Author Archives: Christopher Stanley

(#FunFriday) I’m an Investor!

So, I’m not so much the next guy that’s going to make it big on the NYSE, but I have contributed my hard earned cash to a fun startup, more on that in a bit.  One of my favorite new sites is Kickstarter.  Kickstarter is a fantastic site that is bringing great ideas to life and allowing creators and inventors a place to succeed.  If you have a great idea and a knack for marketing Kickstarter is for you!  Here is how Kickstarter describes itself.

Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects. Everything from films, games, and music to art, design, and technology. Kickstarter is full of ambitious, innovative, and imaginative projects that are brought to life through the direct support of others.

 

Okay, now back to my investing antics.  A month or so ago I came across Honey Badger BBQ Sauce.  Now, as a guy that enjoys humor, creativity, and food – I was sold.  I created an account and donated to the project.  Soon, I’ll be watching my front doorstep for my very own jar of Honey Badger BBQ Sauce.  You might not be a foodie like me, but there are loads of fun projects out there sure to appeals to a very diverse audience.

I heard on the radio that October is the worst month for pedestrian accidents.  The revolights project is for bikers, but it is geared toward safety.  Plus, I think bikers are just as much in danger as pedestrians from the texting and driving maniacs out there.  Have you come across a Kickstarter project that convinced you to contribute, or at least one that peaked your interest?  If so, let me know in the comments.

Here is a fun video of Revolights cruising the Stanford campus.

 

More on Education and Technology

I mentioned in my last post that I like to follow what some other innovative institutions are doing.  That post I focused in on Cornell’s IT Strategic Plan.  Another university that I see as a leader in innovation is Indiana University.  Recently Bradley Wheeler, the CIO for Indiana University, gave a fantastic keynote address at their Statewide IT Conference.  I want to highlight a few things that came up in that keynote presentation, but first I want to talk about the conference itself.

Every year the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MNSCU) system has its own statewide MSNSCU IT Conference.  I’ve been fortunate enough to attend many of those conferences over the past few years.  I believe that they bring tremendous value back to the institutions and ultimately to our students.  That said, I think we should always be looking for ways to improve.  Here are a few things that I like about the Indiana University Statewide IT Conference that I think we should consider at our next MSNSCU IT Conference.

  • Openness. The Indiana Daily Student reported that “about 700 students and professionals from across Indiana” attended the conference.  We’ve always focused our conference on IT professionals.  But why not expand a section of our conference to the broader community – students, staff, faculty?  Maybe take it one step further and bring in CIO’s from the commercial sector?  How about K-12 technology professionals?
  • Thought leaders.  During my last post I linked to Shel Waggener’s keynote video.  He made another appearance at Indiana’s conference as a part of “Great Cloud Debate” event.  Brining in thought leaders from the industry like Shel Waggener or Diana Oblinger is a great way to challenge our community to rethink how we approach technology in education.
  • Communication.  I love that both Cornell and Indiana have made the topics and content from their conferences available to everyone.  The community was invited to attend or participate via Twitter, watch their keynote speakers on demand, they have great websites full of active information.
  • Post conference events.  There are many engaging conversations that happen at these conferences.  But continuing those conversations and keeping the connections alive isn’t as well thought through.  Let’s organize touch points throughout the year so that the excitement doesn’t fizzle out!

Okay.  Now let me highlight a few things that I found to be key takeaways for myself from the keynote at Indiana University’s Statewide IT Conference.  First, watch the keynote for yourself here: Indiana University Statewide IT Conference Keynote.

  • I like that they are taking a nimble approach to technology.  They are experimenting.  They know there will be mistakes and bumps along the way.  That is not a trivial statement for CIO to make. But making the statement to a large public audience says a lot, and sets a tone for their culture.
  • I like that they are truly embracing the cloud.  More than that they are actively working with partners (Internet2, textbook companies, etc.) to shape the future of cloud technologies.  They aren’t sitting on the sidelines waiting for others to pave the path, they are charting their own course and deciding their own destiny.  I’m also a fan of their strong push to leverage Citrix and Box.com for their IU Anywhere service.
  • I like that they are open an honest.  They admit that they’ve made mistakes.  Just says yeah we’ve made mistakes is a step, but they go one step further and cite those mistakes, in their case citing their online learning strategy.  That approach is definitely an exception to the rule, and one that I believe will bolster trust in their community and have a profound positive impact on their culture.
  • I like that the CIO spent time to advocate for a healthy workforce.  Encouraging the staff to take a break from emails, run a 5k, and participate in healthy activites shows that they care about their people, and it’s not all about producing IT widgets.
  • I like that they value training, professional development, and career advancement.  A workforce where your employees are valued and feel like they have an advocate as opposed to an environment where you’re always worried about who’s going to step on you or what your numbers are for the quarter is one that should attract the best of the best.
  • Lastly, and probably the biggest takeaway for me, I like their strategy to work as a system and offer a single centralized online offering for general “intro” classes.  Why have each regional institution try to develop their own brand for commodity classes?  Why not work together leveraging the best minds from across the system to build the best offering possible.  Let your regional institution shine in specialized areas with more advanced coursework.  This is a strategy MNSCU needs to consider.

Image courtesy http://thegoldguys.blogspot.com

Education Technology Transformation

I believe that we can learn a lot from other academic institutions. One of the institutions that I like to check in on is Cornell University. Cornell is going through an Information Technology re-envisioning process and it reminds me a lot of the journey we are on at St. Cloud State University. If you are interested in getting involved in the future of IT as SCSU, I strongly encourage you to look at follow the conversation at Cornell’s IT Strategic Plan site. There are so many good things I could point out about Cornell’s site but I’ll try to focus in on a few.

