Third camp physicians

I experienced not one, not two, but THREE consultants applauding vehemently when I mentioned the dreaded word "socialism" at a meeting with the Royal College of Physicians on the subject of co-payments last week. Does this suggest that instead of reading medical journals consultants are reading Capital and the New Left Review? Are we in a pre-revolutionary situation? Are we going to see the Countryside Alliance calling for workers control? Make haste comrades and don't stop until the pips squeak!

Food for thought?

The highlight of my trip back to Norwich is to partake in a Delia Smith charged meal on the restraunt car of the train. Sometimes you are joined by Mail on Sunday journalists who are always a danger, Daily Telegraph who are even more of a danger, fortunately though you do meet an odd nice constituent. The meals are excellent and usually finish by the time you get to Ipswich.

To take that service away will destroy I think the concept of British rail travel, which has been part of our lives for years, from getting a bacon roll in the morning to sitting down to dinner in the evening. So many people rely on this on the way back home from London. By the time I arrive back in Norwich it can be as late as 11 which is far too late to be getting pots and pans out to cook a meal. This service is well appreciated, well used and helps to make ammends for what is a pretty poor service with there often not being enough seats for passengers, services being severly delayed and cancelled. The decision to cut this service makes no sense at all.

Tony Benn spoke in the Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich yesterday afternoon and unsuprisingly captivated a large audience with his views, especially on democracy. Although an elder statesman (yes he's older than me!) he is still as quick as a whistle. He said it was clear that Bush needed Blair's political support on Iraq, the fact that it would be more pallitable internationally if it was not just America "going it alone" so to speak. The troops that went with the support that Blair gave, Benn went on to say weren't needed.

Please check the member list!

Here is the latest list of members of Etsy Twitter. Please check it over as it will be sent to make this an official team on Monday. If you are not on it, please convo me on Etsy: http://scraparcs.etsy.com . Thanks!
-scraparcs

3zart
acageybee
adnagam
AmbientLights
Ameesadornments
amorevivo
AngelKissesJewelry
ara133photography
arawlins
artmixter
babycakes1011
bamdesigns
BellflowerTextiles
blackbird72
crochetgal
cupcakechristmas
curiousmess
CutthroatBodyArt
EirewolfCreations
elysiumbeads
Emmakat
flutteringdesigns
flyingzoo
gemheaven
GemsByJerri
GulfCoastCottagePDF
handmadebydiana
HomemadeZen
humblethings
IguanaMakeIt
inmyheadstudios
invitesbyjen
jermantowicz
jewelcraftdesigns
joojy
journeyoflovedesigns
kimforbeads
koup
KreatedbyKelly
kyko
laurali
LazyTcrochet
LCFashion
lelephantrose
littlealouette
LMcreation
LMcreation
lpathia
MaineLeeCrochet
MeaCulpaBodyandBath
miapie
missficklemedia
mixdclay
mommylion
moonofglass
Morganmelim
mufi
MysticStarTreasures
MySweetThree
noadi
pancakesandnoodles
pandjcrafts
Parrish
PenguinwareBoutique
pinksugarninja
prettywhimsical
racheljasmine
rainbowrevolution
ReneeSuich
RockisSupplies
RoseBushDesigns
seedtobead
SimplyShell
soaprehab
somavenus
starrydeborah
stitchingcrafts2
StylinPupPillows
SugarAndSpice
sunrisecrafts
tangocatgems
TheCupcakery
thepinksamurai
thewildhare
Timeless
TweedleBee
umlauf
vickijoycedesigns
VKnO

How to act against detention

I went to see the play "Motherland" a couple of nights ago with performances from Juliet Stevenson and Harriet Walter. The play is based on experiences of refugees seeking asylum in the UK being detained in detention centres. It was a very moving performance, but more importantly it highlighted the disgraceful treatment that many receive when seeking asylum in this country, particularly children. Many families have come here seeking asylum from oppression and violence, and for them to be treated the way that they have been by immigration services is utterly disgusting.

