized in 2009.

Okay, I could go on and on but you probably get the idea. Here is my challenge to you on a very cold and snowy Wednesday: are you puzzling your students enough and tying their thinking into knots? Are you helping them solve those puzzles and untie those knots? If not, you might want to consider that strategy as a way to increase their understanding, curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm.

Students warn not to take Joe Hoyle's accounting classes "for fun"
RateMyProfessor --- http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=380444

Student 1
I am confident that taking this class is the most valuable academic experience I will ever have. By far the best professor at Richmond. Go see him after class, become his friend. Try not to get frustrated, you may study 15 hours for a test and get a C. Attendance policy: If you don't go, you're screwed.

Student 2
As everyone has said, Great Professor and forces you to learn the material. I worked by far the hardest for this guy but also learned the most. He loves to send out emails about life lessons but some are interesting. Be ready for LOTS of work but lots of learning too.

Student 3
Professor Hoyle is indeed the best professor in the business school. His tests are challenging but very fair. If you have any interest in accounting or business in general, then you must take this class. The curve is extremely helpful so making an A is reasonable while getting below a C is almost impossible.

Student 4
Attendance is not mandatory, but this class is one that will kill you if you don't come to it. It is an extremely difficult course, but interesting and worth the time. Hoyle is one of those profs you either love or hate, and is also one of those profs that you will remember your entire life.

Joe's free basic accounting textbook (updated)

Free accounting textbook from a generous accounting professor ---
http://www.ibtimes.com/prnews/20081218/ny-flat-world-knowldg.htm
Also see http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/Joe-Hoyle-Podcast

--Each chapter opens with a video to explain the importance of the material and get the student interested in reading the chapter before they even start.

--The material (all 17 chapters) is written in a question and answer (Socratic) format to engage and guide the students through each area. The subjects are broken down into a manageable and logical size. Faculty often complain that students do not read the textbooks. I think this format can change that trend.

--Embedded multiple-choice questions are included on virtually every page to provide immediate feedback for the students. CJ and I wrote the multiple choice questions ourselves as we wrote the manuscript to ensure that they would tie together logically.

--Each chapter ends with a review video where we challenge the students to pick the five most important areas from the chapter. I firmly believe that students need to learn to evaluate what they are reading. We then provide our own “Top Five” list so that they can see where we agree and where we disagree.

Yes, professors do get hard copy versions.

Joe is also behind the free CPA Review course that was once commercial but then became a freebie to the world.
Free CPA Review Course --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/

Gadgets For People Who Roam the Hard Copy Stacks Rather Than Google

These gadgets might also be useful for detail tests on audits

"Pint-Size Peripherals Scan or Print at a Price," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2010 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704820904575055321581158304.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_RIGHTTopCarousel

It's often said that less is more. If only this were true for computer devices like printers and scanners, which take up a lot of desktop real estate. The reality is that small, stylish, portable versions of these gadgets are often pricey and not as functional.

This week, I reviewed two products that unfortunately live up to that reality: a portable printer and mini scanner that put a premium on good looks at $300 each. I've been using Fujitsu's newest $295 mini scanner, the ScanSnap S1300 (fujitsu.com), and PlanOn System Solutions Inc.'s tiny $300 PrintStik PS905ME (http://3.ly/6QVS). There are several good printers, scanners or all-in-ones that cost significantly less or offer more functionality than these devices.

But boy, do these gadgets look good. The Fujitsu ScanSnap collapses down to a small, rectangular box with mirrored buttons. The PlanOn PrintStik resembles a box of aluminum foil in the kitchen drawer—except more compact.

Both devices are small and lightweight enough to fit in a bag or briefcase, if necessary. Either one of these could be ported around without a problem: The PrintStik weighs 1.5 pounds and the ScanSnap weighs twice as much at 3.08 pounds. Both fit well in a tiny work space or on the desktops of people like me, who don't print or scan much and don't want a device taking up a lot of space.

As is usually the case with smaller devices that lack display screens and extra buttons, one hopes they come with straightforward software or simply plug in and play. The Fujitsu ScanSnap meets that requirement with software that installs on Macs or PCs and can be used without reading complicated instructions.

The PlanOn PrintStik uses thermal printing to produce images and characters on scrolls of paper. The PlanOn PrintStik worked adequately as a basic black-and-white printer for Windows PCs (it isn't Mac compatible), but fell short as a wireless printer for smart phones. The PrintStik is meant to receive and print documents sent to it via Bluetooth from BlackBerrys, but I found the BlackBerry program to be clumsy and in the end, it didn't even work despite at least two dozen attempts. PlanOn's tech support said they thought my PrintStik's Bluetooth could be faulty, but couldn't send me a new device in time for this column.

These two devices offer some interesting design elements. The PlanOn PrintStik PS905ME uses thermal printing—an old technology that has been around for decades—rather than ink cartridges, to produce images and characters by applying heat at tiny points.

The PrintStik's thermal printing only works with special scrolls of thin, slippery paper. It comes in packs of six rolls for $23; one roll is about 23 feet long and prints roughly 30 sheets of letter-size paper. You can opt to print only as much as a document requires to save paper. But a long document prints out in one continuous scroll rather than separate pages.

The PrintStik has a rechargeable battery that lasts long enough to print about 30 pages; a wall charger is also included. It can churn out up to three pages per minute. I can imagine tossing this printer into my suitcase for business trips; it would also come in handy for printing boarding passes for use at the airport, among other things.

Documents that are supposed to be printable from the BlackBerry with a remote-printing app include Web pages, attachments including PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, JPEGs, and PowerPoint presentations. PlanOn representatives say an app will be available for Apple's iPhone and Google's Android phones in about four or five months; they also are working on an iPad application. Though the PrintStik's remote-printing app for the BlackBerry is currently free, the company intends to begin charging $30 annually for its remote-printing service this summer.

Fujitsu's ScanSnap S1300 can suck in 10 pages at once, and has two cameras that can scan the front and back of printouts. This process can scan as many as eight dual-sided pages a minute. Item sizes range from 2x2-inch cards to legal documents.

The ScanSnap comes with a wall charger but also runs without being plugged into the wall: It uses a USB cord for charging from a PC in addition to the USB cord that transfers data between the scanner and computer.

Seconds after I scanned documents into the ScanSnap, colorful icons appeared on my computer screen. Choosing one of these icons let me send the documents to one of the following: email, Word, a printer, Excel, iPhoto or Cardiris—a program that exports contact information from scanned business cards into Address Book or Entourage; CardMinder on Windows exports contact information to Outlook and other programs.

If you want to scan old or precious documents, you may not like using the ScanSnap's sucking method for scanning, in case a page gets stuck or damaged. For sensitive objects or page scanning, the best bet is to use a flatbed scanner or all-in-one (that prints, scans, and faxes) with a lift-up lid that scans items on a flat surface.

Though the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 and PlanOn PrintStik PS905ME aren't the least expensive or the most functional devices of their kind, they're easy to move around and take up minimal amounts of space. For some people, that may be well worth the higher cost.

—Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Question
What hand-held device can photograph close up and read aloud from books, price labels, receipts, and newspapers?

Hint:
This device has far more uses beyond being a helper for sight impaired people.
For one thing, auditors might make use of this when detail testing.

Intel Reader --- http://www.intel.com/healthcare/reader/index.htm

The Intel Reader, powered by an Atom processor, is a handheld device with a five-megapixel camera that can read aloud any printed text it is pointed at, including product labels, receipts, and pages from books and newspapers. Previously, visually impaired or dyslexic people required a desktop scanner connected to a computer to convert print into speech.
"Scan and Listen," MIT's Technology Review, December 17, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/24198/?a=f

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm#Technology

Education Technology Award Winners

"Teaching Toolbox: 57 Ways to Upgrade Education," by Tanya Roscorla, Converge Magazine, January 4, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/The-2009-Edublog-Awards.html?elq=4768d02be55741bb9e3e0bc860e41996

This year, spruce up your teaching toolbox with some of the top education blogs, tweets, wikis and more, as voted on by educators in the Edublog Awards.

On these sites, you'll be able to connect with other educators, see what's going on in classrooms around the world and find out what technology tools you can use in your classroom.

Best individual blog

Winner: Free Technology for Teachers
Google certified teacher Richard Byrne reviews free technology resources and shows educators how they can integrate those resources into their teaching. He also won the best resource sharing blog award.

First Runner Up: Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch
Technology administrator Kathy Schrock covers ed tech tools, techniques and tricks of the trade.

Second Runner Up: Larry Ferlazzo's Websites Of The Day For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL
Larry Ferlazzo teaches English Language Learners and native English speakers in Sacramento, Calif.. He provides links to sites that help educators teach English to non-native speakers. He also won best resource sharing blog award.

Best individual tweeter

Winner: web20classroom
From Winston-Salem, N.C., technology educator Steven W. Anderson interacts with other educators by sharing links to online resources and participating in conversations about real issues in education.

First Runner Up: russeltarr
Russel Tarr teaches history in Toulouse, France.

Second Runner Up: courosa
Alec Couros teaches educational technology and media in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Best group blog

Winner: MacMillian Dictionary Blog
As the English language constantly changes, five authors take the pulse of the living language and share how it is used around the world.

First Runner Up: I.N.K.: Interesting Nonfiction for Kids
Authors and illustrators give readers a behind-the-scenes look at how they research, write and integrate art into their books.

Second Runner Up: SCC English
The English Department of St. Columba's College in Whitechurch, Dublin 16, Ireland posts news, poems, drama, essays, podcasts, book recommendations and more.

Best new blog

Winner: Kirsten Winkler
Kirsten Winkler started blogging about online education in January and takes readers on a quest to find better education.

First Runner Up: Look At My Happy Rainbow
A male kindergarten teacher shares stories from his classroom in Maine. As for the blog title, one of his students shouted, "Look at my happy rainbow!" one day after he drew a rainbow with four or five crayons in one hand.

Second Runner Up: Teach Paperless
Shelly Blake-Plock shows educators how to teach with interactive technology and provide real-world learning opportunities for their students.

Best class blog

Winner: Billings Middle School Tech Class Blog
From Seattle, Technology Integration Coordinator Jac de Haan shines a spotlight on students' adventures with digital tools and discussions about the social, political, environmental and moral impacts of technology.

First Runner Up: Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog
Third graders from Linda Yollis' class learn and share what they're learning on their blog.

Second Runner Up: English With Rosa
Rosa Fernández Sánchez helps her students from Coruña, Galicia, Spain, practice English.

Best student blog

Winner: Civil War Sallie
A Boyd's Bear named Sallie Ann travels to classrooms, museums and battlefields to learn about the United States Civil War, and then shares what she learns on her blog. The person who created Sallie Ann is a student from St. Patrick School in Carlisle, Pa.

First Runner Up: Universo
Eighteen-year-old Néstor Aluna Maceda Pacheco writes about botany from Rio Blanco, Veracruz, México.

Second Runner Up: Moo
A college student majoring in photography shares photos and commentary. She also happens to be the daughter of The Scholastic Scribe, which earned first runner up in the best teacher blog category.

Best resource sharing blog

Winner: Free Technology for Teachers
Voted the best resource sharing blog for the second straight year. Google certified teacher Richard Byrne reviews free technology resources and shows educators how they can integrate those resources into their teaching. He also won the best individual blog award.

First Runner Up: Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day
Larry Ferlazzo teaches English Language Learners and native English speakers in Sacramento, Calif.. He provides links to sites that help educators teach English to non-native speakers.

Second Runner Up: Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day
Social learning consultant Jane Hart features an ed tech tool each day.

Most influential blog post

Winner: "Heads in the Cloud" from Anseo.net
This post shows how one school uses cloud computing through Google Apps as a communication tool for the staff and board of management.

Joint First Runners Up:
"This, This, That" from Dear Kaia and Skyelar
Three-year-old Kaia explored the desert near her home in Qatar, took photos of what she saw and created a photo essay that she posted on her blog. She wrote the post with her dad, teacher Jabiz Raisdana, who then sent it out to his Twitter network.

The link made its way into the Twitter stream of technology teacher William Chamberlain, who asked the eighth grade students in his class to comment on the blog post.

The story doesn't end there. The eigth-graders had some questions about Kaia and her dad's life in Doha, Qatar, so Raisdana skyped into their class. The students also created video comments that they sent to Kaia (read the complete story on Raisdana's blog).

On top of that, professor John Strange from the University of South Alabama saw the post and passed it on to the students in his educational media class. They commented on Kaia's photo essay as well and wrote more than 50 blog posts in response to the photo essay (read this part of the story in Raisdana's words).

"Tech addiction 'harms learning' ... really??? $24.99 and I am no wiser" from Wishful Thinking in Medical Education
After seeing tweets about a BBC News Education story in her Twitter stream, general practitioner and clinical lecturer Ann Marie Cunningham checked out the research that prompted the above headline.

She had to pay to find out what was in the report "Techno Addicts: Young Person Addiction to Technology, and what she found was 'poor research.' She gives her analysis in this blog post.

Jensen Comment
My threads on educator use of Twitter are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet-based discussion

Winner: #edchat
Through Twitter, educators discuss real education issues on Tuesdays at noon EST and 7 p.m. EST using the hashtag "edchat."

First Runner Up: Blogworthy Tweets
English teacher Claudia Ceraso from Buenos Aires, Argentina, publishes some of her tweets on the blog ELT notes.

