Author: Professor David Simpson

Why Blog?

This past week I have been "studying" the excellent online lessons posted by Jane Hart about blogging. One consequence is that I have experimented changing the look of my posts here. I'm not sure that I agree with Jane that  it is important to keep a blog "dynamic" by changing its appearances, but in so doing I can better get a sense of what this TypePad blogging tool can and cannot do.

Motivated by Jane's lessons I have begun investigating the relative strengths and weaknesses FOR ME and FOR MY PURPOSES of WordPress, Edublogs, Blogger, and Tumblr. I definitely plan to incorporate blogging as a component into my "Virtual European Immersion Course" (let me know if you are interested in more about this). However, I think I can adequately address that need with the integrated blogging tool which is part of the Social Network software i am using there (Ning).

I initially made a number of half-hearted attempts at blogging about six years ago but didn't seriously start using blogging tools until I was awarded an opportunity to become an online  "community blogger" for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It was during that year that I  discovered the seminal work of  my "virtual" mentor the indefatigable, never seems to sleep Jane Hart. I was also  blessed to have a supportive editor who gave me free license to explore Web 2.0 tools and to write about whatever i cared to. Given that freedom to explore I rediscovered the joys and challenges of writing. The following year I was given the opportunity to teach a semester-long course on Web 2.0 learning tools to 25 college freshmen and blogging was a tool I introduced to them.

 I blog when I feel I have something to say that might be of interest to others. I have an interest in life-long learning and in sharing what I learn. I have no particular interest in having a large number of followers, but I welcome feedback and, as time allows, I will acknowledge it. I've "met" a large  number of interesting individuals in the past few years who have enriched my life and informed my teaching and learning. Let's learn together.

 

Robin the Newf – My Canine Confidante

 

 

Responding to Jane Hart’s “10 Tools Challenge”

Recently Jane Hart has extended an interesting professional development challenge.  Make a resolution to find out how to use 10 new tools this year and write a monthly blog post describing one's experiences with the tools.Though I have been a persistent dillettante of her Top 100 Tools for Learning Lists for the past six years, this semester I have a unique opportunity (and a block of dedicated time) to focus on mastery of a subset of these tools. Hence, I accept and welcome the "challenge!" Thanks for the 'incentive", Jane!

Over the next 15 weeks six of my students and I will be working on a project to create a "virtual European immersion cultural experience course." Among the resources we will be drawing upon are

  1. Jane Hart's Social Learning Handbook (and selective updated material I shall master as a function of my joining the Top 100 Tools Club)
  2. Susan Manning and Kevin E. Johnson's The Technology Toolbelt for Teaching
  3. Laurence Peters' Global Education: Using Technology to Bring the World to Your Students
  4. Michelle Pacansky-Brock's Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies and
  5. Deltina Hay's A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web

 The broad categories of tools I hope to master with my students are

Ambitious? Yes. Overly ambitious —time will tell but I am blessed with an unusually talented group of students with whom I have worked for years and who each have received a brand new Ipad to support their creation of this new course.

We welcome feedback and ideas.

 

OMG: Twittering (Reconsidered)

Several years ago I pontificated the value of my using Twitter. At that time I  came to the conclusion that Twitter  was not a useful tool for me. Much of my current thinking
has benefitted from my reading or rereading several books (listed
below), my having participated in Carroll Technology Fellows group discussions,
and my developing with six student research assistants a new course ("Pioneering Virtual European Immersion
Experiences"). I also have found value in revisiting some resources I discovered such as this classic tutorial by the consummate visionary, teacher, and proselytizer, Jane Hart.

 

        Books that have shaped my thinking:

  1. Michelle Pakansky-Brock's Best Pracices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies. She writes well and thoughtfully, recognizes the limits of technology tools and offers a well-reasoned set of criteria for deciding which tools to integrate into the classroom. She is definitely someone I find value in "following"—so I do!

Susan Manning and Kevin E. Johnson's The Technology Toolbelt for Teaching. This book provides a useful decision matrix for choosing among and using the "right" technology teaching tool. As a result of having studies this book, I now have a better understanding of some situations where Twitter can be helpful to me in my teaching and scholarship.

  1. Deltina Hay's A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization. This book, though not written by a a teacher or for teachers,  provides a very pragmatic guide to maximizing the benefits of Web 2.0 tools. I found the CD of links particulary instructive.
  2. Paul McFedries' twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets. Though somewhat outdated, this book successfully provided me with helpful, lucid details on mastering features of Twitter of which I was totally unaware.

Now if I can only divine my message to Pope Benedict XVI to 140 characters or less.

 

Just finished reading Susan Manning's and Kevin E. Johnson's (2011) book "The Technology Toolbelt for Teaching". Interesting to juxtapose this against the seminal 2008 work by Jane Hart that first focused my interest in bringing technology tools into the classroom. I'll use the Manning and Johnson decision matrix to help me decide which tools to use in the Virtual Cross-cultural Immersion Experience my students and i are designing.