This year during the Fall Convocation Provost Malhotra asked that we “re-imaging the student experience.” Cornell has put together a Student Experience Innovation Gallery that has a ton of great ideas. Does that spark any ideas for you on ways we can help re-imaging the student experience?

Next, as a part of their process to focus on the future of IT, they held an open daylong meeting and brought in some great keynote speakers: Shel Waggener and Diana Oblinger. Shel Waggener is a Senior Vice President of Internet2 and Diana Oblinger is the President and CEO of EDUCAUSE. (Nerd Alert) From an Education-IT perspective, that is a rock star lineup for an IT planning meeting! I encourage you to read the abstract of their presentations on the Cornell IT Strategic Future site. Or even better watch their full presentation via their streaming video site.

I want to highlight a few key points from their presentation that I think are particularly relevant to SCSU. The first point made by Shel Waggener is that the cloud is real, imminent, and unavoidable. It is like a stampede and Universities can either decide to get trampled or to get on our horse and help direct its future. I believe that this he is dead on in this assessment. Both SCSU and MNSCU are trying to do more with less and there is a new push to try to collaborate and share services. This is a great and noble endeavor, but I believe it’s 5 or more years too late. The cloud players are massive. Trying to go it our own just doesn’t make sense anymore. From an innovation perspective there is no way to keep up. From a financial perspective there is absolutely no way to keep up. I’ve heard many people concerned about outsourcing, losing their jobs, etc. Is see the situation from the opposite perspective. If we try to do it all and compete with services like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. we will lose. And we simply do not have enough people to help our faculty, staff, and students embrace the cloud services that will make them the most successful. Embracing these cloud services is the best way to keep a vibrant technology department that can deliver the results our community needs.

Next, Diana Oblinger shows us that technology and education at our local universities needs to change radically. There are so many innovative services available to our community. Our community will ultimately end up leveraging these services whether or not we embrace them. Diana offers many different ways to consider leveraging new technology services and trends. I think her presentation should inspire us all to reimagine what might be possible with technology and education in the future.

Kudos to Cornell University’s IT department for putting together so many great resources and offering outstanding communication to their community to build a better IT department. Let’s learn from their success!

(What If…) Carpe Diem Charter School

Back on Sunday, September 16, I sent a link to a video (See video below) asking what folks thought about the approach of Carpe Diem Charter School in Arizona. They designed a school from the ground up based on a blended-learning approach. One of their strategies was to put technology first, and they seem to have some pretty good results.

Then on Saturday NBC Nightly News aired a report on this same school. There is now an entire site dedicated to the school on the Education Nation website too. http://www.educationnation.com/casestudies/carpediem/

This added press got me to think more about what this school is doing.

  • If self-paced video and online labs help the students at Carpe Diem, might they help our students?
  • If students are intimidated to ask questions, might they benefit from self-paced video and online labs?
  • If students are motivated by earning points, badges, and seeing visual indicators of their learning progress, might self-paced video and online labs help them succeed?
  • If we could watch students’ success as they complete self-paced video and online labs could we better identify how to help these students?

What if we offered classes where a significant portion of the class was “lab time” where students could come in and leverage self-paced exercises in a computer lab style environment with a teacher’s assistant present? If students were sick or needed extra time they could get access to the same lab exercises online. That could then be coupled with instructor time where those concepts could be re-enforced and more personal conversations could happen. We could take this one step further and complement the courses with an “Open Study” style collaborative study group. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

An Innovative Web Experience

Developers working with Google created a browser experiment that allows you to visit a website using Google Chrome and follow a Cirque du Soleil character through a whimsical journey with acrobatic  performances and imaginative scenery.  The coolest part is that the experience is interactive and crosses any device, it’s awesome!  Their blog post explains that because it was built using HTML5, it works  across all devices and leverages capabilities like the accelerometer, camera, and microphone and allows you to actually participate in the story.

I highly recommend visiting www.movikantirevo.com using Google Chrome to check it out.  If you have a device with a camera/microphone/accelerometer that would be best.

Innovation in Education

Recently Dell hosted a Social Think Tank event titled “A Day of Innovation in Education.”  They streamed the discussion and have made it available for viewing.  There were many interesting perspectives shared from a panel made of diverse individuals, but I’m not sure that there were any revelations made.   That said, if you are interested in this topic you might find the discussion interesting.  Head on over to Dell’s site to checkout the videos.

http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/secure/innovation-in-education.aspx

X-ray Diffractometer Coming to SCSU?

The St. Cloud Times is reporting that the new ISELF building will get a X-ray diffractometer.  What a great opportunity for the students and faculty!  According to the article SCSU will still need to raise raise $140,000 by December.  I’m ready to get some cookies ready for a bake sale.

Image from the GE Global Research Blog. http://ge.geglobalresearch.com/blog/1-2-3-tools-of-the-trade-for-materials-characterization/x-ray-diffractometer-023/

12 Awesome Ed Tech Tools for 2012-2013

Richard Byrne who hosts the blog “Free Technology for Teachers” has a great article out on Scribd called “12 Awesome Ed Tech Tools for 2012-2013.”

Here are the tools he recommends:

12 Awesome EdTech Tools for 2012-2013