Second Runner Up: #teachertuesday
Every Tuesday on Twitter, educators and others recommend teachers to follow through the hashtag #teachertuesday.

Best teacher blog

Winner: Two Writing Teachers
Ruth Ayres and Stacey Shubitz share their tools, ideas and experiences with educators who teach kids how to write.

First Runner Up: The Scholastic Scribe
A high school journalism teacher writes about life inside and outside of her District of Columbia classroom. She is the mother of the college student behind Moo, who earned first runner up in the best student blog category.

Second Runner Up: Cool Cat Teacher
Vicki A. Davis from Camilla, Georgia, shares her experiences with technology as well as how students are collaborating globally through activities including the Flat Classroom Project.

Best librarian / library blog

Winner: Never Ending Search
Joyce Valenza writes about technology, research, search engines and more from Springfield Township High School in Oreland, Pa. Check out the school's cool virtual library.

First Runner Up: Bright Ideas
The School Library Association of Victoria run this blog, where school library staff can share how they use the latest research tools in their libraries.

Second Runner Up: Library Media Tech Musings
Gwyneth A. Jones passes on education links and resources, among other things, with a sprinkle of snark, as she puts it.

Best educational tech support blog

Winner: iLearn Technology
Technology teacher Kelly Tenkely wants to help teachers "fall in love with technology the way that their students have," and she does that by giving them ideas for how to integrate new technology into their classrooms.

First Runner Up: Langwitches
This blog follows Silvia Tolisano as she discovers the magic of learning on her journey as a technology integration facilitator.

Second Runner Up: Life Feast
Ana Maria Menezes shares what she's learning about using Internet tools to enhance her classes and change up the daily routine for her EFL students in Brazil.

Best elearning / corporate education blog

Winner: MPB Reflections — 21st Century Teaching and Learning
From Teaching Without Walls, co-owner and educational consultant Michelle Pacansky-Brock posts her thoughts about changes in higher education, with an emphasis on online learning.

First Runner Up: Angela Maiers
After a 20-year career in education, Angela Maiers became an independent consultant who focuses on literacy education, and through her blog, she encourages teachers to be great learners.

Second Runner Up: e-learning, conocimiento en red y web colectiva
This blog covers e-learning, network knowledge and the collective Web.

Best educational use of audio

Winner: Xyleme Voices Podcasts
A podcast library on the evolution of training, featuring interviews with top industry analysts, consultants and practitioners in the field of learning.

First Runner Up: Musical Blogies
Ignacio Valdés posts audio and video of his students, who play music from a secondary education institution in the Spanish principality of Asturia.

Second Runner Up: My Audio School
Children can download more than 150 classic books and listen to more than 200 radio and television broadcasts on My Audio School. While this Web site was originally designed to help dyslexic students, it can be used for any students.

Best educational use of video / visual

Winner: Bitácora de Aníbal de la Torre
Aníbal de la Torre compiles short educational videos on his blog from Palma del Rio, Cordoba, Spain.

First Runner Up: The Longfellow Ten
Middle school students create and share stop-motion films that depict academic terms and concepts. They're definitely not boring.

Second Runner Up: Inanimate Alice
Through text, sound, images and games, writer Kate Pullinger and digital artist Chris Joseph tell the story of a girl named Alice and her imaginary digital friend, Brad. Pullinger teaches creative writing and new media for De Montfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom.

Best educational wiki

Winner: Greetings From The World
Teachers and students tell others about their countries by sharing glogs on this wiki.

First Runner Up: Soar 2 New Heights
A fourth-grade class shares books and themes that they enjoy.

Second Runner Up: HUMS3001: Censorship and Responsibility
From the University of South Wales, the students in Ben Miller's class on censorship and responsibility work together to build the pages in this wikispace.

Best educational use of a social networking service

Winner: English Companion Ning
English teachers help each other on this network, which high school English teacher and author Jim Burke created.

First Runner Up: EFL Classroom 2.0
This Ning provides a space for English language teachers and students to ask questions, share answers and find resources to help them learn.

Second Runner Up: RSC Access and Inclusion Ning
The Regional Support Centre for North and East Scotland allows educators to discuss, share and join with other colleagues as they work with learners who need additional support in higher education.

Jensen Comment
My threads on educator social networking are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

Best educational use of a virtual world

Winner: Virtual Graduation at the University of Edinburgh
While some education students graduated at McEwan Hall in November, other students graduated online in Second Life. Those students completed their Master of Science in E-learning, which is a distance learning program.

First Runner Up: Virtual Round Table Conference
This Ning is dedicated to a virtual conference on language learning with technology that LANCELOT School coordinated.

Joint Second Runners Up:
ISTE's Second Life Island
Second Life Education New Zealand

Jensen Comment
My threads on Second Looks and virtual learning are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Lifetime achievement

Winner: Karl Fisch
Karl Fisch has been teaching for 21 years and is currently director of technology at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo. He was previously a middle and high school math teacher.

First Runner Up: Will Richardson
Will Richardson is the "learner in chief" at Connective Learning and author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.

Second Runner Up: Larry Ferlazzo
Larry Ferlazzo teaches English Language Learners and native English speakers in Sacramento, Calif. On his blog, he provides links to sites that help educators teach English to non-native speakers.

For more ways to learn online, check out these resources:

Educators Click with Social Networking

Wiki Shines Spotlight on Top Education Blogs

Bob Jensen's threads on educator blogs, social networks, and tweets are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

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

Cloud Computing --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

"How Cloud Computing Can Transform Business," by Bernard Golden, Harvard Business Review Blog, June 4, 2010 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/06/business_agility_how_cloud_com.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE

You're in a meeting. You and your team identify a great new business opportunity. If you can launch in 60 days, a rich new market segment will be open for your product or service. The action plan is developed. Everything's a go.
And then you come down to earth. You need new computer equipment, which takes weeks, or months, to install. You also need new software, which adds more weeks or months. There's no way to meet the timeframe required by the market opening. You are stymied by your organization's lack of IT agility.

Or, you could have the experience the New York Times had when it needed to convert a large number of digital files to a format suitable to serve up over the web. After the inevitable "it will take a lot of time and money to do this project," one of their engineers went to the Amazon Web Services cloud, created 20 compute instances (essentially, virtual servers), uploaded the files, and converted them all over the course of one weekend.

Total cost? $240.
This example provides a sense of why cloud computing is transforming the face of IT, with the potential to deliver real business value. The rapid availability of compute resources in a cloud computing environment enables business agility — the dexterity for businesses to quickly respond to changing business conditions with IT-enabled offerings.

Notwithstanding the fact that IT seems to always have the latest, greatest thing on its mind, cloud computing has the entire IT industry excited, with companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and others investing billions of dollars in this new form of computing. And in terms of IT users, Gartner recently named cloud computing as the second most important technology focus area for 2010.

But what is cloud computing exactly? Why is it different than what went before? And why should you care? While there are many definitions of cloud computing, I look to the definition of cloud computing from the National Institute of Standards and Testing (NIST), part of the US Department of Commerce. In its cloud computing definition, NIST identifies five characteristics of cloud computing, which include:

on-demand self service, which allows business units to get the computing resources they need without having to go through IT for equipment .

broad network access, which enables applications to be built in ways that align with how businesses operate today - mobile, multi-device, etc.

resource pooling, which allows for pooling of computing resources are to serve multiple consumers

rapid elasticity, which allow for quick scalability or downsizing of resources depending on demand

and measured service, which means that business units only pay for the compute resources they use. Translation: IT costs match business success.

To offer a concrete example of how cloud computing agility enables organizations to respond to business opportunity, let me share the experience of one of our clients, the Silicon Valley Education Foundation. Its Lessonopoly application allows 13,000 teachers throughout Silicon Valley to collaborate on lesson plans. NBC approached SVEF just before this year's Winter Olympics with science-focused lesson plans centered around the science behind the experience of Olympic athletes (e.g., the loads placed on a skier's legs as she swerves around a slalom gate).
One concern SVEF had was whether or not Lessonopoly could handle the likely application load increase. There were only a few days before the start of the Olympics, which would initiate heavy use of these lesson plans. The group had migrated the application to Amazon Web Services a few months earlier, and they were able to quickly shut down the small machine Lessonopoly was running on and bring it back up on a larger instance with three times the computing capacity of the original.

It's a cliché to say that business is changing at an ever-increasing pace, but one of the facts about clichés is they often contain truth. The deliberate pace of traditional IT is just not suited for today's hectic business environment. Cloud computing's agility is a much better match for constantly mutating business conditions. To evaluate whether your business opportunities could be well-served by leveraging the agility of cloud computing, download the HyperStratus Cloud Computing Agility Checklist, which outlines ten conditions that indicate a business case for taking advantage of the agility of cloud computing.

Bernard Golden is CEO of HyperStratus, a Silicon Valley-based cloud computing consultancy that works with clients in the US and throughout the world. Contact him at bernard.golden@hyperstratus.com

Winner: "Heads in the Cloud" from Anseo.net
This post shows how one school uses cloud computing through Google Apps as a communication tool for the staff and board of management.

"Thinking About Teaching," by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Financial Accounting Blog, February 28, 2010 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2010/02/thinking-about-teaching.html

You may have seen the video below (it is four minutes long). It had a lot of impact on me when I was creating our new Financial Accounting textbook. The video was apparently created by the students you see and really made me think about the state of education today. As far as I am concerned, education is expensive and, too often, both boring and inefficient. I wanted to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. As a result, I helped design and create this new type of Financial Accounting textbook.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
**

As I have mentioned previously, a few years ago I wrote a free on-line teaching tips book (https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~jhoyle/). I was lucky, a few people read it and told other people and then I got a very nice review in the Chronicle of Higher Education. As a result, I started getting emails from around the world about teaching. That was wonderful.

One day I received an email from a professor in London who said something like: “you don’t know me but I have read your teaching tips book and have a quote that I think you are going to love.” And, he was absolutely correct—this is one of my two or three favorite quotes about teaching. Whenever I give a teaching presentation, I always use this quote to explain what I believe is the true secret for becoming a better teacher. It is the best piece of advice that I can give any teacher who wants to improve.

"Teaching does not come from years of doing it. It actually comes from thinking about it."

I get pretty decent teaching evaluations from my students and I have won a few awards. Whenever anyone asks me how I managed to do that, I always say: “I think about this stuff a lot. Whether it is 6:00 a.m. when I wake up or 10:30 p.m. when I go to bed, teaching and my students and how to help them learn is always floating around in my head.”

So, today, I decided to tell you about what has been floating around in my head recently.

It seems to me that college education in my lifetime has focused on the conveyance of information. One content expert (the teacher) conveys information to a group of individuals who want (or are required) to gain a bit of that expertise. Despite what we might say, that process has not changed too radically in the last four decades since I was a college student.

However, with the Internet, Google, Bing and the like, information is readily available to most individuals at any time. It is hard to find a factual question that you cannot answer in less than one minute using a search engine. What then is the future purpose of a college education (other than the acquisition of a very expensive diploma)? If there is no longer a huge need for the conveyance of information from one generation to the next because it is so readily available, what are we doing? Don’t we need to know that before we even start the first class?

Do we who teach in college think about that question enough or just try to ignore it as best we can?

When I give teaching presentations, we work on developing “fly-on-the-wall” philosophies. What the heck is that? I ask the members of the audience to picture the course that is their favorite to teach. Then think of the final day of the semester when the students file out of the room for the last time. I ask each of the teachers to pretend they are a fly on the wall right above the door. If you were that fly on the wall, what would you want to hear from your students as they exited for the final time?

--The teacher sure conveyed a lot of information??
--I certainly took some great notes this semester??
--I memorized a lot of material so I could pass a test??

From my experience, a lot of teachers teach as if that is their goal. But, surely that cannot be the reason we became teachers. In 2010, doesn’t it have to be something more than that? And, if the answer is Yes, then what is the purpose of a college course?

I can tell you my own personal fly-on-the-wall philosophy but I am not sure that I am not ready for some change in it. So, if you have suggestions, let me know.

Here is my mine. On the last day of class, I would love to hear by 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.”

What is yours?

Continued in article

"How to Teach with Tech Tools," by Tanya Roscoria, Converge Magazine, February 9, 2010 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/82633067.html

In Western Civilization class at The John Carroll School, freshmen grab plastic chairs from a stack against the wall, gather around the room in different areas and jump online with their tablet PCs.

Using a class hashtag, they respond to questions that teacher Shelly Blake-Plock posts on Twitter. He projects their discussions on the classroom wall so that everyone can easily track what's going on.

Then, instead of pulling out textbooks to study ancient Rome, the students check out primary sources online such as BBC's interactive history section or the Metropolitan Museum of Art timelines that integrate text and artwork. As jazz music plays in the background, they pull up a document and use Diigo to annotate the text as well as share annotations.

They'll keep scouring the web for sites on ancient Rome and share the links they find on Twitter, then pick the best ones to post on their class wiki. Afterward, students look for correlations between the history they're studying and current events that media sources post on Twitter.

At the end of the 45-minute class, Blake-Plock throws out another question on Twitter that the students use as a guide to write a post on their personal blogs that night. The next day, they read and comment on their classmates' blogs and start the process all over again.

These students are learning through technology and directing their own learning in the process. Here's how educators around the country are empowering their students to do the same.

Focus on education At Charlotte Country Day School in North Carolina, Technology Integration Specialist Tim Moxley works with teachers to incorporate smartboards, document cameras and netbook computers into their lessons. To successfully blend tech tools into their instruction, teachers need to have a combination of technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK), which is a model that Punya Mishra and Matthew J. Koehler of Michigan State University researched.