The Government decided in September to remove its opt out to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, allowing child asylum seekers to be fully protected by this convention. I hope this will mark the end to indefinite detentions and abuse of people that have started new lives in this country.

Welcome to the Etsy Twitter team!

We've had fantastic turnout so far and I'm very excited to see the Etsy Twitter team get off the ground! Thank you all for joining and welcome!

-ScrapArcs

Give Bees a chance!

The sound of "give bees a chance" droned over 10 Downing Street by keepers from accross the country. Over 400 potestors came to blow smoke around Parliament Square. A delegation presented a petition with 140,000 signatories to 10 Downing Street.

They wriggled their way from Parliament Square past the lunch time joggers with evil thoughts of releasing bees on Whitehall bureaucrats. I got quite a buzz from the event.

Football and religion

There is much consternation in the city as far as the team is concerned, will they survive or will they be relegated? The club is looking for new investment so why shouldn't the evangelical church man who is building sites in Drayton and on the Heartease recognise that was put so well by Bill Shankly that "soccer is bigger than life and death"! is the evangelist listening?





In relation to politics, old Bill came up with another little cracker especially now considering the financial markets bottling it. "The socialism I believe in is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That's how I see football, that's how I see life". Not Bevan, but not wrong either.

Top 5 Quiz Generators for Online Educators

Top 5 Quiz Generators for Online Educators

Building out quizzes for both traditional and online classes can be a time-consuming chore. Luckily, there are now many online "generators" being designed that take much of the work out of online test taking. If you need to create a simple online test, look to the five user-friendly tools below.

1. Exam Builder – With this exam generator, you can create an online test in a Web browser, and then publish it in one click. You can customize each test for online registration and individual retests, plus the site provides an analysis on how your students scored as a whole.

2. Quiz Center – Brought to you by the Discovery Channel, this easy tool will allow you to create, publish and grade quizzes online. This generator is very flexible and, perhaps even more importantly, is free of charge. Teachers should find this tool useful at both the K-12 and college level.

3. Easy Test Maker – Here, you can create a host of different tests at no charge. Your answer options will include multiple choice, fill in the blank, matching, short answer, true or false and more. This robust tool includes a spell check function, as well, which comes in very handy for those of us creating tests late at night.

4. Charles Kelly's Online Quiz Generator – This multiple choice test generator is very popular amongst tech-savvy college instructors. It allows you a lot of freedom in terms of formatting the data.

5. JavaScript QuizMaker – As the name suggests, this is a quiz generator that provides JavaScript that you can cut and paste into your own Web page. If you are operating your own classroom site, this can be an easy way to host a test on your page.

The above tools have proven to be very useful and popular amongst online instructors. Although more complex tools do exist, most teachers are looking for easy-to-use generators to maximize their productivity. These resources will certainly save you time and make online test taking easier on your students.

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This post is by guest blogger, Heather Johnson. Heather Johnson is a regular commentator on the subject of top online universities. She welcomes your feedback and potential job inquiries at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

Does Your Department Blog? - Why Not?

@micamonkey recently posted a comment on Twitter.com in which she mentioned that at least three departments at the National University of Singapore (NUS) had department blogs. I asked her who these were and she sent me these three links:

• Sociology Dept. - http://socioblogsg.wordpress.com/
• Biodiversity research group in the Biological Sciences Dept. - http://nusbiodiversity.wordpress.com/
• Industrial Design Program - http://moduleblog.nus.edu.sg/blogs/id4104/default.aspx

The differences among these three blogs is interesting. Here a are screen grabs of their headers along with a few comments from me:


The Sociology blog page is used almost entirely to announce events. Tabs on the blog provide basic static information, like a traditional web 1.0 website.


