Author Archive
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/48902/digital-note-taking-strategies-that-deepen-student-thinking
Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) “The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard” as well as Carter, Greenberg and Walker’s (2016) “Effect of Computer Usage on Academic Performance.” claim that students in lecture-style courses perform worse on assessments when allowed to use devices for note taking.
However, none of these studies question the teaching methods used in the classes themselves or whether teachers are recognizing the power of digital devices for students to create, share, connect and discover information.
Digital Organization and Content Curation
Much like students understand the concept of binders, notebooks and notes in the physical world, they need a similar system in the digital one. Whether working with dividers and subjects in a tool like Notability or sections and pages in OneNote, students need to build vocabulary to support how they house their learning.
Tagging this way not only helps students stay organized, but it could also help them to examine trends across courses or even semesters.
As a doctoral student, I use OneNote. First, I create a new digital notebook each year. Inside that, I add sections for each term as well as my different courses. Finally, my notes get organized into individual pages within the sections. When I can recall the precise location where I put a particular set of notes, I navigate directly to that page. However, on the numerous occasions when an author, vocabulary term or concept seems familiar but I cannot recall the precise moment when I took notes, then the search function becomes critical.
Multimodal Notes
With most tools (Notability, OneNote, Evernote, etc.), students can not only capture typed and handwritten notes but also incorporate photos, audio and even video. These versatile capabilities allow students to customize their note taking process to meet their learning needs. Consider these possibilities:
- Students may take notes on paper, add photos of those papers into a digital notebook, synthesize their thinking with audio or written notes, and then tag their digital notes for later retrieval.
- Students might use audio syncing — a feature that records audio and then digitally syncs it with whatever the student writes or types — to capture the context of the class discussion or lecture. When reviewing their notes, students could click or tap on their notes and then jump directly to that point in the audio recording.
- Teachers might provide students with their presentation slides or other note taking guides as PDF files. Now, students can focus on taking notes — using any modality — for synthesis, elaboration, reflection or analysis rather than in an attempt to capture content verbatim.
In 1949, neuropsychologist Donald Hebb famously wrote, “Neurons that fire together wire together.”
Concept Mapping
One of the powerful components of digital note taking is that the pages never end, and a full page isn’t an artificial barrier to limit thinking. Students can work on an infinitely expanding canvas to include as much information as they need. For example, concept mapping tools such as Coggle or Padlet allow students to create networks of ideas using text, links, images and even video without ever running out of room. (my note to John Eller – can we renew our 201-2013 discussion about pen vs computer concept mapping?)
Visible Thinking Routines
Visible Thinking routines, sets of questions designed by researchers at Harvard’s Project Zero, encourage thinking and support student inquiry.
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more on note taking in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=note+taking
https://www.npr.org/series/684530164/the-plastic-tide
We’re Chris Joyce, veteran Science Correspondent for NPR, and Dylan de Thomas, vice president of Industry Collaboration with the nonprofit Recycling Partnership. Ask us anything about the recycling industry and plastic recycling in particular. from environment
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more on Reddit in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=reddit
Gestalt principles in User Interface design.
How to become a master manipulator of Visual Communication.
Jan 16, 2018 Eleana Gkogka
https://medium.muz.li/gestalt-principles-in-ui-design-6b75a41e9965
Great designers understand the powerful role that psychology plays in visual perception. What happens when someone’s eye meets your design creations?
Gestalt (form, shape in German) is a group of visual perception principles developed by German psychologists in 1920s. It is built on the theory that “an organized whole, is perceived as greater than the sum of its parts”.
four key ideas:
Emergence
People tend to identify elements first in their general outlined form. Our brain recognizes a simple, well-defined object quicker than a detailed one.
Reification
People can recognize objects even when there are parts of them missing. Our brain matches what we see with familiar patterns stored in our memory and fills in the gaps.
Multi-Stability
People will often interpret ambiguous objects in more than one ways. Our brains will bounce back and forth between the alternatives seeking certainty. As a result, one view will become more dominant while the other one will get harder to see.
Invariance
People can recognise simple objects independently of their rotation, scale and translation. Our brain can perceive objects from different perspectives, despite their different appearance.
Proximity
Elements arranged close to each other are perceived as more related than those placed further apart. This way different elements are viewed mainly as a group rather than as individual elements.
the Common Region principle
A good Common Region example would be the card UI pattern; a well defined rectangular space with different bits of information presented as one. Banners and tables are good examples as well.
Similarity
Elements sharing similar visual characteristics are perceived to be more related than those not sharing similar characteristics.
We can use the principle of Similarity in navigation, links, buttons, headings, call to actions and more.
Closure
A group of elements are often perceived to be a single recognisable form or figure. The Closure also occurs when an object is incomplete, or parts of it are not enclosed.
We can use the Closure principle in Iconography, where simplicity helps with communicating meaning, swiftly and clearly.
Symmetry
Symmetrical elements tend to perceived as belonging together regardless of their distance, giving us a feeling of solidity and order.
It’s good to use Symmetry for portfolios, galleries, product displays, listings, navigation, banners, and any content-heavy page.
Continuation
Elements arranged in a line or a soft curve are perceived to be more related than those arranged randomly or in a harsh line.
The linear arrangement of rows and columns are good examples of Continuity. We can use them in menus and sub-menus, lists, product arrangements, carousels, services or process/progress displays.
Common Fate
Elements moving towards the same direction are perceived as more related than those moving in different directions, or not moving at all.
We can use the Common Fate principle in expandable menus, accordions, tool-tips, product sliders, parallax scrolls and swiping indicators.
User Interface Design isn’t all about pretty pixels and sparkly graphics. It’s mainly about communication, performance and convenience.