Educators took on the job of providing a quality education, and a piece of that quality education is teaching kids how to use and become comfortable with tech tools.

"When you work in education, the end goal is what’s best for the student," Moxley said. "If using a piece of technology is gonna improve the student outcome in some way, then it’s worth it.”

Students are turned on 24 hours a day, whether they're surfing the web, watching TV or playing the Nintendo Wii, said Technology Integration Specialist Susan Jenkins, and they need to be engaged in order to learn. Engaging students often means using technology to teach, if it can help meet a learning goal.

“We don’t want to put it out there just because it’s a cool thing to have," said Jenkins, who works in Bullitt County Public Schools in Shepherdsville, Ky. " We want a purpose for it.”

Learn about the tools Jenkins helps teachers find that purpose by providing in-service training once a month as well as meeting with them on an appointment basis. While she does show them how new tools work, she also gives them ideas about how they can use them to help students learn.

“As we’re training them to use the tool, we try to train them with the integration side mixed in," Jenkins said.

In addition to learning from other people in their school district, teachers can learn from people they're connected to on Twitter, said Kyle Pace, an instructional/consumer technology specialist with Lee's Summit School District in Missouri. He finds plenty of resources from educators, particularly those who use the hashtag edchat, and shares them with co-workers and teachers in his area.

“If you start to think, ‘Well, I’ve seen all there is to see with this kind of tool,’ something new comes out or the next day you learn about something new,” Pace said. “We’re fortunate in our district that instructional technology is a huge focus, and I think it just has to remain a huge professional development focus at the district and at the building level.”

Back in North Carolina, some teachers tell Moxley that they are computer-illiterate and are horrible with technology. He reminds them that they wouldn't accept that response from a child who tells them he isn't good at math, so he won't accept that as a response for them. When he puts it in those terms, they are more receptive to learning about new tools.

He sits in on grade-level planning meetings, and based on what he hears, he looks for resources that might work with the lessons that teachers have coming up.

“I try to deemphasize the technology itself and just try to get them to see it as a tool that hopefully will enhance the lesson in some way,” Moxley said.

Mix tech into lessons When language arts teacher Heather Mason plans a lesson, she starts by figuring out what she wants her students to learn in her class at Jefferson Middle School in Merritt Island, Fla. Then she thinks about what tools could help accomplish her goal.

And as she wrote on her blog, the technology doesn't have to be new to work. She uses tools such as Post-it notes, highlighters and personal whiteboards to engage her students.

Pencils are also effective tools, and they're the focus of John Spencer's blog Adventures in Pencil Integration. Set in 1897, the blog posts tell the story of a fictional character named Tom Johnson, whose small school district starts paper and pencil integration initiatives to prepare students for the 20th century.

Through satire, he paints a picture of the hype and the paranoia that comes with new technology. Back in his classroom at Raúl Castro Middle School in Phoenix, he teaches his students to identify with both extremes.

“I want them to be both absolute critics of technology and also people who absolutely embrace it," Spencer said. "And I know that’s a really idealistic kind of view to have, but I want them to be both.”

He helps them become both by starting conversations in his multimedia authoring/publishing class that force students to think critically about what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Continued in article

Datawatch's Monarch data mining software --- http://www.datawatch.com/_products/monarch_pro.php
"Kean and Emory Introduce Students to Data Mining," by Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, April 6, 2009 ---
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/04/06/kean-and-emory-introduce-students-to-data-mining.aspx
Link forwarded by Ed Scribner

Two universities--Kean University in Union, NJ and Emory University in Atlanta, GA--have gone public with their use of Datawatch's Monarch data mining software to teach students how to perform business intelligence work.

Kean professor Beth Brilliant introduced Monarch to graduate students of her accounting information systems (AIS) and auditing information system classes.

"I have been using Monarch for years as a [certified public accountant] and swear by it," said Brilliant. "For example, I use Monarch to quickly find any bank discrepancies. As I work for a law firm with client trust accounts, this is extremely important, as all accounts must balance to the penny. I am able to reconcile all the accounts in minutes thanks to Monarch, picking up differences in checks from pennies to hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Brilliant added, "My department has also become more efficient with the use of Monarch, saving hours by importing data into the accounting system electronically vs. manually. Reports that I receive from vendors are saved as PDF files, which are mined using Monarch. The data is then extracted and imported into our accounting system. This not only saves time but it removes the risk of manual data input errors."

"I rely on Monarch to ensure data quality and to ensure I know exactly where company data is coming from, with no need to rely on the company's accounting and IT departments," she explained. "Monarch is an excellent resource for auditors and accountants, and well worth including Monarch within my AIS coursework."

Robert Gross teaches a graduate course on managing healthcare databases at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory. The course is part of the curriculum for the university's master of public health degree.

"Most of my students are physicians and other working healthcare providers, middle managers and public health agency leaders," said Gross. "The students are non-technical, yet must understand how to independently gather, sift, sort, and work effectively with public and private healthcare information sources. We address issues including effective data access strategies, how to ensure data quality, comply fully with HIPAA, and actively work with healthcare data using Excel, Access, and several statistical analysis products."

Continued in article

Bentley College Students Will Make Microloans to Small Businesses
Perhaps this is also an opportunity for accounting students to advise loan recipients on accounting, software, and taxes. There is precedent here for students in colleges that used to administer Small Business Administration grants. Years ago at the University of Maine I supervised some students who in turn were assisting grant recipients with accounting. In one humorous instance, the students could not find the recipients. The SBA had given a grant to a startup company to make patio furniture in much the same manner as birch-bark canoes are made using ash wood and birch bark. Once the recipients got the money for their chain saws and trucks, they were nowhere to be found. Turns out all they wanted the money for was to help them steal wood to sell to the paper companies. Such will also be the risk of microlending by college students.

"Bentley University Class Creates Local Microfinance Fund," Market Watch, October 28, 2008 --- Click Here

New Student-Run Initiative Brings Microlending to the Greater Boston Area An honors finance class at Bentley University has paved the way for an innovative financing initiative: a domestic microcredit organization that will fuel economic and community development by providing loans of $1,500 to $6,000 to local entrepreneurs at or below the poverty level.

The Bentley Microcredit Initiative (BMI) is the result of a course, Seminar in Micro Lending, which debuted in spring 2008. The mission of the BMI is to integrate microfinance into the Bentley community and to promote community development through education and innovation in microlending activities. The class and the BMI are the brainchild of Finance Professor and BMI Director Roy Wiggins. "The fund is something I really thought could be viable here at Bentley," says Wiggins. "Since it's student-run, it will provide hands-on banking experience while also furthering the Bentley mission to send future business leaders into the world who are socially responsible."

Microcredit or microlending refers to modest-sized loans for poverty-level recipients who may not qualify for funds at traditional financial institutions. The practice gained public attention in 2006, when Grameen Bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in microfinance.

Students enrolled in Seminar in Micro Lending developed a working model for the BMI after researching microfinance successes and failures both abroad and domestically to create a framework that could operate in Greater Boston. The fund is being financed by donations from alumni and parents and has an initial equity line of $100,000 on its way to a total loan portfolio of $300,000. The Bentley Microcredit Initiative will identify potential loan applicants by tapping into existing Bentley relationships with community organizations. "One of the attractive things about this venture is that it will be utilizing Bentley's academic resources," says Bentley President Gloria Larson. "We are essentially marrying Bentley's foundation in service and business to help address a societal issue. We hope the Microcredit Initiative will become a part of Bentley's legacy." BENTLEY UNIVERSITY is a leader in business education. Centered on teaching and research in business and related professions, Bentley blends the breadth and technological strength of a university with the core values and student focus of a close-knit campus.

SOURCE Bentley University

Epsilen Environment from Purdue University appears to have brought together the latest technology in a course authoring, course management, and e-learning package --- http://www.epsilen.com/Epsilen/Public/Home.aspx

The Epsilen Environment is the result of six years of research and development within the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI. Epsilen Products and Services are commercially available through BehNeem LLC, the holding company created in Indiana to commercialize, market and further develop the Epsilen Environment. The New York Times is an equity and strategic partner in the company.

I maintain a site on the history of course authoring and course management technology at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

A 2008 addition to the above history site came to my attention in a loose-card advertisement for Epsilen Enviroment that came in the November 3, 2008 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Free ePortfolios

Basic ePortfolio accounts are free for all registered students and faculty of U.S. colleges and universities. An Epsilen ePortfolio can be created in minutes and be used throughout one’s academic career, during professional life, and even into retirement. The free Epsilen ePortfolio account offers tools and resources enabling members to:

Create and maintain a professional ePortfolio

Engage in professional and social networking

Showcase scholarly work and other documents in a wide range of formats

Develop and share resumes

Store and share files/objects

Use Epsilen e-mail, blog, wiki, and other communication and collaboration tools

Create and participate in professional collaboration groups

Access to online courses and trainings using the Epsilen Global Learning System (GLS) courseware.

Produce a personal ePortfolio Web site with profile, photos and video

Receive an automated weekly Epsilen status report that lets you know about those that have visited your “corner”, share similar research, teaching, internship or consulting interests.

If your campus is, or becomes, a licensed Epsilen institution (see below), your free ePortfolio will integrate dynamically with more sophisticated tools and services listed below that accompany the paid license. Visit www.epsilen.com to create your personal ePortfolio and begin exploring the Environment.


Exploratory Institutional Memberships

The Exploratory Membership is an easy and cost-effective option for colleges and universities, schools, districts and state systems to explore and experience the features of Epsilen, the next generation of learning and networking software. Upon payment of an annual membership fee, the following features are available to Exploratory Members:

Administrative account to brand, monitor, and maintain internal ePortfolio accounts of your students ,faculty and alumnae

Institutional ePortfolio site for your college or university

Global announcement and message broadcasting to ePortfolio accounts associated with your institution

Delivery of 12 online courses or training using Epsilen’s Global Learning System (GLS), with the option to incorporate New York Times content described below

Direct access to the Epsilen helpdesk

A hosted Web-based solution that requires no, or little, institutional IT support

Ability to upgrade to other licensed services (see below)

Ability to integrate Epsilen with campus SIS (see below)

Ability to cross list courses across institutions, departments, and schools

Annual Exploratory Memberships begin at $5,000 for campuses with up to 2,000 students. Click here for more pricing information and order application.

New York Times Knowledge Network

New York Times Knowledge (NYTKnowledge Network) offers New York Times content to complement faculty-designed courses served dynamically in customizable templates through Epsilen’s Global Learning System. New York Times content is aggregated by subject and easily selected and incorporated into lessons by faculty and the interactive learning environment. NYTKnowledge Network provides access to a repository of Times archives back to 1851 Times articles, special issues sections, multimedia features, and synchronous and asynchronous contact with correspondents, resulting in an extraordinary integrated learning environment that supports hybrid or online offerings.

The New York Times Knowledge Network also offers the opportunity to participate in Webcasts with the Times correspondents and other subject matter experts. These can be included in traditional courses, or offered by your institution as stand-alone life-long learning experiences with comprehensive continuing education programs designed by the New York Times.

NYT Knowledge Network Provides:

A rich repository of archived content back to 1851

Access to other major content providers

Multimedia news content

Interactive maps and graphs

Webcasts, chats with correspondents

A comprehensive range of content aggregated by subject and easily integrated to support your teaching objectives.

NYTimes Knowledge Network marketing of your continuing education courses.

Visit http://www.nytimes.com/knowledge for further information and pricing (will be released in mid August 2007).

Student Learning Matrix

Programs, departments, and schools within a campus may create unlimited student learning matrices to be used by students through an automated learning outcome assessment tool for both summative and formative learning assessment. Features include:

Creation of unlimited student learning matrices for program- or campus-level learning outcome assessment (Each axis includes attributes defined by the program/campus.)

Ability for students to upload their learning outcomes according to predefined rubrics

Access by faculty and academic advisors to each student learning matrix for assessment, advisement, and certification

Program- and campus-level assessment reports for internal and external accreditation reviews

A hosted Web-based solution that requires no institutional IT support

The annual Student Learning Matrix membership fee is based on the number of students in the program or institution. Click here for more information and online membership application.

Global Learning System (GLS)

Epsilen offers the Global Learning System (GLS), a new Web-based learning framework developed as the next generation of eLearning and networking. In contrast to current legacy learning management systems, the GLS offers true global learning collaboration by connecting students and instructors on campuses in the U.S. and around the world in an interactive and intuitive Web 2.0 learning environment. The GLS complements existing licensed or open source CMS products. The GLS features include:

Global learning management system that enables students and instructors to easily register or be invited to courses and learning collaboration

Cross listing of class rosters of two or more courses within various campuses, or across institutions

Innovative tools using professional and social networking to enhance learning, encourage collaboration, and utilize peer review technology

The ability to easily archive courses and working groups for continued engagement

A hosted Web-based solution that requires little, or no institutional IT support

The annual GLS membership fee is based on the number of students and courses within the institution. Click here for more information and online membership application.