The Biodiversity research and education group's blog is more diverse than that for Sociology. Blog postings include announcements of an NUS library blog and the promotion of a professor, a job announcement, and several posts linked to news stories about NUS's discovery of a lung-less frog. The "Blogs, et al." link is a substantial list of blogs and online journals associated with research and classes (called "modules" in Singapore) related to the Biological Sciences Dept. More static links go to a list of classes and the student club, which seems to be responsible for this blog.


The Industrial Design program's blog at NUS is called "ID @ NUS" and describes itself as:

This blog serves as a platform to provide design information to industrial design students in the National University of Singapore (NUS). It also serves as a flatform to demonstrate the teaching outcomes in NUS ID programme, in particular, the final year studio and thesis projects.

Most of the current blog posts are about forthcoming design competitions. Unlike the other blogs, there is no static information is provided on the blog site -- at least not yet.

==========

This relatively random selection of three department/program blogs shows the considerable diversity of ways that department can use blogs to keep their students and the general public up to date on their activities. They range from the more social networked engaged to the more straightforward announcements (almost like an email list), and from the more narrow sites to broader information dissemination.

Blogs offer a very easy way (in my opinion) to keep the different populations served by academic departments informed and up to date on department activities. It can supplements the traditional alumni newsletter that is common in the US (I am not sure how common they are elsewhere) with more timely information updates. They can help build alumni support, as well as engage current students and recruit future students. And they can give department accomplishments more exposure both within the university and to the larger public who pay a good part of the budgets of state/government universities.

Blogs also allow for RSS subscriptions, which are widely appreciated and used by those of us who are more into the social software realm. But more importantly, RSS allows these blogs to be re-purposed in other ways across the Internet, thereby giving each blog the potential to reach well beyond the immediate links above, and thereby exposing them to larger audiences. The blogs can be reposted on other websites and subscribed to in RSS readers, such as Google Reader (which is what I use).

So, when @micamonkey wondered in hwer tweet whether or not departments should blog, I think yes, absolutely -- every department should blog. It is possible to set up a group blog that includes most of the faculty and principal administrative staff in a department. It is possible to install "blog this" utilities on their computers so they can quickly and easily post to the blog without needing to go to Wordpress or Blogger.

Despite my own participatory preferences, we might not want all faculty members to have access -- given the politics that can exist in some departments. And, of course, not everyone would want to blog, either. I am a geek and am often considered a little too far into the future by others in my department. In fact, I could imagine general resistance to this whole idea from some people in my department. Despite that, I still think it is a good idea!

(BTW - you can follow me in Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/alew)

Vote / Debate Online Social Networking for Education

The venerable Economist magazine is holding an online debate and poll on the topic of Social Networking for Education.

• Click here to read and cast your vote.

I am obviously in the Pro- camp on this one. Like many Anti-Social Media in Education arguments, the Economist author finds selective shortcomings in different corners of Social Media and paints a broad condemnation of the entire field.

I am using Ning.com in a class this semester at the National University of Singapore and I think it is working great. The class is currently only viewable to the students, but I do plan to open it to world after the semester has ended. (The students will be allowed to edit or remove themselves and their postings before I do that.)

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P.S. - I have not posted anything to this blog in awhile. I guess I have been distracted. Now that I am getting settled in Singapore (just visiting for this semester), hopefully I will get back to some regular posts! -- Alan

Blogging, Creativity and Formal Writing in the University

I highly recommend listening to this interview on ITConversations:

• Interview with Gardner Campbell (English Professor, University of Mary Washington) - on John Udel's Interviews with Innovators podcast

• UMWBlogs - mentioned in the interview

This is an interesting conversation about writing and creativity and how this is important in blogging, online communication, and web-based education. Prof. Campbell makes the case for using online tools to find new ways of learning and communicating about ourselves and our world. He makes some interesting comments. One that I like is how writing public blogs is something that students will carry with them after they graduate. I have been trying to get this idea across in my classes (most of which have some public social media presence), though not quite as concisely as Prof. Campbell did.