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more on ID in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=instructional+design
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more on metacognition in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=metacognition
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/27/754362629/the-scientific-debate-over-teens-screens-and-mental-health
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more on electronics and mental health in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=mental+health
Facebook quietly ditched the ‘It’s free and always will be’ slogan from its homepage
https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-changes-free-and-always-will-be-slogan-on-homepage-2019-8
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more about Facebook on this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=facebook
https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5155654/IT-Issues-2020?sguid=60122224
what i find most important:
Future IT Workforce: Deploying a broad array of modern recruitment, retention, and employment practices to develop a resilient IT talent pipeline for the institution
Digital Integrations: Ensuring system interoperability, scalability, and extensibility, as well as data integrity, security, standards, and governance, across multiple applications and platforms
Engaged Learning: Incorporating technologies that enable students to create content and engage in active learning in course curricula
Student Retention and Completion: Developing the capabilities and systems to incorporate artificial intelligence into student services to provide personalized, timely support
Administrative Simplification: Applying user-centered design, process improvement, and system reengineering to reduce redundant or unnecessary efforts and improve end-user experiences
Improved Enrollment: Using technology, data, and analytics to develop an inclusive and financially sustainable enrollment strategy to serve more and new learners by personalizing recruitment, enrollment, and learning experiences
Workforce of the Future: Using technology to develop curriculum, content, and learning experiences that prepare students for the evolving workforce
Holistic Student Success: Applying technology and data, including artificial intelligence, to understand and address the numerous contributors to student success, from finances to health and wellness to academic performance and degree planning (my note: this is what Christine Waisner, Mark Gill and Plamen Miltenoff are trying to do with their VR research)
Improved Teaching: Strengthening engagement among faculty, technologists, and researchers to achieve the true and expanding potential of technology to improve teaching
Student-Centric Higher Education: Creating a student-services ecosystem to support the entire student life cycle, from prospecting to enrollment, learning, job placement, alumni engagement, and continuing education
https://www.wired.com/story/digital-textbooks-radical-transformation/
Pearson “digital first” strategy.
My note: see our postings
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/07/09/pearson-selling-us-k12-business/
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2019/04/19/change-in-the-k12-sector/
It also enables Pearson to staunch the bleeding caused by an explosion in the second-hand market. A company called Chegg launched the first major online textbook rental service in 2007; Amazon followed suit in 2012. Both advertise savings of up to 90 percent off the sticker price.
But more technology doesn’t always mean better results. Within K-12 learning environments, the digital divide means that students in low-income and rural households have less access to reliable internet and fewer connected deviceson which to complete the online portions of their homework. And while Pearson’s initiative applies only to textbooks in higher ed, the shift to digital has implications at the collegiate level as well.
Just as traditional software has a thriving open source community, textbooks have Open Educational Resources, complete textbooks that typically come free of charge digitally, or for a small fee—enough to cover the printing—in hard copy. And while it’s not an entirely new concept, OER has gained momentum in recent years, particularly as support has picked up at an institutional level, rather than on a course by course basis. According to a 2018 Babson College survey, faculty awareness of OER jumped from 34 percent to 46 percent since 2015.
One of OER’s leading proponents is OpenStax, a nonprofit based out of Rice University that offers a few dozen free textbooks, covering everything from AP Biology to Principles of Accounting. In the 2019–2020 academic year, 2.7 million students across 6,600 institutions used an OpenStax product instead of a for-profit equivalent.
The knock against OER is that, well, you get what you pay for. “One faculty member told me only half-jokingly, that OER is like a puppy that’s free. You get the free puppy, but then you have to do all the work,” says Cengage’s Hansen, who argues that traditional publishers provide critical supporting materials, like assessment questions, that OER often lacks, and can push more regular updates.
By virtue of being free, OER materials also heavily skew toward digital, with hardcover as a secondary option. (Or you can download the PDF and print it out yourself.) The same caveats about efficacy apply. But at least OER doesn’t lock you into one digital platform, the way the major publishers do. OpenStax alone counts around 50 ecosystem partners to provide homework and testing support.
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Or you could always split the difference.
That’s the territory Cengage wants to stake out. Late last summer, the educational publishing behemoth—it announced a planned merger with McGraw Hill in May; the combined company would surpass all but Pearson in market capitalization—rolled out Cengage Unlimited, a “Netflix for Textbooks” model that rolls all textbook rentals and digital platform access into a single rate: $120 for a semester, $180 for a full year, or $240 for two years. Almost a year in, the US-only program has a million subscribers.
My note: more about Cengage and McGraw Hill in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2017/06/22/textbook-model/
this added Sept 13, 2019:
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more on textbooks in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=textbooks
https://www.cnet.com/news/wi-fi-6-will-upgrade-your-workhorse-wireless-network/
Wi-Fi 6, the consumer-friendly new name for the tech standard actually called 802.11ax,
wireless chip designer Qualcomm is betting big on Wi-Fi 6
“Cord cutting is real. What was typically one TV in the average home is now five or six different screens,” Patel said. “There’s a tremendous amount of content sourced through the home that wasn’t before. There’s a congestion problem.”
One of Wi-Fi 6’s biggest advances is OFDMA — orthogonal frequency division multiple access, if you must know — an efficiency-boosting technology purloined from mobile networks. Another is MU MIMO, short for multiple user, multiple input, multiple output. And then there’s 1024 QAM — quadrature amplitude modulation — which bumps up data rates by 30%.
- Double the range — though Qualcomm has built-in mesh networking technology that’ll let multiple wireless access points cooperate to bathe your house in Wi-Fi radio signals.
- Triple the speed — useful not just for watching 4K video but also for uploading from our phones.
- Better reliability — good for avoiding video chats plagued by stuttering.
Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon says Wi-Fi 6 and 5G networks complement each other.
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more on 5G in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=5g