Charter Membership

Experience the full suite of the Epsilen “Environment” and resources with unparalleled access to NYTKnowledge Network content. Charter members receive special pricing for unlimited use of ePortfolios, the Student Learning Matrix, courses through the Global Learning System, and interactive Webcasts with correspondents. With charter membership, two university administrators will be invited to participate in the Epsilen - New York Times charter council, with meetings and events scheduled at The New York Times. Benefits include:

Single sign-on environment featuring a toolbox of services for ePortfolio, social networking, Learning Matrix, GLS, object repository, and NYTKnowledge Network

Totally hosted turnkey solution with no need for local servers or local technical staff

Cost effectiveness for both small and large campuses

Collaboration on designing the next generation of eLearning through networking with other members of the Epsilen - New York Times charter council

The Epsilen Charter membership fee is based on the total number of students within the institution. Click here for more information and online membership application.

Technical Support and System Integration

Epsilen offers consulting and technical support through both internal and third-party sources for the integration of Epsilen with local campus databases and existing licensed technology. This provides a seamless, single sign-on, portal approach to all resources and services supporting the learning and teaching initiatives of a campus. Click Here for more information and online membership application.

I maintain a site on the history of course authoring and course management technology at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence: Tools for Teaching and Learning --- http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/Tools/

Tools for Teaching and Learning

Look to our specialists to help you use best practices in your teaching. Whether you are new to our services, or an old friend, please don't hesitate to contact us at site@psu.edu with your questions.

Course Design and Planning

Adult learners

Developing learning objectives

Online and blended learning

Syllabus development

Test planning

Using tests creatively in course design

Writing effective cases

Cutting Edge Course Design Tutorial

Teaching and Assessment Strategies

Computer-based testing

In-class assessment techniques

Inquiry-based learning

Large class strategies

Pedagogy in Action, SERC portal for Educators

Problem-based learning

Resources for Teaching Writing

Rubrics

Teaching diverse students

Using discussion in the classroom

Ways to avoid students sharing test information

Writing good test questions

Working with groups

Tools for Course Evaluation

Classroom observations

Midsemester feedback

Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness (SRTEs)

Using item analysis to improve tests and learning

Tools for University Assessment

General Education Assessment

Program and Department Assessment

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Public scholarship

Service learning

Teaching and course portfolios

Writing a teaching philosophy

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

Search Engine, ChunkIt, Marketed to College Students

Questions
How can you turn your email messages into free video messages?
How can you video conference calls?

For those of you in the American Accounting Association, I call your attention to a new Teaching Resource called TokBox submitted to the Commons by accounting professor Rick Little. You do not need to go to the Commons for some of Rick’s links passed on below. I thank Rick for sharing this teaching resource.

AAA Members

Please go to the AAA Commons at least once each day --- http://commons.aaahq.org
For Teaching and Research Resources, Click on the menu bar item called “Roles”
Rick’s posting is called “Thinking Outside the Box”
You might want to clidk on Rick’s picture to see his interesting profile (e.g., with Grant Thornton and as a local CPA before getting his PhD in accounting)

Links for Non-Members

Rick’s TokBox Blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/using-tokbox-to-communicate-with-your-students/

Rick’s introductory video is at http://www.tokbox.com/vm/b056ued8rnau#vmail=b056ued8rnau

TokBox --- http://me.tokbox.com/

If you are trying to gather a group of people for a conference or chat, TokBox may be just the perfect thing. Visitors can use the video chat feature to include up to 20 participants in a call, import contacts from Gtalk and Facebook, and also text chat with other people during the call. Also, visitors can share YouTube videos and files. This version is compatible with all computers running Windows 2000 and newer.

Jensen Comment
TokBox dropped its free video conference software --- http://www.tokbox.com/blog/?p=1701
However, it commenced OpenTalk that allows groups to have live video conversations --- http://www.tokbox.com/opentok/showcase

February 12, 2011 message from Rick Lillie

Hi Bob,

Last year, TokBox decided to drop the video messaging feature of its service and focus on multi-party video conferencing and chat. I told them that I felt they were making a big mistake with this service change.

I replaced TokBox with two other services (i.e., Eyejot and YouTube). Eyejot is a video email messaging service. YouTube added an option that makes it possible to upload a video and keep it private but shareable.

I'm using Eyejot with all my students. It's working very well and students really like it. I've been able to integrate Eyejot into Blackboard. Students can send me a video message of up to 5 minutes in length. Soon, Eyejot is supposed to increase the message time from 5 minutes to 10 minutes.

Tokbox went its way. I went mine. Life continues.

Rick Lillie
CalState San Bernardino

Accounting Quiz Archives

August 21, 2008 message from Rob Nance [rnance@accountingweb.com]

Submitting 10-question accounting quizzes is great exposure for your accounting program. Check out the archives:

http://www.accountingweb.com/quiz/

If you would like to submit a quiz, reply to this message and I will send you the Excel template.

*****

Coming later this year: information on a scholarship program for your accounting students. AccountingWEB will be bestowing a load of money on three U.S. accounting students.

Rob

The AccountingWeb student zone (including humor) is at http://www.accountingweb.com/news/student_zone.html

"15 Tools to Make Your PC a Multimedia Powerhouse: Enjoy your video and audio collections to the fullest with the help of these free and low-cost downloads," by Preston Gralla, PC World via The Washington Post, October 30, 2008 --- Click Here

Your PC has become the greatest entertainment device ever created, but you wouldn't know that judging by the software that ships with the machine. Bundled media players, and related software for playing and managing audio and video, tend to be underwhelming at best.

We've assembled 15 of our favorite video and audio applications, all of which can handle just about any job you can throw at them. The vast majority of these downloads are completely free, and the others offer no-cost trials.
They'll help you download YouTube videos to your PC, or convert videos to formats that you can view on handheld devices. They'll play any audio and video formats you can find. They'll make you into a DJ and allow you to create your own customized mixes, too. So if you want to get the most out of the entertainment device on your desk, read on--and start downloading. (And if you want to access all of these tools in one convenient place, hop to our audio and video downloads collection.)

Video

Want to download YouTube videos to your computer, convert video files to formats that you can view on portable players, find the best videos online, or watch TV from around the world? We have software that does all that, and a lot more.

TubeMe

How many times have you watched a YouTube video and wished that you could save it to your hard drive for future viewing? With this free software, you can save YouTube videos as .flv files; afterward, you can watch the videos in any multimedia software that supports the .flv format (such as FLV Player or VLC Media Player, both discussed below). Before downloading the videos, you get a full description of them, as well.

Be aware that using this program can be a bit confusing. Make sure to click the Download path button, at the bottom of the screen, to tell the program where to download your videos. And to download the video, you'll have to copy and paste the YouTube URL into the program. After that, click the icon with a small plus sign; it looks grayed-out, as if it were nonfunctional, but it does work. Once you've added the link, you can download the video. You can also put multiple videos in a list, and download them all at once.

Download TubeMe| Price: Free

FLV Player
If you've downloaded YouTube videos using TubeMe or another downloader, or if you've collected other files in the .flv format, you may run into a problem: Many media players, including Windows Media Player, can't handle them. FLV Player is a straightforward media player designed to play .flv files exclusively. To access a video, press , browse to the file, and open it, or else double-click the .flv file from inside Windows Explorer. You can also drag and drop files into the player. The software even handles multiple .flv files: Simply drag several files to the program, and the app plays each video in its own window.

You can control video playback through the usual controls, or with a variety of keyboard shortcuts. You can also toggle between full-screen mode and normal mode. Note that you may run into problems installing the software on Windows Vista. If that happens to you, right-click the installation file and choose Run as Administrator. That should solve the problem.

Download FLV Player| Price: Free

Any Video Converter Free Version

Playing video these days is no longer confined to your PC--countless other devices can play video as well, including handheld devices and music players, mobile phones, and the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The problem, though, is that if you've downloaded videos to your PC, they might not be in the formats your devices require.

Continued in article

Do It Yourself Interactive Whiteboard (about $60 instead of over $1,000)

October 27, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker [lister@BONACKERS.COM]

Mr. Lee encourages innovators to ask themselves, "Would providing 80 percent of the capability at 1 percent of the cost be valuable to someone?" If the answer is yes, he says, pay attention. Trading relatively little performance for substantial cost savings can generate what Mr. Lee calls "surprising and often powerful results both scientifically and socially."

As evidence, he might point to a do-it-yourself interactive whiteboard, another of his Wiimote innovations. Interactive whiteboards, which in commercial form generally sell for more than $1,000, make it possible to control a computer by tapping, writing or drawing on an image of the desktop that has been projected onto a screen. Mr. Lee's version can be built with roughly $60 in parts and free open-source software downloadable from his Web site.

Some 700,000 people, many of them teachers, have downloaded the software, Mr. Lee says. Much more expensive whiteboards may offer more features and better image resolution, but Mr. Lee's version is adequate for most classroom applications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/business/26proto.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

This seemed like it might be of interest, if not useful

Scott Bonacker CPA
Springfield, MO

Maple's Document Management System

October 30, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker [lister@BONACKERS.COM]

This came as part of a subscription to a technology newsletter, I haven't tried this product myself. Scott Bonacker CPA, Springfield, MO]

As an IT professional, chances are good that you have lots of detailed information that you have to keep track of in order to do your job effectively and efficiently. You probably have a multitude of documents stored in a multitude of folders on your hard disk. Using a series of documents and folders to store all your information is a pretty logical way of doing things, especially when used in combination with Vista’s Search tool and Saved searches feature, keeping track of all that information is pretty easy. However, it could be better — especially if all that information could be made available in one place.

Well, I recently discovered a very nice document manager called Maple from Crystal Office Systems that runs perfectly on Windows Vista and produces what is essentially a document database. In this edition of the Windows Vista Report, I’ll introduce you to Maple and show you how to use it manage your document collection.

This blog post is also available in the PDF format in a TechRepublic Download.

Getting Maple

You can download Maple from the Crystal Office Systems Web site. Once you download it, installation is a snap and you’ll be ready begin creating you custom document database in no time. You can download and try Maple for 30 days at no cost. A single-user license is $21.95.

When you access the Crystal Office Systems Web site, you’ll also notice that there is another version of this document manager called Maple Professional, which provides a set of advanced features. You’ll also find free reader called Maple Reader that will allow other users to view any document database created with either Maple or Maple Professional.

Read the rest at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=802&tag=rbxccnbt

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting software are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#AccountingSoftware

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

August 19, 2008 message from MERLOT Webmaster [barb@merlot.org]

Dear Learning Material Author,

We are sending you this email because you are an author of material in the MERLOT collection (www.merlot.org). As you know, MERLOT is an international consortium of higher education institutions, professional societies, digital libraries, and corporations who support educational improvement through technology. Last year, MERLOT had more than 1,000,000 visits from people searching for reusable learning materials to incorporate into their teaching and learning. As MERLOT continues to grow (over 20,000 materials accessed by more than 62,000 members, growing at 1200+ new members monthly), participants are increasingly concerned about legal issues related to the reuse of online materials.

We recognize the efforts of people like you who have created learning materials and have agreed to share your work through MERLOT. To protect and guide members of the MERLOT community, we have adopted the intellectual property policies of the increasingly popular consortium, Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org). We are doing this to:

· Encourage creators of online materials to share their work with others who might wish to reuse the materials.

· Ensure that contributions of online materials by MERLOT members are protected from misuse and abuse.

We would like to encourage you, as a developer of online materials, to declare Creative Commons licenses for all your material so that others don’t use your work in ways counter to your intentions. Creative Commons provides an easy process for defining licenses; it also provides HTML code you can copy directly to your website to let others know what license applies to your work. To easily select the license of your choice, go to www.creativecommons.org/license.

If you wish to have a Creative Commons license displayed with your MERLOT digital content and you are the original contributor of your material to the MERLOT collection, you may add the Creative Commons information yourself. You may also send an email to the MERLOT Webmaster (webmaster@merlot.org), indicating the title of your material in MERLOT and the Creative Commons license you would like to display with the description of your material. If you aren’t sure which license to use, we suggest the Creative Commons license that allows others to reuse and alter your work, but only if they provide attribution to you as the author and only if they reuse it for non commercial purposes (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license).

For more information about Creative Commons, please visit www.creativecommon.org or view their video at http://youtube.com/watch?v=2BESbnMJg9M. You can also review MERLOT’s policies regarding Creative Commons licenses at: http://taste.merlot.org/acceptableuserpolicy.html

- MERLOT Webmaster --- webmaster@merlot.org

Question
What does a student's blinkless stare signify?

a. Daydreaming
b. Confusion
c. Anger
d. Stoned

"Facial-Recognition Software Could Give Valuable Feedback to Online Professors." Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 27, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3126&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Many professors who teach online complain that they have no way of seeing whether their far-away students are following the lectures — or whether the students have fallen asleep at their desks. But researchers at the University of California at San Diego say they have a solution. They recently tested a system that can detect facial expressions of online students and determine when they find the material difficult, so that cues could be sent to the professors telling them to slow down.

Jacob Whitehill, a doctoral student at the university working on the research, presented results from the experiment this week at the Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2008 conference in Montreal.

In the experiment, eight subjects were shown short video clips of lectures while a Web cam tracked their facial expressions — looking for smiles, blinks, raised eyebrows, and the like. The subjects were then asked to report how difficult they found each section, and to take a quiz on the material. Mr. Whitehill says that the system correctly detected when students were having trouble (the most reliable indicator: students blinked less when they were struggling to understand).

The system could be used to give valuable feedback to professors teaching online, says Mr. Whitehill. “It’s not going to be perfect by any means,” he says, but it’s better than no student feedback at all. “Professors say that they can’t see the students. This could do it for them automatically.”