Internet Detritus and Wabi-sabi

A few years ago a Carroll trustee remarked to me that he wondered how much Internet detritus has accumulated (unused email accounts, abandoned web pages, forgotten electronic projects). Jim's musing about this lost virtual space recently returned to me while I was attending a Carroll Technology Fellows' meeting. We were being introduced to wikispaces and it dawned on me that I not only had an account there, but I also had abandoned accounts on four other wiki hosts which I had explored intermittently since 2007: pbwiki, wetpaint,
twiki, and jotspot. That embarrassing realization in turn led me to revisit Woods and Thoeny's (2007) Wiki's for Dummies, revisit all my prior accounts, and think about whether an "old" (e.g. 2007) largely abandoned teaching technology tool deserved any place in my technology teaching tool kit today.

Ward Cunningham invented the wiki (essentially a collection of web pages) as the simplest possible online data base that anyone could edit. Simple it is. Myriad wiki tools exist. Here is ONE way to choose among them.

I presently am using wikispaces because it is free to educators and is easy to use.  Presently, I have (re)found it valuable as a project manager of a
colloborative research project I am working on with six undergraduates where we have a
need for an easily accessible, editable shared repository on the web. Abundant well-written
tutorials exist for guiding the novice user.

Woods and Thoeny liken wikis to electronic, linkable index cards and enjoin the reader to embrace the attitude of "Wabi-sabi"—the beauty of unfinished content—as one enters the world of wiki collaboration. I personally find that attitude motivating in the same sense as the Zeigarnik effect or the lines of  Robert Frost "…miles to go before I sleep."  Though I have not seen wikis "conquer" problems as some wiki evangelists predicted, I presently benefit from the tool facilitating collaboration. Perhaps the logo on this t-shirt expresses it best:

 

 

 

 

Reaching Out Globally—Virtually

Help me out. It is official. My 6 very talented undergraduate  research assistants and I have successfully "won" a university-wide competition with our proposal to create a pilot Cross Cultural Experience (CCE) at Carroll University with a focus on an in-the-classroom emersion experience. Each student will be awarded a new Ipad and will receive two-credit hours for pioneering this course development project.

"Dr. David Simpson, Professor of Psychology,
along with students Phoumany Phouybanhdyt, Ryan Waters, Catrina Duncan,
Amy Peterson, Elizabeth Firkus, and Maxine Venturelli,  proposed
a pilot that focuses on a single culture/nation for approximately 2 weeks.
By the end of the semester students will be able to compare and
contrast several cultures to the United States. The goal of the
classroom experience is to give the students the
ability to have an immersion-like experience through the different uses
of technology incorporated within the course through class discussion
and student reflection. Students will have the ability to interact
globally through the use of various 21st
century technology learning tools."
We have already created a wikispace and will no doubt be using among other tools Skype and VoiceThread. This is a wonderful opportunity for me to cascade into the larger Carroll community several teaching tools I have been invesigating since 2007.
What a joy to work with, develop, and learn with such student talent. This is going to be fun.
We welcome ideas, contacts, and interested virtual observers as we learn together.
Thanks in advance to Drs. Lynne Bernier and Terri Johnson for creating this educational opportunity and special heart-felt thanks (or is that Hart-felt thanks) for my wise, generous, indefatigable virtual mentorship by Jane Hart for sharing her social media wisdom and insights across the years.

 

Appy Daze Is Here Again! Making Lemonade from a Rotten Apple

This summer I was overconfident about my multi-tasking capabilities. Stupid. Careless (oopsie). Hypocritical. "Save regularly, backup often," I repeatedly tell my students. Practice what you preach, Dr. Simpson. Somehow I managed to make my faithful MacBook Pro inaccessible and inoperable. In addition I created considerable havoc and access confusion on its backup hard drive. Duh. Ouch.

I tried to no avail offering sacrifices to the computer gods and appealing to their intervention.

After many days and considerable expense experimenting with trial versions of data repair and data recovery software I called a well-known tech support recommended by Robin.

 

 

 

In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have kicked her off the couch before I asked Dogbert  for help.

I believe that I have recovered all the apps and succesfully transferred them to my new MacBook Pro. Of course within a month after I purchased my replacement laptop a new MacBook Pro was released and the new Mountain Lion operating system became available (for which many of my apps need to be upgraded).

Over the rest of the semester I hope to revisit each of the 200 apps I have (re)installed. Why do I have so many?  How many of them do I regularly use? Which are critical to my success as a teacher, as a learner, and as a consultant? Which are more than "Mac Gems" or POPULAR  technology tools? Which has demonstrated their value acoss the years? Which can be retired before I retire? Stay tuned.

 

What corporates can learn from the Top 10 Tools for Learning 2012 | Learning in the Social Workplace

Few can rival the vision of Jane Hart. As I move in and out of the academic and business worlds I treasure her inspiration and wisdom.

What corporates can learn from the Top 10 Tools for Learning 2012 | Learning in the Social Workplace.