While I have no background in the arts, I think I agree that literature and the arts need to be free of boundaries. However, I believe that the sciences require a formal knowledge foundation, including formal forms of communication. Only then can creative insights expand the boundaries of our knowledge.

I agree with his comments that social media requires some new writing skills, and that this new medium can generate creative and new depths of communication. But as the editor of an academic journal in the social sciences, I think there is a necessary role for teaching formal rules -- especially writing. Even Wikipedia is trying to get its articles written in a more formal and academic manner.

Unfortunately, there are few more frustrating challenges for me than the poor writing ability of many of my students. If they cannot write a coherent sentence and paragraph (let alone a whole paper), then they will not be able to effectively communicate in the real world when they graduate. You cannot gain professional respect unless you are able to write to the level of your professional peers. And I am always wonder just what my students are being taught in those required English classes that they take.

Finally, I agree with his chagrin over a computer system designed to automatically grade essay exams -- and its tie to a textbook publisher. At the same time, as a former department chair in a publicly funded teaching university, I am aware of the demand from state legislators for faculty to teach as many students as possible in the most efficient manner possible. Departments that do not play the game risk the loss of faculty positions and degree programs.

Structure vs Agency

I think that there has always been a tension between structure and creativity in education (e.g., the old "structure vs agency" debate). I see it in the kindergarten classes that my wife used to teach, and I have seen it on graduate research committees. I think that the reason why the US higher education system has been so successful is because this tension is recognized and accepted, if not always appreciated (physical sciences are always better funded than social sciences and the arts).

It should be no surprise that these same tensions arise in the use of social media tools in education. To me, social software is a tool. How it is used is up to the instructor. Many of the the potential uses of social software actually evolve out of collaborative learning and student-centered learning, on which many books have been written in the past several decades, and from which those of use who teach mostly online have a wealth of knowledge to draw upon.

So anyway, it was a thought provoking interview -- and one that took me away from an encyclopedia article that I am working on, that is already past-due to the editors!

NAU Technology Faculty Survey - Google Doc's Presentation

This is a short presentation that I am giving in a couple of hours. I created it with the Google Docs presentation tool, which works fairly well. I just wish there was an off-line version, just in case the Internet goes down just before my presentation time!

NEW: Note in the Comments that is is possible to save the presentation as an HTML file (with supporting folders) on your computer, which then allows you to show the presentation offline using any browser.

Click the Title Above to Start the Presentation.

Web 2.0 Cool for School - on the DownloadSquad Blog

DownloadSquad has a list of 15 mostly free online applications to make student life easier for this coming school year. Categories include Communication, Office Apps, Note Taking and Sharing, Organizing and Scheduling, and Making Money. Also see the comments section for other apps and topics not covered in the main blog.

RELATED TO THIS is nedwolf.com's list of Best Free Web Applications - also very useful for students and teaching.

AND - FOR PARENTS - Now you can Help your student write their term papers with Google Docs. - from the WSJ - via the Adult Education and Technology Blog

Twitter Tweets for Higher Education

I love Twitter.com. I usually post a couple of items a day, on average, and tend to follow and interact others who also post in a moderate fashion. Some people post dozens of twits a day and use Twitter as a kind of instant messaging client. I see, and use it, more as a mini-blog. When I click on my name, I see all my posts, which is a sort of summary of things that I do and think about that I want to share with others.

For the uninitiated, Twitter limits you to 140 characters and spaces per post (or per "tweet"). You can follow others Twitter uses on your home page. The graphic above is a snapshot of my Twitter homepage, showing three of the people whose Tweets I follow. They also follow me, though that is not necessary. To see all my posts, go to my Twitter page at: http://twitter.com/alew.

I actually had not considered it as a tool for education until I saw a link posted by Twittown to a blog post on that subject. Doing a little online searching (emphasis on the little), I found the following items related to Twitter and education.