Visualization of Multivariate Data (including faces) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm

Video: Augmented 3-D Sketching --- http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/24253/?nlid=2446&a=f
Bob Jensen's threads on data visualization --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm

May 4, 2008 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

I have placed a (Camtasia) video online on omnisio.com, which allows comments to be placed OVER the video.

http://www.omnisio.com/v/49zPDUbdjhG/the-basic-accounting-equation

This is a video that I have on youtube and just linked it to Omnisio.

Jensen Comment
There are some other cool things to do with video at http://www.omnisio.com/

"Microsoft Ramps Up Its Free College E-Mail Program," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 27, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3032&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Microsoft has decided to enlarge a service of keen interest to colleges, even as the company last week dumped another offering used by higher education, its Live Search Books program. Now Live@edu, the free Web-based e-mail and online collaboration program for students and alumni, is getting much larger inboxes, the ability to handle bigger attached files, true shared calendars, and the chance for colleges to block student e-mail containing words they deem offensive, the company announced today.

Tired of the 5 gigabyte inbox? Live@edu now offers accounts with 10 gigabytes, and the capacity to handle attachments up to 20 megabytes in size, says Bruce Gabrielle, senior product manager for the service. The boost is because the company has decided that, in addition to handing campuses Microsoft Hotmail accounts (with university-based e-mail addresses), it will offer accounts on the more powerful Microsoft Exchange Web access system. That gives users access to Windows programs like Outlook, with e-mail, full calendars, and a contact list.

It’s a solution used by many businesses, and Microsoft has been quietly offering it, in a form called Exchange Labs, to a few educational institutions since last fall. Drexel University, Hinds Community College, and the Colorado Community College system are some that have tried it.

With Exchange Labs, users at the same university can see one another’s calendars to set up meetings. E-mail tracking is enabled, so students can see whether a term paper was delivered to a professor’s inbox. They can also push e-mail to cell phones. (And they can use Exchange to wipe data from those phones if they happen to lose them.) Exchange Labs also gives university officials the ability to set up filters, like spam filters, for offensive terms in e-mail, though Mr. Gabrielle says he wasn’t sure what words, if any, that universities have tried placing on a “do not type” list.

At this point the service is not being offered to faculty members or administrators. “I think it’s a business model decision,” Mr. Gabrielle said, noting that the company may need to figure out whether it wants to allow ads on Web pages seen by those users; the student and alumni service is ad-free.

"SketchCast: a New Blogging and Teaching Tool," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 14, 2008 --- Click Here

Want to preserve that lesson you did at the blackboard today in class and share it with students online? Try SketchCast, a free blogging tool that allows users to record a digital drawing (and contemporaneous audio), and then embed the animated video onto a Web site. It’s essentially an easy form of animation.

Watch the video demo --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2998&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Comment from Charles

What a nice tool to capture and share ideas informally! I have been trying to capture tools and concepts for opening up collaborative learning on my blog www.collaborativenetworkedlearning.blogspot.com

— Charles May 14, 08:50 PM #

David Pogue is one of my technology heroes --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pogue
Vidya Ananthanarayanan called my attention to his recent keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference
"Five ways to improve technology in education," by Todd Ritter, DownloadSquad, February 12, 2008 --- Click Here

Stay informed
Use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to keep up with technology news and events. To use RSS you'll need an RSS reader like Google Reader, NetNewsWire (Mac), or FeedDemon (Windows) to read RSS feeds. An RSS feed is basically a dynamic link that updates your RSS reader when new content is posted to a website (click the "RSS Feeds" button under our search bar to see examples).

You can also subscribe to technology newsletters, and talk to students about websites and web services they use on their own. A majority of teachers do not know what Stickam or Meebo are, yet these sites are used daily by many of their students.

Focus on the learning process, not the end product
When little Susie uses iMovie to create a video of her class field trip to Cape Canaveral, she should be evaluated on what she's learned through the creative process, not how many wipes and sound effects she used in her final movie file. The quality and relativity of the still pictures she took by learning how to use a digital camera, or video footage from a well-designed storyboard are better barometers of a successful project.

Work with IT professionals who understand education
I work on the IT side of education daily, and I know it's important to unfetter technology at a school to stimulate the learning process. IT staff must be willing to bend on certain security measures and trust students with equipment so that they can be creative and not boxed in. We let students take laptops home to work on approved projects, which ultimately motivates their peers to do the same. We also have a dedicated instructional adviser who helps teachers integrate technology into their lesson plans. This often helps ease the teachers' modification of antiquated lessons.

Become a user
Make a Facebook account so you can understand the allure of social-networking sites. Add some information about yourself. Locate former school pals. Join some groups. This will let you see sites like Faceook from a student's perspective.

To collaborate and share course materials, you can create a Moodle site for your class, or start a class blog. Students benefit more from teachers who collaborate and less from teachers who force-feed lectures. Also, it's much easier to teach about something that you've actually used in depth. It's time to break the stigma of "those that can, do; those that can't, teach."

Don't be afraid of change
Some teachers think that upgrading from Office 2003 to 2007 is using the latest technology. However, a Word document is still words and formatting meant for someone to read. Instead of being satisfied with word processing in a new version of software, why not let students create a school "newspaper" on something like Joomla. The news could be updated in seconds, it could be interactive (comments, updates, etc.), and it could be include user-submitted media. Google Earth could be used to give an elementary student global perspective by flying in from a world view down to the roof of his home.

Jensen Comment
There are other things that I would recommend. I think joining listserv of other educators is important, especially educators in your discipline --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

It is exceedingly important to know what knowledge is being freely shared by professors and universities --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
I hope that you will one day share your own knowledge with us.

I think becoming a user of important technologies is important, especially video recording using Camtasia --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
Also see the 50Camtasia.ppt file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/

Following the tools of technology in education in general is important --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

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

"TextMeTV Is Either Future of Television or Beginning of Its End," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 13, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3240&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Late at night on a television station in Lansing, Michigan, a new kind of program tries to make the audience the main attraction. It's called TextMeTV, and it goes like this: One or two young hosts, some of them college students, sit on a couch and read text messages being sent in live from viewers, and those messages are also posted on a box in the corner of the screen. Sometimes the hosts encourage those texters to debate topics of the day, other times they offer free iPods or other prizes to viewers who can answer trivia questions. The show looks more like a YouTube page than a television show. Though moderators do edit the text messages that come in before they post them to the screen, the show is live with no tape delay, says Helena Kirby, a producer for the show and one of its 7 rotating hosts. "There's no swearing and no sexual talk -- we keep it pretty clean," she adds. Viewers pay a small fee per text message to participate. Ms. Kirby says the show's best moments have been when viewers sparred about race issues or politics. "People get fired up," she says. But this January the show -- which has been on since last year -- began focusing more on games and contests, like trivia challenges, than on debates. One entertainment blogger recently called the show "the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard," noting that the show seems empty of substance. But Ms. Kirby argues that it represents a revolutionary new format. "I think some people are just afraid of it -- that this new concept is going to do something big, and they don't want it to," she says. "I say, Out with the old, in the with the new." Amariee Woods, another host of the show who is a senior at Michigan State University, says that younger audiences want to participate, not just passively consume media. "People want to put their comments on everything, and the faster they can do that, the better." A similar show in Texas called Subtext, which features students from the University of Texas at Austin, uses a similar format but focuses on dating. The shows are essentially trying to turn television into something more like the Internet. In fact, the shows would probably work better as interactive Web pages where people could put aside their cell phones and interact with their computer keyboards. But then the show's producers would not be able to make a cut of the text-messaging fees, as they do now. Do younger viewers now see one-way broadcast television as dull? Or are these interactive shows a sign that media companies are trying to mix many kinds of media formats? Use your computer keyboard to let us know what you think.

TextMeTV (watch the video) --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3240&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"Making a Big Point (in class) With Your PC," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 23, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2932&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Pen Kenrick J. Mock says he loves recording lectures for his classes using his tablet PC. And the associate professor of computer science at the University of Alaska at Anchorage also loves projecting computational problems using PowerPoint or the writing program OneNote.

What Mr. Mock does not love is the inability to point to a specific part of the problem for his class. “It’s always bothered me that the pen cursor is a tiny little dot,” he writes in his blog on technology and teaching. “The problem is that I like to use the pen to “point” at things as I give the lecture, but it doesn’t help if the class can’t see it.”

He looked, in vain, for a program that would enlarge the cursor. And finally he gave in, remembered he was a computer scientist, and wrote a program himself.

The result is PenAttention, and it turns that minuscule dot into a minuscule dot with a big colored spotlight around it. It’s a little more distracting to write with this kind of cursor, but his class can finally see what he is doing.

The program is free, works on tablet PCs running XP and Vista, and can be downloaded from a link in Mr. Mock’s blog post describing it.

See http://www.math.uaa.alaska.edu/~afkjm/techteach/?q=node/52

"Microsoft Opens Free Online Workspace for Student Collaborations," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 5, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2795&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Microsoft wants to help students get their lives together (their learning lives, at least), and Tuesday it rolled out a product to help. As part of Live@edu, the company’s free Web-based email and calendar suite, Microsoft unveiled Office Live Workspace, which lets students access their work online and share it with others. Live@edu is in use at more than 600 colleges.

“The most visible new feature is the activity panel,” said Guy Gilbert, a Microsoft group product manager, in an interview with The Chronicle Monday. “Suppose you are in a work group with other students. You can look at the panel and see everything that anyone has done since you last logged on. And links in the panel take you right to that object,” whether it is a document, a spreadsheet, contact list, or database.

Users can also set up e-mail alerts that notify them any time an item is changed.

The service has been running in beta for several months, and of its estimated 100,000 users, 20 to 30 percent are in higher education, Mr. Gilbert says. Microsoft has worked with 13 colleges to fine-tune the service, including Florida Community College at Jacksonville, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Wisconsin at Parkside.

And if the new service doesn’t seem familiar to users of Google Docs, don’t worry. Microsoft’s arch rival also promises real-time collaboration, and the two companies seem to be running neck and neck in the education marketplace.

AtGentive: New software platforms that incorporate artificial intelligence and social networking into their approach toward e-learning.

February 20, 2008 message from Glen L Gray [glen.gray@CSUN.EDU]

Attention Please! Next-Generation E-Learning Is Here ICT Results (02/14/08)

European researchers working for the AtGentive project have developed two new software platforms that incorporate artificial intelligence and social networking into their approach toward e-learning. AtGentive coordinator Thierry Nabeth says the first generation of e-learning platforms focused on replicating the classroom experience, but student's often had difficulty staying motivated and the learning program failed to keep their attention. To overcome this problem, one of the AtGentive platforms uses techniques similar to those found on Web sites such as Facebook that make them so popular as a means of staying in touch with others. The platforms also use artificial intelligence to keep students interested. "Artificial agents are autonomous entities that observe users' activities and assess their state of attention in order to intervene so as to make the user experience more effective," Nabeth says. "The interventions can take many forms, from providing new information to the students, guiding them in their work, or alerting them when other users connect to the platform." The artificial intelligence agents provide a smart form of proactive coaching for students by assessing, guiding, and stimulating them. The agents can alert students when others have read their articles, or when they receive feedback on their contributions to a collaborative project. The agents are also able to detect when students are not interacting with the system and try to get them to rejoin the lesson.

Click Here to View Full Article

http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/89524

Glen L. Gray, PhD, CPA
Accounting & Information Systems, COBAE
California State University, Northridge
Northridge, CA 91330-8372
818.677.3948
818.677.2461 (messages)
http://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f

Notes on the Smart Pen
The s mart pen that Wired Campus flagged back in May was unveiled last week at a technology conference in Palm Springs, Calif. The company behind it, LiveScribe, has been aggressively marketing the device to college students with the slogan "Never miss a word." It's basically a combination recording machine and camera. Users take notes while a minirecorder, embedded in the pen, records whatever is being said. Later, to clarify the written notes, the user can touch the pen to a specific passage and listen to a recording of the instructor speaking those words. A tiny camera links what is being written to what is being recorded. In a takeoff on television commercials for pharmaceuticals, the smart-pen advertisement below features a student who suffers from "restless mind syndrome." The pen is offered as a panacea. Livescribe has set up a Facebook page to push the pen, and offers to pay college students to promote the device on their campuses. It's also advertised on the Web site ThePalestra, where Andy Van Schaack, a senior lecturer at Vanderbilt University, who is an adviser to LiveScribe, is seen praising the pen. Will the pen, which sells for about $200, take off with college students? Will it be used as a crutch for students who are too tired or distracted to listen to their professors?
Andrea L. Foster, "Notes on the Smart Pen," Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2719&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology

Questions
Will we soon be able to lecture without opening our mouths?
Can you send a "relational" database file to a friend by simply shaking hands?
Is this the beginning of a whole new definition of human "relationships?"
Can the message of a hug be digital and unambiguous?
New magic in a kiss or two?
Does your database have halitosis or dirty fingernails or a flu virus?
I'd better stop asking questions about this before I get in trouble!

