Teaching With Web 2.0 - conference paper

Click on the title above, or try here, to download the MS Word file for a paper titled:

Social Software in Tourism, Event Management and Tourism Education

that I recently presented at the 3rd Tourism Outlook Conference in conjunction with the Global Events Congress II, 16-18 July 2007, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Event Management section is rather weak, as I added that mostly for the conference theme. In addition, I wrote this for the conference proceedings, so there are no references cited. I mostly just wanted to get it out for people to see and use. A more formal version will be submitted to an journal some day (which means it would not be out for a couple of years).

The core of the paper recounts my experiment and experience using Web 2.o teaching tools in an online class on Sustainable Tourism in the Spring 2007 semester at Northern Arizona University.

Digital Urban Blog: Universities using Second Life? Don't believe the hype

In an interesting post, Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith in the Digital Urban Blog writes:

"To be honest its hard enough to get academics to write blogs – even by those in the realms of Internet based research – Second Life it seems is still a step too far for many."

I agree with this statement. As intellectually compelling as the concept of MMOW* teaching is, in my own minimal ventures into Second Life, I found that it took far too much effort for me, let along my far more technologically-challenged students, than it is currently worth. Reports from those using Second Life at my university (Northern Arizona University) are the same -- a lot of effort on the teacher's part, and a major challenge for their students. These barriers could change in the future, of course, but for most teachers in the trenches that future is quite a ways off.

*Massively Multiplayer Online Worlds

[Digital Urban is written by Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith, aimed at examining the latest techniques to visualise the city scape via digital media it covers a lot of the work going on at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London.]

Read/WriteWeb.com's list of Web 2.0 Apps for Students

The popular Read/WriteWeb Blog has posted a fairly long list of Web 2.0 tools for students. Many of them have been covered in Web 2.0 Teaching Tools in the past, but there are also quite a few that I have not reviewed. In particular, I have always been a bit skeptical of the value of online Notetaking and Mindmapping applications. But from the comments to the Read/Write Web blog, I guess there are students who use and like them.

Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students

University Librarians Emotionally Debate Web 2.0

From: The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: 'Everyone's Tripping and It's All Free':

Calling upon Mr. Lanier’s notion of “digital Maoism,” Michael Gorman, the former president of the American Library Association, depicts Web 2.0 as “an unholy brew made up of the digital utopianism that hailed the Internet as the second coming of Haight-Ashbury — everyone’s tripping and it’s all free.”

Mr. Gorman's stinging critique of the undermining of academic authority by user generated Web 2.0 (e.g., Wikipedia) is met by equally stinging responses and discussions by blogger librarians. Links can be found in the original article, or here:

• Two posts on Britannica Blog by Michael Gorman
• Jaron Lanier, who previously expressed similar concerns in a much-discussed essay
• Two Academic bloggers have challenge Mr. Gorman’s arguements

iTunes Store Opens a Special Portal for University Content

from: The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: iTunes Opens a Special Section for Free Collegiate Content

"Today the iTunes store unveiled its new iTunes U portal, a spot on the site that will collect college lectures, commencement speeches, tours, sports highlights, and promotional material, all available at no cost. ... The new portal should make it much easier for shoppers to happen upon collegiate content. The store’s home page now features a link to the special iTunes U section, and recordings offered through iTunes U now show up in search results."

Using Social Software in Online and Hybrid Classes

| View | Upload your own

This is the Audio and Powerpoint of the presentation that I gave today about my experience using social software (blogs, wikis, podcasts, and website creation) in an online class this last semester.

The audio is located on my Geography for Travelers podcast. The Powerpoint slides are hosted for viewing and downloading at: http://www.slideshare.net/alew/

----
Note that this version of the Powerpoint presentation is slightly different from the audio file. There are a couple of slides at the start and at the end that were not in the presentation when the audio was recorded, and there is one slide at the end that I mention (very briefly) that is not in the slidecast. --- Long story....

Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators - eBook

TeachingHacks.com provides a free and very interesting eBook titled:

"Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators: A Guide to RSS and More"
by Quentin d'souza

Download the PDF book here

and go to the blog page that supports the book here

The guide is designed for K-12 educators, but with the current state of Web 2.0 in Higher Education (very limited in my view), I do not think there is really that much difference.

Here are two chapter from the Table of Contents:


IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED

• SOCIAL BOOKMARKING AND RSS
• WHAT IS SOCIAL BOOKMARKING?
• HOW IT WORKS?
• BLOGGING AND RSS
• WHAT IS A BLOG?
• COMMENTS IN BLOGS
• WIKIS AND RSS
• WHAT IS A WIKI?
• SHARING RSS FEEDS
• PHOTO SHARING AND RSS
• WHAT IS PHOTO SHARING?
• HOW IT WORKS

MORE IDEAS

• SHARING LEARNING OBJECT’S
• K-12 Learning Objects Shared Through RSS
• CLASS AND SCHOOL INFORMATION
• TRACK DISCUSSIONS

EDUCATIONAL PODCAST DIRECTORIES

EDUCATIONAL PODCAST DIRECTORIES

Here is a list of directories to educational podcasts. Educational podcasts range from university classes, to elementary school news, and from pay-per-download ebooks to free DIY (do it yourself) tutorials. All of these are worth checking out.

Learn On The Go - Nice, clean interface; Nice organized list of university podcasts; Designed for general public interest

Learn Out Loud - Includes a lot of pay-per-download audio books mixed in with the free stuff -- made it somewhat confusing to me; Designed for general public interest

Podcast Directory for Educators, Schools and Colleges - More educator and school-oriented (all levels) than the those above, though also includes professional training and learning about podcasting.

