Testing Connection between Blog and Facebook

If this works, then dlvr.it made the connection!

Linking blogs to Facebook

Linking your blog to fascebook is relatively simple. There are a bunch of video tutorials on how to do it. The only problem is that Facebook changed their interface, so you have to go to Notes > My Notes. Then create a New Note, Discard it, and then you'll see the button for importing a blog.

Isabelle Courneaux's Video

aaron mccreight's movie

A 1964 Gibson SG

When I was in college I didn't have much money. I also played guitar in a band. One day I was at the guitar store with some friends, down where they kept all the used equipment. I found an old SG, which I really liked because it was very lightweight.
I didn't really know anything about guitars, and nothing about SG's, other than that my friend Mike Mattingly owned one and liked it. The SG was only $45 so I bought it, and ate ramen for 3 or 4 weeks to pay for it. I played that guitar for years, until my wife bought me a Les Paul a few years ago. I let me boys play with the SG when they were little, only taking it away when they started jumping on it.

Imagine my surprise when I checked on eBay and found out that 1964 SGs were selling for well over $1000!

Education 2.0 and Assessment

In the last year I've spent way too many hours thinking about Education 2.0 and assessment. Most of my thinking has been about ways to gather objective data about the impact of adding the various Web 2.0 tools. (There are plenty of Social Science studies that ask students how they feel about Web 2.0, but very little about actual impact on student learning.)

But this week I started to think about Education 2.0 versus the assessment activities that we are currently carrying out at the college. We're supposed to design some activities to assess student learning. These activities should do a couple of things:

1. Check to see if our students are learning what we say they should learn. That is are they meeting class, program or college objectives.
2. Check to see how effective the activity is. The results of the assessment activities are should provide instructors some insight and feedback about student performance. If the students perform as expected then it can probably be assumed that they learned the subject. If the students don't perform as expected, then something probably needs to be changed.

I think the assessment activities are very valuable, and coming from industry, I'm surprised that we don't do more complete assessments.

But as I work on Education 2.0 and see it's impact, I feel a little perplexed by the assessment activities we're doing at the college. It's like we're on a big ship where we need to deliver a cargo to a distant port. We're being asked to measure a bunch of little things like cabin temperature or number of cans of chili left in the food locker. These things may be somewhat important to a successful voyage, but in the big picture they're actually pretty incidental to things like steering the ship. Moving from Education 1.0 to Education would be even bigger than changing the ship's course, it would be like changing from a sail powered boat to a modern nuclear powered ship.

There still's some value in measuring the little things, but they have such a small impact on student learning compared to moving to Education 2.0. I'm hopeful that the rest of the college will soon share this feeling.

Situation Target Proposal (STP) For CBC Technology

I'm on the newly revived Columbia Basin College Technology Committee. We had our first meeting on Dec 9, and it looks like a good group. Kim Tucker is leading the committee, and here are her opening remarks.



And here are some photos of some of the committee members. Please do not make fun of Nina until we move these photos to her blog. I asked her to do this!



The next step is to define where CBC is currently at regarding technology. Jerry Lewis volunteered himself, and then me to do this, and Brian Dexter said he'd also help. Jerry talked about doing a survey of what hardware and software people are using ... which could be useful to define our current situation.

But as I started to think about it, the things that define that define our current situation aren't really things. It's my belief that the important factors about our current situation are these properties of our technology tools and toys:

1. How easy is it for an instructor to use the tool. This could be measured in the number of hours of training required to begin using the tool, and the number of hours required to implement a class.
2. How easy is it for students to use the tool. This could be measured in the number of hours of training required to begin using the tool.
3. What measurable benefit is there. (Has any measurement been done at all?)
4. Cost of purchase.
5. Cost of ownership. This would include support and administration costs.

This line of thinking brings me around to seeing that I must've already defined some goals. It looks like I'm thinking that technology should:

1. Be easy for instructors and students to use
2. Have a measurable impact on student learning
3. Be inexpensive to purchase and maintain

I'd also like to add that I believe that in the near future educational software and teaching components will be "open". By this I mean there will one or two widely accepted XML standards for defining things that might be used in a class such as lecture or presentations; quizes tests and other assessment tools; exercises and labs; etc. I believe any tools we choose should support open standards. This will prevent us (by us I mean instructors and support staff in general) from wasting time developing class modules that we may have to abandon in the future. It will also allow us to easily share with other instructors and take advantage of the nature of Web 2.0.