Japanese firm harnesses the power of human touch
They say you can tell a lot from a handshake. But while it's usually guesswork, the power of human touch will soon be used in Japan to transmit data. Telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) is planning a commercial launch of a system to enter rooms that frees users from the trouble of rummaging in their pockets or handbags for ID cards or keys. It uses technology to turn the surface of the human body itself into a means of data transmission. As data travels through the user's clothing, handbag or shoes, anyone carrying a special card can unlock the door simply by touching the knob or standing on a particular spot without taking the card out. "In everyday life, you're always touching things. Even if you are standing, you are stepping on something," research engineer Mitsuru Shinagawa told AFP. "These simple touches can result in communication," said Shinagawa, senior research engineer at the company's NTT Microsystem Integration Laboratories. He said future applications could include a walk-through ticket gate, a cabinet that opens only to authorised people and a television control that automatically chooses favourite programmes.
PhysOrg, February 21, 2008 --- http://physorg.com/news122793751.html

Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm

The Five Senses of the Future: Threads on the Networking of the Five Senses (Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, and Taste) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/senses.htm

Barbra Streisand - He Touched Me (1967) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO-wPOgVtqg

Question
What are real time virtual office hours?
Hint:
They operate a bit like a course chat room with some added features like microphones, and an instructor or teaching fellow is in the room at all times.

As reported in The Harvard Crimson on Monday, teaching fellows (Harvard parlance for TAs) for the course this semester will begin holding real-time, online help sessions for students this week. Using free, Java-based software, students can log on, chat with each other (via text or microphone) and even “raise their hands” with the click of a button, which adds them to a queue on the teaching fellow’s computer.
Andy Guess, "Office Hours: Coming to a Computer Near You," Inside Higher Ed, September 18, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/18/officehours

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

Question
What are the supposed Top 10 and the Top 100 e-Learning tools, at least in England?

Answer
Top 100 --- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html
Various experts list their Top 10 --- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/index.html

Jensen Comment
I totally disagree with the rankings of the Top 100 and the Top 10.

Where is Blackboard and WebCT? --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard

Where are the many important tools for handicapped learners? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

Where is Camtasia? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Where are the edutainment and learning game alternatives? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

Where is Matlab (used in virtually every U.S. university) --- --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB

Like it or not, Wikipedia is one of the most sought out sights in the world by e-Learners --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
There are risks, but the odds are high that users will get helpful learning information and links.

Where are HTML and related XML/RTF and XBRL markups? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm

Where are the many huge and free online libraries? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

Where are the important blogs and listservs? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

I could go on and on here!

Bob Jensen

August 3, 2007 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Bob:
I agree with you that the list is flawed - Toolbook should be #1

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

The Idiotic Top Tools for Learning Compiled by Jane Hart

"Top 100 Tech Tools for 2010," by Rick Lillie, Thinking Outside the Box Blog, October 20, 2010 ---
http://iaed.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/top-100-tech-tools-for-2010/

Each year, I look forward to the “Top 100 Tools for Learning” list compiled by Jane Hart (Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, UK). This year’s tools were recommended by 545 learning professionals from around the world. You may recognize many of the tools on the list. Some have been around for a while. Pay particular attention to tools shaded in “blue.” These are new to the 2010 list. Click the picture below to access the Top 100 Tools for Learning web page.

Jensen Comment
In the past I've been very critical of this supposed "Top 100 Tools for Learning." I'm still not impressed in 2010, but there are a few improvements ---
http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100-2010.html

Where is Blackboard and WebCT? --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard
In 2010 this was added at Rank 68 (far too low)

Where are the many important tools for handicapped learners? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
Jane seems to never find some of this great learning software for the disabled.

Where is Camtasia? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
In 2010 this was added at Rank 27 (finally)

Where are the edutainment and learning game alternatives? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

Where is Matlab (used in virtually every U.S. university) --- --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB

Like it or not, Wikipedia is one of the most sought out sights in the world by e-Learners --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
There are risks, but the odds are high that users will get helpful learning information and links.
In 2010 this was finally added at Rank 16. It should've been Rank 1.

Where are HTML and related XML/RTF and XBRL markups? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm

Where are the many huge and free online libraries? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
In 2010 various Google sites are mentioned, but not the vast Google Library Project ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/electronicliterature.htm#OnlineBookFinders

Where are the important blogs and listservs? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

I could go on and on here! Jane is not a pain, just a yawn!

Bob Jensen

August 3, 2007 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Bob:
I agree with you that the list is flawed - Toolbook should be #1

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring, management, and presentation technologies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.ht

August 3, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Richard

ToolBook should’ve been number 1 but it fumbled the ball. What proportion of e-Learners are now learning, today, from ToolBooks? My guess is that much less than one percent. A negligible proportion of instructors are developing learning materials using ToolBook dhtml files relative to FrontPage and Dreamweaver htm files.

The biggest innovation for e-Learners and authors was Adobe Acrobat’s tremendous development of online pdf files that could be read and electronically searched for free but not be tampered with by readers. Now major commercial publishing houses are putting new books on line as pdf files.

One of the biggest innovations I forgot to mention was the unknown (at least to me) date in which MS Office files (particularly ppt, doc, and xls files) could be downloaded and read from Web servers that at one time only could handle htm markups. In terms of e-learning htm, pdf, doc, xls, and ppt files are overwhelmingly the main files for e-Learning, although they are now joined by such files as xml files.

Another huge e-Learning innovation that I forgot to mention is the unknown (at least to me) date in which the above learning and research files could be attached to email messages. This made it easier to have private distributions (say to students in a class) without having to put files on Web, Blackboard, or WebCT servers. Anybody with email can not send files back and forth.

There is still a great risk of macro viruses when downloading MS Office files from the Web or email messages. However, most e-Learners are doing so from trusted Web sites and/or email senders such as files from their course instructors.

ToolBook could fade away and the world would hardly know about it or miss it.

Bob Jensen

Zotero software for storing, retrieving, organizing, and annotating digital documents --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zotero

Zotero is a free, open source extension for the Firefox browser, that enables users to collect, manage, and cite research from all types of sources from the browser. It is partly a piece of reference management software, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. On many major research websites such as digital libraries, Google Scholar, or even Amazon.com, Zotero detects when a book, article, or other resource is being viewed and with a mouse click finds and saves the full reference information to a local file. If the source is an online article or web page, Zotero can optionally store a local copy of the source. Users can then add notes, tags, and their own metadata through the in-browser interface. Selections of the local reference library data can later be exported as formatted bibliographies.
The program is produced by the Center for History and New Media of George Mason University and is currently available in public beta. It is open and extensible, allowing other users to contribute citation styles and site translators, and more generally for others who are building digital tools for researchers to expand the platform. The name is from Albanian language "to master".

It is aimed at replacing the more cumbersome traditional reference management software, originally designed to meet the demands of offline research

"Mark of Zotero," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, September 26, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/26/mclemee

Zotero is a tool for storing, retrieving, organizing, and annotating digital documents. It has been available for not quite a year. I started using it about six weeks ago, and am still learning some of the fine points, but feel sufficient enthusiasm about Zotero to recommend it to anyone doing research online. If very much of your work involves material from JSTOR, for example – or if you find it necessary to collect bibliographical references, or to locate Web-based publications that you expect to cite in your own work — then Zotero is worth knowing how to use. (You can install it on your computer for free; more on that in due course.)

Now, my highest qualification for testing a digital tool is, perhaps, that I have no qualifications for testing a digital tool. That is not as paradoxical as it sounds. The limits of my technological competence are very quickly reached. My command of the laptop computer consists primarily of the ability to (1) turn it on and (2) type stuff. This condition entails certain disadvantages (the mockery of nieces and nephews, for example) but it makes for a pretty good guinea pig.

And in that respect, I can report that the folks at George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media have done an exemplary job in designing Zotero. A relatively clueless person can learn to use it without exhaustive effort.

Still, it seems as if institutions that do not currently do so might want to offer tutorials on Zotero for faculty and students who may lack whatever gene makes for an intuitive grasp of software. Academic librarians are probably the best people to offer instruction. Aside from being digitally savvy, they may be the people at a university in the best position to appreciate the range of uses to which Zotero can be put.

For the absolute newbie, however, let me explain what Zotero is — or rather, what it allows you to do. I’ll also mention a couple of problems or limitations. Zotero is still under development and will doubtless become more powerful (that is, more useful) in later releases. But the version now available has numerous valuable features that far outweigh any glitches.

Suppose you go online to gather material on some aspect of a book you are writing. In the course of a few hours, you might find several promising titles in the library catalog, a few more with Amazon, a dozen useful papers via JSTOR, and three blog entries by scholars who are thinking aloud about some matter tangential to your project.

Continued in article

October 12, 2011 reply from Steve Hornick

I've used both Endnote and Zotero but now use a Mac product called Papers - if anyone has a Mac I'd highly recommend looking into it: http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/

Bob Jensen's threads on how scholars search are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

How to Avoid Expensive Adobe Software for Converting MS Office Documents to PDF Files

"Creating Documents for All to Read Inexpensive Ways To Convert a Variety Of Content to PDFs," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2007; Page D9 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118652753636390978.html

For years, people have accessed a variety of digital content in one of the most universally accepted formats: Adobe's Portable Document Format, better known as the PDF. A PDF holds images and text without altering a document's original fonts and layout. It can be searched, protected with a password, disabled from printing and enriched with bookmarks and hyperlinks that make it more navigable.

But while Adobe provides a free reader for viewing PDFs, creating PDFs yourself can be costly and confusing, even though the format is great for saving and sharing documents of almost any kind including images, Web pages, Word documents and emails. For users who want higher-end PDF creation and collaboration software, Adobe Systems Inc. offers its $450 Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional software program. But that's pricey for most casual users. So this week I tested some inexpensive or free methods for making PDFs.

There are plenty of Windows programs available for download online that will help you create basic PDFs. On Windows computers, I tried three programs, starting with the $20 standard version of deskPDF from Plano, Texas-based Docudesk Corp. (www.Docudesk.com). I tested a stripped-down and less-expensive version of Adobe's program called Create Adobe PDF Online, which works by uploading your document at www.CreatePDF.com and costs $10 monthly or $100 annually. And I also used a free program called CutePDF from Acro Software Inc. (www.CutePDF.com).

If you own a Mac, things are even simpler. Macs come out of the box with the ability to turn documents into PDFs, and I tested that function as well.

DeskPDF and CutePDF worked roughly the same way, though deskPDF costs $20 and CutePDF is free. Adobe's less-expensive program offered a few more features than deskPDF and CutePDF, such as the ability to add password encryption to a document or to make it unprintable by others. Making PDFs on the Mac was a cinch, including options to compress or encrypt a PDF. None of these methods allowed me to add extra features to PDFs like bookmarks and hyperlinks; for that, you'll need a more serious program.

When Microsoft's Office 2007 program shipped early this year, many people expected that it would have the built-in ability to save documents in PDF format; it didn't. Users can find a patch that fixes this on Microsoft's Web site.

Apple's operating system has long been known for the ease with which it can create PDFs using built-in tools. Put simply, any document that can be printed from a Mac can also be turned into a PDF. Users follow the normal steps necessary to print a document or Web site (usually File, Print), but can choose a button on the Print screen labeled "PDF" that converts the document.

In seconds, I turned all types of documents on my iMac into PDFs, including images in JPEG and TIF formats, emails, Word documents and Web sites. This last conversion was helpful for saving not just a view of the current screen, but the entire site from the top of the page to the bottom.

Options labeled "Compress PDF" and "Encrypt PDF" can be chosen in this Print screen. I chose Encrypt PDF and protected a PDF using a password in one quick step. The option to compress a PDF will decrease the size of an image in a document, but won't decrease the size of a text-only document.

Two of the three Windows programs use a method similar to Apple's, letting me send documents or Web sites into print mode and converting them into PDFs. Downloading and installing deskPDF or CutePDF adds a virtual printer driver to the computer. Rather than choosing a separate button labeled "PDF," the conversion program is selected from a list of printers, and hitting the Print button saves the document as a PDF file. The first time I did this, I thought my document was printed rather than saved because a printer icon appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, as if the document was printing. But a screen appeared asking where I wanted to save the new PDF, and I specified a location.

Docudesk offers free 24-hour technical support with all of its deskPDF programs, even trial versions. The company also touts its $40 deskUNPDF program, which restores PDFs to Word documents for editing purposes, one of the features also found in Adobe's $450 product.

CutePDF writer and deskPDF must be used with separately installed converter programs, but these are small and free, and their installation is prompted after each of the core programs is downloaded. Both programs are also offered in upgraded versions that cost $50 for CutePDF Pro and $30 for deskPDF Pro, enabling advanced features like hyperlinks, encryption, password protection and printing restrictions.

Adobe's Create Adobe PDF Online program offers a few more features than the others, but feels a bit disconnected because it uploads documents to the Web for PDF conversion rather than converting documents in an installed program.

An option called Create Adobe PDF Online Printer installs a printer driver on your PC, like deskPDF and CutePDF. But this saves your PDF online forcing you to retrieve it via Adobe's Web site, an emailed link or an emailed attachment.

After registering to use Adobe's online conversion product, users must select the file or Web page intended for PDF conversion. Security features are optional with each document, such as requiring a password to view it or not allowing others to print it. I tried both successfully. Once converted, a document can be delivered to you via email in a link or attachment. It can also be retrieved from a Conversion History section on the site or converted directly on the site.

Most of these conversion programs are available in some free capacity. DeskPDF can be used five times free of charge in the standard and professional versions before it starts adding a watermark to each PDF, which is intrusive. Adobe's program can be used five times for each email that you register before you must subscribe to its conversion service.

If you need to save a document in a format that has the greatest likelihood of being viewable by all of your recipients, PDFs are the way to go, and they aren't difficult to make.