The Education Podcast Network - Podcasts are listed by academic discipline so they can be used in classrooms and for home schooling. This one is the most school-oriented of these four directories.

Open Culture: University Podcast Collection - A listing of links to university websites where podcasts can be found, with xome comments on what is available. (I reviewed this site in more detail previously.)

Theory and Practice of Online Learning

Theory and Practice of Online Learning - Free eBook from Athabasca University.

Here is the TOC (table of contents), because practice really works best when supported by theory:

Part 1 • Role and Function of Theory in Online Education Development and Delivery

1 Foundations of Educational Theory for Online Learning - Mohamed Ally
2 Toward a Theory of Online Learning - Terry Anderson
3 Value Chain Analysis: A Strategic Approach to Online Learning - Fathi Elloumi

Part 2 • Infrastructure and Support for Content Development

4 Developing an Infrastructure for Online Learning - Alan Davis
5 Technologies of Online Learning (e-Learning) - Rory McGreal & Michael Elliott
6 Media Characteristics and Online Learning Technology - Patrick J. Fahy

Part 3 • Design and Development of Online Courses

7 The Development of Online Courses - Dean Caplan
8 Developing Team Skills and Accomplishing Team Projects Online - Deborah C. Hurst & Janice Thomas
9 Copyright Issues in Online Courses: A Moment in Time - Lori-Ann Claerhout
10 Value Added—The Editor in Design and Development of Online Courses - Jan Thiessen & Vince Ambrock

Part 4 • Delivery, Quality Control, and Student Support of Online Courses

11 Teaching in an Online Learning Context - Terry Anderson
12 Call Centers in Distance Education - Andrew Woudstra, Colleen Huber, & Kerri Michalczuk
13 Supporting Asynchronous Discussions among Online Learners - Joram Ngwenya, David Annand & Eric Wang
14 Library Support for Online Learners: e-Resources, e-Services, and the Human Factors - Kay Johnson, Houda Trabelsi, & Tony Tin
15 Supporting the Online Learner - Judith A. Hughes
16 The Quality Dilemma in Online Education - Nancy K. Parker

This book is released under the Creative Commons copyright (attribution, noncommercial, no derivatives).

FlatPlanet Wiki - International Collaborative Wiki Example

The FlatPlanet Wiki (on Wikispaces.com) is a collaboration between a secondary class in Canada and one in the UK. The students worked together to create a series or projects that deal with Environmental Issues.

The site includes a useful set of ground rule that would be helpful to anyone wanting to setup a similar wiki project.

Nice job, kids!

BTW - I used Wikispaces, myself, this past semester as part of a class on Sustainable Tourism. I think Wikispaces is the best out there for class use -- especially from a teacher's perspective.

Earth Observatory Reference: Global Warming

Earth Observatory Reference: Global Warming

Not really Web 2.0, but this is a Great New Resource from NASA on how scientists develop global climate models and predict the impacts of global warming.

(See if you can find the photo I took that they found on my Flickr account.)

MERLOT - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

MERLOT = Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

MERLOT is the probably the largest social network for sharing educational resources in higher education. At the time that I am writing this, the site claimed to have 16,566 Materials (learning materials and assignments), and 45,057 members (faculty, students, librarians, and others).

The website is divided into the following sections:

		Learning Materials Browse peer reviewed online learning materials in your discipline.
		Colleagues Find expert colleagues in your discipline.
		Personal Collections View personal collections from people in your discipline.
		Assignments Get assignments you can use with your students.
		Guest Experts Find guest experts in the Virtual Speakers Bureau.

The Learning Materials is probably the most useful. The list is created by users who basically link to material that they have placed on their own websites. I looked at some of the Editor's Choice material, which I found to be quite good. Despite the large number of members and materials, not a whole lot came up when I typed in my discipline of geography, and nothing came up when I typed in my specialization of Tourism.

MERLOT is ike many other things on the web with the categories of Information Technology and Business being most prominent, while the Arts and Social Sciences are least represented. In addition, because the material is linked to off-site webpages, I would be concerned that some material will disappear over time -- a problem that I have regularly had to deal with in my online classes over the years.

That being said, I am a new member of MERLOT and hopefully I will be able to both use and contriute material to it in the future.

Wired Campus Blog: Virtual Island Fosters Educational Innovation

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Virtual Island Fosters Educational Innovation:

"On May 16, the new island will make its debut in Second Life, the interactive virtual world. Built to foster collaboration in the higher-education community, the site -- a joint effort of the software developer Angel Learning and the Second Life Educators community (SLED) -- is a place for educators new to virtuality to figure out how things are done. Teaming up to tear down a campus and redesign it is one possible use."

How Many Students Are Just Right in a Web Course?

How Many Students Are Just Right in a Web Course?

"In one university engineering program, an additional $150 per student was added to a faculty salary for every distance learning student — plus an additional $50 per student goes to the department’s budget. At a state university, faculty teaching distance learning courses received a $100 bonus for each student once the enrollment exceeded 25. In another example, in a library information program on the east coast, faculty received an additional $50 per out—of—state student enrolled in the course." ( Copyright Judith V. Boettcher, 1997-2007)

This article is actually a decade old, though it has apparently been updated over time... -- Alan

Japan's First Internet University Goes Online

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Japan's First Internet University Goes Online

Japan’s first entirely Internet-based university opened last weekend with a real-time entrance ceremony Webcast to the PC’s of its 1,200 freshmen students and a promise to shake up the country’s moribund higher-education sector.