1- Using Twitter with your students on Doug Belshaw's teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk blog - emphasizes secondary education. Doug says:

• I think Twitter could be ideal for reminding students about homework, trips and such things, especially as they can enter their mobile phone number to be alerted when one of their ‘friends’ updates their account. The advantage is that you don’t need to know the phone numbers of students to get messages onto their device: they are the ones who authorize their mobile phone from the website and they subscribe to your Twitter feed.

2- The Educause 7 Things You Should Series on the EdVentures in Technology blog - The list is a lot longer than 7 items now. A PDF summary of Twitter was added in July 2007. The summary points out three potential uses of Twitter: (1) as a communications tool for collaborating researchers; (2) As a way to get students to focus in a concise (140 words) way on a topic; and (3) As a way for conference attendees to discuss topics, again in a concise manner.

3- Reference services and Twitter on the Digital Reference blog - Stephen Francoeur cites a couple of examples and suggests that libraries could advertise a Twitter address which people could "follow" to learn about library events, new books, and other announcements. Twitter could also be used to announce responses to library user questions, which might be answered in greater length on a linked webpage.

For a couple more library examples of this, see

• - Twitter Update or how I was able to exploit the latest social networking site without really trying on the Gather No Dust Blog.
• - Twitter and the Missouri River Regional Library
  

4- A Guide to Twitter in Libraries on the iLibrarian blog - This is a resource site, broken into the categories of :

• How to Use it
• How Libraries are Using it
• Library Twitter Accounts
• Twitter Tools & Mashups
• Twitter Alternatives

Like many Web 2.0 tools, librarians are at the forefront of Twitter use. I am not sure why that is. Perhaps social media is just more core to their work and mission. Or perhaps they just have more time that do classroom teachers. Or perhaps I just did not search deep enough to find teachers using Twitter. Whatever the reason, there are lessons for classroom and online teachers from these sites. These include:

1. Twitter is very easy to sign-up for and to use
2. Twitter is an effective communication tool for concise messages and news items, or links to longer messages and news items
   
3. Twitter is fun to use and may, therefore, be effective in engaging students in discussions who do not need to write longer essays

There are some interesting Twitter tools (also see #4 above), that students might find of interest, though they tend to not be as easy to use as Twitter.

You can set your Twitter account private ("Protect My Updates") or public. This is changeable in the Settings section. With a private account, your posts are only available to other Twitters who you specifically approve to follow you. This is probably the preferred approach for most classroom situations.

If your account is public, anything that is posted by you on Twitter can be "followed" any any other Twitter member in the world, and indeed is posted to super sites, such as the Twitter Public Timeline and Twittervision, for everyone to see. This, of course, presents privacy issues for students. I personally think that can be dealt with for university students by warning them and encouraging anonymity and thoughtful postings.

A growing issue is a kind of Twitter Spam. There are some Twitter users whose goal seems to be to follow as many people as possible. How can one possibly follow 10,000 people? They do this simply to get others to visit their Twitter site and then click on links that will take them to a different website (some of which may not be safe). When they follow you, anyone who is interested in see who your followers are will see their link. It is easy to permanently "block" these people, which you can do when you click on the list of people who are following you.

So Twitter is basically a potential alternative to email, instant messaging and discussion forums, as ways of communicating with students. And because it is fun to use, I may give it a try in my next class -- after my current sabbatical. By then, however, Twitter may be old hat, replaced by something else.

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NEW (28Sept 07): Steve Dembo's Teach42 blog has an interesting post titled "What I learned from Twitter Today" which gives yet another interesting perspective on the use of Twitter in education.

NEW (29Jan 08): Twitter for Academia - list of uses of Twitter in a university class based on actual experience.

NEW (8May 08): Academic Research page on the Twitter Fan Wiki site. - not much there yet, but if we can get the word out, perhaps it will grow.

NEW (9Jun08): Twitter for Librarians: The Ultimate Guide - these ideas are not just for librarians - includes a list of about a dozen library twitter blogs