Is Facebook the New MySpace?
MySpace has an impressive lead today, but things can change quickly in the fluid world of mass-market social networking sites. Just ask Friendster. First Friendster was everybody's favorite social networking site. Then Friendster fell out of vogue--precipitously--and people stopped going there. In its place, MySpace became the darling of the Web. MySpace provided not only a free place to host your own online identity, but a full set of tools for meeting and interacting with others. Now everybody is talking about Facebook, which fits the same description, but in a very different way. Will Facebook become the next MySpace? I think so, and here's why.
Mark Sullivan, PC World via The Washington Post, July 20, 2007 --- Click Here

From the University of Chicago
BiblioVault: An Alternative for Long-term Storage of Digital Book Files

BiblioVault helps scholarly publishers preserve and extend the value of their books. We provide long-term storage of digital book files for our member presses, as well as a wide range of scanning, printing, transfer, and conversion services. Launched in late 2001 by the University of Chicago Press, BiblioVault operates under the umbrella of Chicago Distribution Services, which also oversees a digital printing center, the Chicago Digital Distribution Center (CDDC). The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supported the development of BiblioVault and the CDDC with three grants totaling $3.2 million.
http://www.bibliovault.org/BV.index.epl

Digital Production Strategies for Scholarly Publishers, by Denise Nitterhouse, BiblioVault from the University of Chicago, 2005 --- http://www.bibliovault.org/docs/digital_prod_strategies.pdf

SCHOLARLY BOOK PUBLISHING

Production

Offset versus Digital Printing

Specifications, Processes, and Quality

Cost and Quantity Trade-offs

Schedule

Additional Considerations

Production Decisions

Scholarly Book Sales Patterns

Scholarly Press Overprinting and Storage Costs

Production Decision Making and

Management Processes

DIGITAL PRODUCTION STRATEGY EXAMPLES

Paperback Reprints

Hardcover Digital Reprints

Hardcover Digital Frontlist Printing

CHANGING PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION MODELS

Integrating and Automating Production and Fulfillment

Short-Run Digital Printing (SRDP)

An Oldie but Goodie

An Oversize Classic

Saved by SRDP

Impact of CDDC SRDP

Harvard University Press: Ultra-Short Inventory-Replenishment Program (USIRP)

MIT Press Classics Series: Bringing Books Back into Print

Print-on-Demand (POD)

Electronic Distribution (E-books)

CHOOSING PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION ALTERNATIVES

Effects of Digital printing

Outstanding Issues

From Carnegie-Mellon University: How to Turn Your Photographs into 3-D Photographs

"A New Dimension for Your Photos Web service Fotowoosh wants to be the Flickr of 3-D," by Wade Roush, MIT's Technology Review, April 27, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18596/

Looking at the photo prints from your Washington, D.C., vacation can prompt memories of being at real, three-dimensional places like the Lincoln Memorial. But what if you could actually walk into your photograph and stand at Lincoln's feet all over again--or at least zoom inside a 3-D version of your image on a computer screen? A new Web service called Fotowoosh promises to deliver such an experience, courtesy of computer-vision researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh.

Derek Hoiem, a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, has spent the past year and a half figuring out how to get software to convert flat images into 3-D virtual-reality models that can be manipulated on-screen. Working with faculty members Alexei Efros and Martial Hebert, Hoiem came up with a machine-learning system that identifies various surfaces and their orientations based on what it has learned from examining previous photos. In essence, Fotowoosh frees the person viewing a photograph from the photographer's point of view so that he or she can explore perspectives other than the one the camera actually captured.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of education technology are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Camtasia --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/whatsnew.asp

Videos from the company that developed Camtasia for the PC and the Mac
Revolutionary Ideas in Learning: News, stories, and training from TechSmith ---
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4321D8B4B19EAE9F

Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft Office

From the University of Illinois Issues in Scholarly Communication Blog on December 13, 2006 --- http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/

Microsoft has created a free add-in that enables you to embed a Creative Commons copyright license into a document that you create using the Microsoft application Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. With a Creative Commons license, authors can express their intentions regarding how their works may be used by others.

To learn more about Creative Commons, please visit its web site, www.creativecommons.org. To learn more about the choices among the Creative Commons licenses, see http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses.

Download the Creative Commons Microsoft Office add-in from the Microsoft website. For a short URL to this resource, use this tinyURL:
http://tinyurl.com/y9y634

Installation of the Creative Commons Microsoft Office add-in will add an option to your File menu whereby you can easily add the CC logo and usage statement to your document.

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

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

Teaching Channel --- https://www.teachingchannel.org/

"10 Faculty Perspectives on What Works in Lecture Capture," Chronicle of Higher Education, November 4, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/10-Faculty-Perspectives-on/129268/

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

Screencasting
ScreenCast from TechSmith is a leading storage/server alternative for your Jing and Camtasia videos ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechSmith

However, there are quite a few other screeencast video capturing alternatives and hosts ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software
This is a pretty impressive Wikipedia comparison site!

Bob Jensen's video helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Technology in the Arts --- http://www.technologyinthearts.org/

Camtasia v7.1
Closed Captioning for Camtasia Videos

October 12, 2010 message from Richard Campbell

The primary new feature is speech-to-text recognition for closed captioning.

This facilitates section 508 compliance for the hearing impaired.

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

Bob Jensen's threads on technology for the hearing disabled are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

Question
What other ways can I use my new sunglasses with a built-in Camcorder?

Here are a few starting thoughts:

My neighbor Lon has just driven across part of my lawn and crashes into a birch tree. He appears to be unconscious while slumped over the steering wheel in his Cadillac Escalade. I race out wearing my cool sunglasses and capture video of his wife breaking out the rear window with a golf club in a frantic effort to unlock the car. (Actually I think Nancy would be smart enough to find a window closer to a door lock). I later sell my video to the paparazzi for a million dollars. I then give Lon and Nancy $8,000 for repairs to their Escalade. But that's not enough! They sue me for my million dollars and ask the judge to throw in my cool sunglasses as well.
I can wear my cool sunglasses on mountain hikes and capture video of a hawk in flight, bear dung in the middle of the trail, an owl sleeping by day on a pine bough, and a huge moose sending ripples across the pond as he lifts his rack out from under the mirror-like surface of a reflecting pool.
On a moonlit night I can capture the audio of frogs singing in my pond or capture distant hoot owls singing to each other most summer nights. There's even the shivering scream of a Fisher cat on some dark nights. The video will probably not show up in the dark of night, but I can still capture audio with my cool sun glasses.
I can capture skiers who are mere moving dots ten miles off as they wind down the steep slopes of Cannon Mountain.
Not wanting to appear too cool in public, I can pull the colored sun shades out of my cool glasses and capture inspiring moments of a speaker or a musical performance such as the local women's choir in concert at our Town Meeting Hall next Sunday afternoon (really).
Before I retired from teaching, I used to set a video camera on a tripod and capture student team presentations that were part of the project assignments in my two graduate courses. My cool sunglasses have the capacity for eight hours of video recording, and I could capture other memorable classroom moments such as when I try to make a sleeping student more comfortable or particularly like the plaid fabric in a mini skirt. I mean teaching has its own rewards.

Unfortunately and truthfully, my wife's favorite cable TV channel is QVC ---
http://www.qvc.com/
QVC generally has high quality merchandise. Erika mostly buys clothes, gifts, and gadgets for me that I can never find on those rare occasions where a gadget might be useful.

Her latest purchase is four pairs of sunglasses with a built-in camcorder --- Click Here
She intends to give them away as gifts this holiday season.
Here is a site with a picture and the following description ---
http://nugossips.com/eagle-i-built-in-videoaudio-recording-camera-sunglass

Eagle-I Built-in Video/Audio Recording Camera
Sunglass is designed with polarized lenses that provide UV protection. The Eagle-I Camera Sunglass comes with built-in video camera to record video and audio content for up to three hours on the internal memory. The camera is positioned over the bridge of the nose for minimal visibility, while still providing a wide recording range. It is very easy to use, just push a button to start recording. A slot on the arm of the glasses allows you to input your own MicroSD memory card for more recording time up to eight hours with a 2GB MicroSD card, not included. QVC offers Eagle-I Built-in Video/Audio Recording Camera Sunglass for $79.20

Interestingly, the price above is stated as $79 whereas the QVC site has them with a crossed out $96 price that makes you think you're getting a special deal for $87. Erika falls for that every time. What's worse is that the QVC site also claims the "retail value" is $192. That's stimated the same way banks are now estimating the value of poisoned loan portfolios.

My cool sunglasses plug into a USB port for battery recharging and video downloading. Video playback works on either Quicktime software or my favorite free video software called VLC Media Player --- http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
My favorite would be Camtasia Producer if this software was not so limited with respect to what codecs it will play.

You can search video and start the video when a particular word crops up
YouTube's Interactive Transcripts --- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/youtubes-interactive-transcripts.html

YouTube added a cool feature for videos with closed captions: you can now click on the "transcript" button to expand the entire listing. If you click on a line, YouTube will show the excerpt from the video corresponding to the text. If you use your browser's find feature, you can even search inside the video. Here's an an example of video that includes a transcript.

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

Here is my first video capture, to date, with my cool sunglasses ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/VideoCoolSunglasses/Vid0000.3gp

To be honest I would probably use my cool sunglasses more if they only captured still photos since it's a bit more convenient for me to put still photos on the Web, and readers of things like Tidbits probably prefer viewing pictures rather than having to download my home videos.

But now I'm watching each and every day for Lon to drive across my lawn and crash into a tree. Actually its more likely to be a partying golfer in a golf cart on Lon's golf course behind my back lawn. The Sunset Hill House golf course is owned and operated by Lon and Nancy Henderson. Fortunately, the golf course was placed into a New Hampshire Conservatancy so that it can never be developed into anything other than a golf course. The golfers are really friendly folks.

We have a son Mike in Yuba City, California who owns a pro shop. He sent me a sign that reads as follows:

"When I die bury my balls beside my old bag."
(His mother doesn't care for that sign.)

I nailed the sign to the side of my barn so that golfers can read it while moving toward the third tee.
Erika has not yet discovered that I tacked it on the barn.

December 3, 2009 reply from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@TERRY.UGA.EDU]

Bob,

This cool new product reminds me of a GAAP issue of many years ago. I was in the national office of E&Y and we were discussing the amortization of film costs for one of the major movie studios. Those costs are amortized based on total expected revenue per film. At that time, domestic revenues were still the major part of a film's total expected gross, but foreign revenues were also quite large and sales to both broadcast and cable television were becoming larger. More importantly, video rentals were becoming a much larger source of revenue and the client in question was predicting that this would increase substantially in estimating future revenue. Our practice office auditors were naturally skeptical and asked for advice from "national." As we discussed this issue, I observed that if we had had the same conversation several years earlier we wouldn't have even thought of sales to broadcast television, much less video rentals, so perhaps it was reasonable to assume expanding sources of revenues. Then I went on to speculate that sometime in the future there could even be a product where individuals could watch movies on the backs of their glasses while commuting on trains into New York City, for example! It turns out that my prediction came true!

Denny Beresford

Pete Wilson provides some great videos on how to make accounting judgments ---
http://www.navigatingaccounting.com/

The “Professional Judgment” Problem: Do the ends justify the means?

"The “Professional Judgment” Problem," by David Albrecht, The Summa, February 11, 2010 ---
http://profalbrecht.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/the-professional-judgment-problem/

There’s quite a discussion going on over at AECM now, centered around whether or not corporate disclosures via XBRL tagged data will be audited, and therefore receive some sort of assurance blessing.

One professor whom I respect a great deal is arguing that it is in the best interest of companies to make the best and most honest disclosures as they seek to raise capital, and it is in the best interest of auditors to associate themselves with only those companies that make the best and most honest disclosures via XBRL (and presumably via financial statements, also).

To which I say: hogwash!

I’ve seen enough corporate reporting shenanigans, and auditor “nod-and-wink” assurance, that I have concluded that there are indeed sufficient incentives in place for corporate agents to try to game the system by mis-reporting financial results. I don’t see why, if there is substantial non-compliance with GAAP, that XBRL tagging would be a refuge of purity. Moreover, there are incentives in place for auditors to fail to object to minor transgressions. Some of the times, the incentives are sufficiently large so that auditors fail to object to major transgressions. I guess I don’t see why assurance on XBRL reporting will be any different.

I certainly don’t trust corporate executives or auditors, as classes, to properly exercise “professional” judgment. Oh, proper judgment may be exercised more than half the time of the time, but given the risk averse nature of many investors, it is enough for a few bad apples to give the rest a bad name. It is the many examples of bad reporting and bad auditing (while admittedly in the minority) that are enough to destroy trust.

A spouse only need go wayward one time in order to destroy any trust the other felt. From that point on, the wayward spouse may be preceived to be untrustworthy even though a majority of days end without an unsanctioned hookup.

I believe it is not always in a company’s best interest to make an honest disclosure, and it is not always in an auditor’s interest to demand proper accounting. That is because many costs to misbehaving are long-term, but the rewards for transgressing are short term in nature. When making certain decisions, sometimes the focus of either corporate executive or auditor can shift to the short-term on a moment’s notice.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
David has entered into the very controversial "little white lie" rationalization of deception. The truth should stand on its own in financial reporting, because once we start rationalizing little white lies we never no when to stop. Pretty soon a thousand dollar white lies here and a hundred dollar white lies there begin to accumulate until we have over a billion dollar accumulation of lies --- which is exactly what happened in Worldcom.

