Richard’s Educational Technology Blog

Today I had an experience that proved yet again that certain elements of organizational change exist no matter how great or insignificant the change may be. It started when I stood at what I thought was the front of the sandwich line at the cafeteria at work.  After a long time of waiting for someone to take my order, I realized that I was standing at the end of the line instead of the beginning.  This was particularly confusing because the entrance to the cafeteria is exactly opposite the exit of the sandwich line, making the flow of the sandwich line exactly opposite the flow of the rest of the traffic moving through the cafeteria.  So my friend Mike (who was standing at the end of the line with an equally perplexed look) and I decided to save hundreds of people confusion and unnecessary steps and switched the “entrance” and “exit” signs.  The process was dramatically improved (Steve Krug himself would have been impressed).  Yet the funniest part was to hear the roles that emerged during our change initiative…

First we had the conformers - people who saw that the current system wasn’t working but figured that they were the ones that were wrong and then decided to get in line.  In fact everyone in the line first stood by the “exit” sign waiting to place their order, but eventually realized that the line was backwards and moved to the other side.  Next we had the change agents, in this case Mike and I, going against the odds (and several direct threats from the lunch lady) to fix a broken process.  Then on to the nay-sayers.  Several people that were already in the line actually turned to us and said, “you know you’re not allowed to change the signs like that, right?”  And of course no change effort is complete without the dinosaurs.  Shortly after we changed the signs two guys walked up to the new entrance of the line, one turned to the other and said, “the sandwich like has changed - but it’s always been the other way!” and then decided that it would be easier to get a salad than to adjust to the change.  And finally, the natives - people who showed up after the change had occurred went right to the front of the new line as if it had always been that way.

So if you’re considering an organizational change effort but are afraid that perhaps it would cause too much stress on your team, realize that they would be just  as bent out of shape if you changed the direction of the sandwich line (and everything falls back into perspective).

Some of the best software that I use on a regular basis are free open source or web 2.0 aps. In addition to being free, they rival and even surpass the 800 pound gorillas of the commercial software world. If you haven’t tried these out, you really need to take a couple of minutes to follow the links…

Web Editing
Kompozer - A great open source tool for web design that supports templates (compare with Adobe Dreamweaver).

Word Processing
Google Docs - An online word processor with collaborative writing features - I’m writing a book right now using only Google Docs (compare with Microsoft Word)

Financial Planning
Mint - An easy way to track personal finances and budgets with some great visualizations and notification options (compare with Intuit Quicken).

Web Browsing
Firefox - ok, this one isn’t new to anyone - but if I’m making a list of my favorite free software I have to include Firefox (compare with Microsoft Internet Explorer).

Media Conversion
You Convert It - A great web-based media conversion tool - even converts videos without installing anything on your computer (compare with Sorenson Squeeze and a whole bunch of other file conversion aps).

Audio Editing
Audacity - The easiest tool for doing audio recording and editing (compare with Sound Studio).

Page Layout
Scribus - A powerful, open source, page layout tool (compare with Adobe InDesign)

Today I had the opportunity to hear “the rest of [a] story” which reaffirmed my belief in the power of gaming and simulations for learning. Several months ago we all watched an amazingly perfect landing of a JetBlue flight landing in LAX with broken front landing gear. In fact the landing was smoother than many that I have seen with working front landing gear. When the pilot was questioned as to how he pulled off such a perfect landing he simply responded, “well, I’d done it 8 times before (and only crashed twice)”. The pilot was referring to the simulations he had performed previously to make the task so automatic that when the real event occurred he knew exactly how to land a plane, even under very strenuous circumstances.

As teachers it’s important to think about finding ways to allow our students to fail (in a safe environment) so that they will have the necessary experience when perfect performance is required. For more information, check out gaming and simulations

If you haven’t become converted to Google Docs yet, take a minute to create an account and play around. Google Docs is more than just a word processor, it is a tool that has the ability to change the way we interact with others. Google Docs was built from the ground up as a collaborative tool. Here are two examples of how Google Docs can enhance collaboration.

1. Think of how many times you’ve written a document and attached it to an e-mail to send to a friend for feedback. If you’ve ever co-authored a paper you’ve probably done it 100 times. Even if you are using Track Changes in Word, you can only really collaborate with one person at a time before the versions get out of sync (and you can’t work on the document yourself until the feedback has come back). With Google Docs you can simply drop in the e-mail address of someone you want to work with and they will have access to view or edit your documents.

