Category Archives: Digital Living

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Changing Fate with a Screen: High School Live Cast in China

From MIT’s open courseware to the proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), I have seen a lot efforts being taken towards blending advancements in technology with the goodwill of making knowledge accessible to all. As an online learning professional, I have been following reports and research on the impact of open education, but never before have I been so stunned by the results of a report. The report, originally published in the weekly edition of Chinese Youth newspaper in Dec 12, 2018, was about a program that provides a full-day live broadcast of a prestigious high school to 248 high schools in the rural areas of China.  

Instead of listening to their own instructors, students in the rural or “far-end” high schools watch a live broadcast of instruction from a high school in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province. According to the report, the launch of project faced strong resistance from teachers in these rural schools. They protested by tearing books apart. Some teachers even took a whole week off and left students “staring” at the screen by themselves.

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Augmented Reality, Korean Dramas, and Higher Education

You probably asking yourself what do augmented reality (AR)and Korean dramas have to do with each other? Well, in December 2018 Korea debuted a new drama on Netflix, Memories of Alhambra, which revolved around a groundbreaking AR game based on medieval battles in Alhambra. The main character of the drama, Yoo Jin Woo, is a CEO of an investment company that specializes in optical devices. One optical device he creates was a contact lens that allows users to interact with AR content. For Jin Woo, getting his hands on the next big AR game was imperative. This leads to a late night phone call from an AR game creator, Jung Se Joo, telling him they need to meet ASAP otherwise he might sell his game to Jin Woo’s competitor. This gets Jin Woo on plane to Granada, Spain, and thus begins his AR journey.

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Video Lecture Production Tip: Extracting Videos from PowerPoint

I frequently work with faculty who want to create a video lecture for an online course using the PowerPoint decks they present in the classroom.

I have misgivings about PowerPoint as a classroom presentation tool to start with (not the least of which is the problem of cognitive load [Mayer1]), but that’s a topic for another discussion. Faculty like them, and an instructional designer (like yours truly) learns to pick their battles.

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Review of the Best Free Quiz Games: Kahoot vs. Poll Everywhere Competitions

I’ve been using Kahoot for several years to create competitive quiz games like 21 blitz for my students. It’s a great tool for reviewing previously covered concepts and breaking up lectures with quick knowledge checks. So, when a colleague encouraged me to check out Poll Everywhere’s new Competitions feature, I was skeptical. I have students who literally cheer when I announce that it’s time for a Kahoot quiz. Even hard-to-impress faculty get caught up in the competition during workshops. They overthink their team names, agonize over answer choices, and trash talk their neighbors as points are tallied. I couldn’t possibly abandon Kahoot and run away with another quiz tool after everything we’ve been through, could I?

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Page Formatting: Yes You Scan!

Are you reading this?

How about this?

  • This is a little out of the ordinary, but I bet you’re reading.
  • Maybe you aren’t.
  • How can we tell?

Readers scan in very predictable ways and patterns. The basics are pretty simple. We jump to bolded text and don’t expect to see giant, bold statements. We read with a different emphasis when text is italicized. We scan immediately to images  on the page. Big, long paragraphs **like this one** are tiresome to readers and often get skipped while scanning. Formatting text in an unexpected way can throw your reader off, but using page formatting strategically can guide your reader through a page and help keep them engaged. Some of the tactics used in best-practice writing for the web may also be useful for academic writing and assignment construction.

You’re definitely reading this.

Most of the research being done around page scanning patterns is being done so with web content, not academia, in mind. However, some of the research done for web content writing may be helpful as you write or create resources for students.

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Considering Student Privacy

Your password will expire in 10 days. Your connection is not secure. Would you like to enable two-factor authentication? Do you want to trust this site?

We are frequently reminded that security breaches are not impossible and no captcha is foolproof. Each day our actions impact our digital footprint and as educators, we are doubly tasked with accounting for what we require of students. While all modalities of teaching can take advantage of incredible opportunities provided by exciting and creative digital tools, in the words of the late Stan Lee: “with great power, there must also come great responsibility.”

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The State of Mobile Learning

The use of mobile devices for education has been an interest of mine since 2011. But a lot has changed since the days of the iPhone 4 and the Nexus S: smartphones, which used to be the cutting edge of consumer technology are now ubiquitous to the point of being taken for granted. And technology vendors, who used to think of mobile as an afterthought, are developing apps and services with mobile compatibility as the first priority.

And I’ve seen attitudes shift among faculty too. As recently as 2015, many faculty I interacted with saw using smartphones for learning as so radical as to be frightening. In the last year, many faculty seem to view the notion as so obvious as to be boring.

Given these shifts in technology and attitudes towards the technology, this is a good time to check in on the current state of mobile learning, and it’s trajectory going forward.

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Hear Your Text: Benefits of Text to Speech

What happens when you get stumped while working on a piece of writing? Many writers, students, academics, and others choose to visit writing centers. More often than not, the first thing the writing center will suggest is to read the work aloud, and listen to what has been written. Why? Because your brain processes information differently based on how you receive it. Sometimes the key to writing is actually putting aside your pen (or keyboard) and taking a moment to listen to what you have written.

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Preparing for the Future When the Virtual is so Real

PS4 gaming consoleLike any mom of teens, I am trying to pull my 13-year-old son away from his game console and get him to try something that I think would benefit him for his growth—something like reading!

“But books are history,” Grant claimed. “And this…” he tilted his head toward the screen with his hands still fixated on the bat-shaped controller, “is the future.”

But, Grant, you see, history is…

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Organizing the Digital Professorship

Female office worker and messy file cabinetSummer means vacation and working on next year’s course updates. But many faculty face a challenge that their physical and computer desktops have in common: chaos and clutter. Files for research, course materials, lecture notes, emails; it can all get overwhelming. Although we all have our personal quirks when it comes to managing our digital assets, taking steps to minimize friction from these habits can ease working with others, as well as free up time and energy to focus on pedagogical matters.

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