If you really want to take up the debate of whether the ends justify the means, then have your students first watch the video of how Worldcom's Controller, David Meyers, at the time of the infractions justified his illegal actions on the premise that the ends justified the means --- because investors and employees in Worldcom would be better off by deceptive rather than honest accounting in the "short term."

June 15, 2009 message from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@TERRY.UGA.EDU]

I apologize if this is something that has already been mentioned but I just became aware of a very interesting video of former WorldCom Controller David Meyers at Baylor University last March - http://www.baylortv.com/streaming/001496/300kbps_str.asx

The first 20 minutes is his presentation, which is pretty good - but the last 45 minutes or so of Q&A is the best part. It is something that would be very worthwhile to show to almost any auditing or similar class as a warning to those about to enter the accounting profession.

Denny Beresford

Jensen Comment on Some Things You Can Learn from the Video
David Meyers became a convicted felon largely because he did not say no when his supervisor (Scott Sullivan, CFO) asked him to commit illegal and fraudulent accounting entries that he, Meyers, knew were wrong. Interestingly, Andersen actually lost the audit midstream to KPMG, but KPMG hired the same same audit team that had been working on the audit while employed by Andersen. David Myers still feels great guilt over how much he hurt investors. The implication is that these auditors were careless in a very sloppy audit but were duped by Worldcom executives rather than be an actual part of the fraud. In my opinion, however, that the carelessness was beyond the pale --- this was really, really, really bad auditing and accounting.

At the time he did wrong, he rationalized that he was doing good by shielding Worldcom from bankruptcy and protecting employees, shareholders, and creditors. However, what he and other criminals at Worldcom did was eventually make matters worse. He did not anticipate this, however, when he was covering up the accounting fraud. He could've spent 65 years in prison, but eventually only served ten months in prison because he cooperated in convicting his bosses. In fact, all he did after the fact is tell the truth to prosecutors. His CEO, Bernard Ebbers, got 25 years and is still in prison.

The audit team while with Andersen and KPMG relied too much on analytical review and too little on substantive testing and did not detect basic accounting errors from Auditing 101 (largely regarding capitalization of over $1 billion expenses that under any reasonable test should have been expensed).

Meyers feels that if Sarbanes-Oxley had been in place it may have deterred the fraud. It also would've greatly increased the audit revenues so that Andersen/KPMG could've done a better job.

To Meyers' credit, he did not exercise his $17 million in stock options because he felt that he should not personally benefit from the fraud that he was a part of while it was taking place. However, he did participate in the fraud to keep his job (and salary). He also felt compelled to follow orders the CFO that he knew was wrong.

The hero is detecting the fraud was Worldcom's internal auditor Cynthia Cooper who subsequently wrote the book:
Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. ISBN 978-0-470-12429) http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0470124296/ref=sib_dp_pt#

Meyers does note that the whistleblower, Cooper, is now a hero to the world, but when she blew the whistle she was despised by virtually everybody at Worldcom. This is a price often paid by whistleblowers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#WhistleBlowing

Bob Jensen's threads on the Worldcom fraud are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#WorldcomFraud

Pete Wilson provides some great videos on how to make accounting judgments ---
http://www.navigatingaccounting.com/

Other possible source material for ethics, independence, and professionalism courses is available at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Professionalism

Bob Jensen's video helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
This includes software for capturing still screens of streaming video and capturing of streaming video as video.

Internet users can view video either as video file downloads (that may or may not be stored on a hard drive) or as streaming video (that does not entail downloading a media file but can be captured with streaming media software).

Update from the AAA Accounting Commons --- http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home
I thank Rick for sharing his expertise in the new VoiceThread multimedia education and communication technology.
Accounting Professor Rick Lillie Uses VoiceThread to Create Streaming Video --- http://iaed.wordpress.com/

If you have not yet discovered VoiceThread, I strongly recommend that you click on the link below and explore the VoiceThread website. You are in for a real technology treat!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VOICETHREAD WEBSITE

I use VoiceThread to create streaming video lectures, to create tutorials explaining how to solve problems, to explain answers to quiz and examination questions, and more. VoiceThread is easy to use, is similar to PowerPoint (but much more robust), and is web-hosted which makes it easy for you to share VoiceThread presentations with your students and colleagues.

During a presentation that I gave at the recent 2008 American Accounting Association (AAA) Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California, I talked about VoiceThread. To help participants to see how easy it is to create and share dynamic presentations with VoiceThread, I put together a short presentation that explains how to use VoiceThread. Click on the link below to view the short tutorial program.

Click here to view a short tutorial program explaining how to use VoiceThread

I encourage you to sign up for a free account. Learn to use VoiceThread. If you like what you create, then you can upgrade to the “Pro” version, which is very inexpensive. To get the full benefit of using VoiceThread, you need a headset/microphone and webcam. To begin, use the tools included in VoiceThread. If you have questions about VoiceThread, use the “Contact Me” option on the right side of the screen. Send me a message. Include your email and/or telephone number. I will be happy to work with you.

Enjoy!
Rick Lillie

Jensen Comment
VoiceThread has an advantage in allowing a community of users to comment (in multimedia) comments on an instructional video.
It's drawback is that it uses a lot of storage and bandwidth for talking heads.

Some VoiceThread pricing information is given at http://voicethread.com/pricing/pro/
It is possible to get small amounts of video file storage free, but it can get really expensive when the community goes on and on with long commentaries.
In the pro version, file sizes are limited to 100 Mb. This is about one tenth the size of a 10 minute YouTube video. YouTube generally limits file sizes to 1 Gb or 10 minutes of compressed video such as mpg compression --- http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hlrm=en&answer=57924
Colleges can stream much larger videos on YouTube such as the courses that UC Berkeley makes available on YouTube with over one hour of video for each lecture in a course.

VoiceThread makes it possible to have somewhat longer videos in a 100 Mb file by using small video screens. Note how Rick does this at http://voicethread.com/#q.b173180.i923368

YouTube also allows any users to comment in text format such that commentaries can accompany videos on YouTube. The huge advantage of YouTube is that videos can be uploaded, viewed, and even downloaded for free. VoiceThread, for an annual fee, has more features.

Although I've not tried VoiceThread, it would seem that cost and file size limits make this less attractive than YouTube.

Other video streaming alternatives are summarized at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

Camtasia users should note that TechSmith will serve up streaming videos in a utility called ScreenCast --- http://www.techsmith.com/screencast.asp

You can read the following at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

However, in most instances open sharing videos are streaming (using the term loosely here) videos for which there is no file to download. In that case the video must be captured in total or in part by software designed for such purposes. The software I like for video capturing is called Camtasia Recorder --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/record.asp
Also see http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/education.asp
This is cheaper alternative than many more specialized products for streaming video capture. You can download my PowerPoint file about Camtasia at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/
Links to examples are given in this slide show.

Most faculty serve up video from their university's servers, YouTube, and Tech Smith's Screencast, but there are other alternatives

"How to Choose the Right Host For Your Online Video," By Robin Miller, ReadWriteWeb, July 25, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/07/how-to-choose-the-right-host-f.php

Bob Jensen's video helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm

Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Other streaming media alternatives are summarized at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

August 31, 2008 reply from Rick Lillie at the AAA Accounting Commons --- http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home

Hi Bob,

Thank you for your comments about VoiceThread. I would like to expand on several points that you raised.

Regarding the way VoiceThread works

VoiceThread is a hosted service that can be used in a variety of ways. For example, VoiceThread may be used to create

a digital discussion board where comments may be made in text, audio, or video formats.

streaming audio commentaries (e.g., streaming lectures, tutorials and personalized feedback to students).

streaming video commentaries (e.g., steaming lectures, tutorials, and personalized feedback to students).

Currently, VoiceThread is offered in both free and low-fee options. The pricing screen needs a little more explanation.

When using the "free" version, you are limited to three active VoiceThread programs (files) at any given time. If you need to go beyond three active VoiceThread files, simply delete one or replace it with the new program.

The file size and time limitations apply to EACH VoiceThread program created. This is not an overall limitations (e.g., for all three VoiceThread programs if you use the "free" version).

The "Pro" version is extremely generous in that you can create an unlimited number of VoiceThread programs during a subscription year, with each file including up to 500 slides and being up to 100 MB in size.

You create your slides on your own computer and then upload them into VoiceThread. Once uploaded, this is where the production process takes place. Commenting on individual slides is done online through the VoiceThread interface screen. You control

how your VoiceThread will be made available to viewers (i.e., public or private).

whether viewers can post reply comments to individual slides within the program.

whether individual slides may be downloaded.

The VoiceThread file is condensed which reduces overall file size for a VoiceThread program.

Pros vs Cons of VoiceThread

VoiceThread recognizes the need to maintain privacy of materials created for use within a learning environment (i.e., face-to-face, blended, or online classroom setting). You control who may view a VoiceThread. While a VoiceThread may be viewed through VoiceThread's social network (i.e., visable to everyone), you may limit viewing. This is important with respect to satisfying "fair use" of copyrighted materials.

VoiceThread is extremely easy to use as compared to other software programs (e.g., Camtasia).

To create a streaming video VoiceThread, all you need is your computer, an internet connection, a headset/microphone, and a webcam. If you do not have a headset/microphone, you can use a telephone to record the audio track.

VoiceThread does not currently meet all ADA (Sect. 508) requirements. However, the developers have said that VoiceThread is expected to be fully ADA compliant by early to mid-2009.

VoiceThread does not currently include a closed-captioning option. YouTube announced yesterday (8/30/08) that it has added a closed-captioning feature for use with videos uploaded to YouTube.

VoiceThread includes a feature that the other software programs do not include. VoiceThread makes it possible to annotate a slide while the program is being recorded. All other programs record static slides and attach an audio and/or video track to the slide. The capturing of the live annotation adds a "warmth" to the delivery of the content that brings the student's learning experience closer to what would be experienced in a live, face-to-face classroom. I have found that this "single feature" improves the learning experience for students, especially when used in blended and online learning settings.

IN CLOSING

There are lots of ways to create rich-media instructional materials. I use them extensively in my accounting courses.

Personally, I do not like Camtasia, Adobe Presenter, Camtasia Recorder and similar software programs. For me, these programs are too complex to use. I like processes to be as simple as possible. This is why I prefer VoiceThread.

VoiceThread allows me to focus on creating the slides, pictures (jpeg files), Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) files, etc., that I want to include in a streaming presentation. VoiceThread makes it easy to go from slides to streaming video with embedded commentary. VoiceThread saves the file and gives me a URL to the program or the html code for embedding a player into course materials.

The overall process is simple and easy to use.

Many accounting faculty that I have talked with seem hesitant to include technology in their courses and to use technology tools when creating course materials. When I find something that will make life easier, I share the information.

Thank you for your comments. I enjoy this type of discussion.

Best wishes,

Rick Lillie

August 31, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen at the AAA Accounting Commons --- http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home

Hi Rick,

I really appreciate your detailed elaboration on video creation alternatives. Thank you so much! Please keep them coming at the AAA Commons. You obviously have unique technology skills.

The one area where I disagree with you is on Camtasia. I personally learned how to use Camtasia in less than an hour and then recorded many technical videos for my students to use outside the classroom. It cut down on the traffic through my office door by about 95% from students who just did follow the technical details in class. More importantly these videos (especially the ones about MS Access technicalities) helped me explain things that I forgot how to do over time. Examples of my Camtasia videos can be found at the following links:

ACCT 5342 (AIS videos) --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

ACCT 5341 (Accounting Theory videos) at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/

I even prepared a tutorial on how to record (capture) computer image videos and produce (compress) them into smaller files for storage and delivery --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
(I suggest clicking on the CamtasiaTutorial.wmv file)

I hope accounting professors and students will not be scared away from Camtasia before even trying it out. A limited and free version may be attempted first. It is called Jing --- http://www.jingproject.com/

But an even better suggestion is to download Camtasia Studio itself on a free trial basis --- http://www.jingproject.com/

Another interesting product from TechSmith is called UserView. Suppose a student is located somewhere else in the world. UserView allows a professor to both see and record what is happening on a student's computer screen such that the professor can analyze the moves and suggest to the student how to do something better. Similarly, the student can see what is happening on a professor's computer while he/she narrates. Good stuff --- http://www.techsmith.com/uservue.asp

But for me, the best thing since grapefruit is Camtasia Studio for producing videos for my own servers, YouTube, and possibly even VoiceThread. For YouTube I suggest choosing mpg compressions after recording a wmv video.

Bob Jensen's video helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Thanks Rick,

Bob Jensen

XtraNormal --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xtranormal

Xtranormal is a website which hosts text-to-speech based computer animated videoclips which can be created by any user and uploaded by a downloadable program or created directly online. It has had little online advertising and has spread by word of mouth and by being uploaded to Facebook and other social media sites.One website refers to controversy about an employee from Best Buy being fired for uploading an animated video complaining about customer service.

The website offers either a free trial program to be downloaded to the computer with a fairly userfriendly interface, though limited to simple animation or creating a video while logged into the website. Popular user-created animations are available to watch.

A growing collection of amateur animators use a do-it-yourself Web site called Xtranormal to vent comically about the academic life. And to teach.
The online animation site they use has become a tool for teaching as well as satire
"So You Think an English Professor's Life Is a Cartoon," by Mark Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/So-You-Think-an-English/125954/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

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:

AIS Cost Intermediate 1 and 2 Tax Auditing Advanced GNP or NFP Any other advanced accounting, like advanced cost.

Thank you,

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