2. Once you’ve written something, the next step is to share it. By using the “Publish” feature in you can also publish any doc you’ve written to the web. Google Docs connects directly to just about any blog so you can actually post to your blog right out of Google Docs (in fact that’s how this post ended up on my blog).

For more information, visit Google Docs.

Two of the most informative resources on the internet collided. I just found an article in The Onion (in my opinion some of the world’s finest reporting) on Wikipedia (the world’s best encyclopedia). I thought you might enjoy it as much as I did.

The Onion on Wikipedia

As I’ve attended classes and presentations and conferences over the years, I’ve come to realize how poorly many learning experiences begin. Typically a learning experience starts with a brief welcome to those who are present and then jumps right into the first lecture or demonstration. Clearly no thought is given to how to set the tone for the event. Perhaps even more frustrating is the idea that the learning experience can’t start until everyone arrives physically in the same place. I’ve reflected on how much more valuable face to face learning experiences could be if we would put some thought into preparing our learners for the experience before they come together in person. Today I saw an approach to starting a learning experience that DID take these factors into consideration. To launch the Learning 2006 conference, Elliot Masie created a video-based orientation segment to prepare the learners for participation in the conference. Take a minute to look at this orientation and think about how much more effective a learning experience can be by taking the time to preparing learners ahead of time.

�

www.learning2006.com/oritneation

There is no doubt that laptops computers have changed the way we think about learning.� The idea of mobile connectivity has opened up doors for learning activities that we couldn’t even consider 10 years ago.� However, laptops have their limitations too.� For example, you still need a desk (or at least to be sitting down) to use one.� Laptop batteries have limited capacity and the size prevents them from being carried around at all times.� That was the goal of PDAs (palm pilots, balckberries, etc).� The problem with PDAs is that they suck.� Software limitations, connectivity issues, as well as major usability issues (thank you, Palm) rendered PDAs a great idea in theory, but a royal pain in the classroom.

So now it’s time for something new: Ultra Moblie Personal Computers (UMPCs).� These are devices that are just slightly bigger than PDAs, but have a full fledged operating system, standard connectivity, and bright full-color screen like a laptop.� For example, most UMPCs have USB and FireWire ports, a 30 GB hard drive, 512 MB of RAM, 1GHz processor - this is NOT a PDA, it’s just the SIZE of one.

The leading venders are offering UMPCs for just over $1000.� Here are some examples…

Dualcor’s UMPC

Samsung’s UMPC

As educators, I hope we take some time to think about how UMPCs can change the limitations of how learners acces course content and interact with their learning community.

Today I had the opportunity to hear “the rest of [a] story” which reaffirmed my belief in the power of gaming and simulations for learning. Several months ago we all watched an amazingly perfect landing of a JetBlue flight landing in LAX with broken front landing gear. In fact the landing was smoother than many that I have seen with working front landing gear. When the pilot was questioned as to how he pulled off such a perfect landing he simply responded, “well, I’d done it 8 times before (and only crashed twice)”. The pilot was referring to the simulations he had performed previously to make the task so automatic that when the real event occurred he knew exactly how to land a plane, even under very strenuous circumstances.

For more information, visit our page on gaming and simulations

I have recently become very interested in the idea of gaming in education.� Games provide an opportunity to for critical thinking and can be a form of experiential learning that can be provided on a much larger scale than traditional types of experiential learning.

Games support:

• Active learning
• Experiential learning
• Problem-based learning
• Immediate feedback
• Learner-centered learning

I’ve created a page on gaming in education to share some of what I’ve found.� I would also recommend reading Marc Prensky’s book.

This week a friend of mine showed me that the US Department of Health and Human Services has a site called “Usability.gov”. If you visit the site (http://usability.gov/accessibility/), you will notice the irony of an article called “best place for nav bars” on the *right* nav bar! Don’t worry, it gets better. You will then notice the word “accessibility” is actually an image making it completely not-accessible. Want more? Go to the main page and try to figure out what text is a link and what is not – no cheating, you have to tell me without just clicking on everything to see where you get lucky. I sure hope these aren’t the same people who manage emergency preparedness and food and drug regulations… oh wait, they are.