It’s all about annotation, and I’ve been comparing Kami and Hypothes.is. Last semester, I used Kami ($50 for no ads) for students to annotate text with my History of Technology class. I had some success, but I was not happy with its limitations, so this summer I tried Hypothes.is instead.
The students were offered a video tutorial on how to use it. I made a group just for them. The assignment was extra credit — for each of the three classes I uploaded an article for them to read and annotate, replying to each other. Sample instructions:
I had been concerned that they would automatically post in Public instead of in the Test Group, because I could find no way to limit that or point them directly to the group page – the choice is made only via a drop-down menu in the upper right corner. Sure enough, several students posted in Public and missed the discussion going on in the group. I will have to add this to the instructions as well as in the tutorial.
I had thought that analysis and counting their contributions would be made easier by the brilliantly conceived Hypothesis Collector, created by John Stewart. It worked great last night. Unfortunately, when I tried it this morning, it only gave me the posts that had been made as of last night. I simply couldn’t get it to work and had to manually count annotations to assign points. I have been contacted by Jeremy Dean of Hypothes.is for ways to integrate with Canvas – this might be a huge help next year.
I am considering providing my next class textbook, The American Yawp, with my own annotations. The book, an open textbook, has a number of faults and omissions that would make for great learning opportunities for students. My own annotations would be like mini-lecture commentary, glossing on the text. But for some of the summer articles (one out of three of mine) in Hypothes.is, the section one highlights is quoted in the annotation without spaces, which is ugly. Also, there is little color or design in the annotation box to alert the student to the presence or unique character of an annotation.
I think Kami looks better for this, and then I will export my pages as PDF for the students.
I had originally thought I could use The American Yawp’s own affordances as an updated online text, but just got an announcement that, ironically, their current update will be integrating Hypothes.is. Each page served by them will then come up with an invitation to annotate publicly. While this might or might not help students with the text, it provides an additional way for students to go wrong beside the Public or Group problem, so I don’t think I’ll be working off the Yawp html pages regardless.
Don’t get me wrong – the business model of Hypothes.is is wonderful. They make a real effort to reach out, adapt and update. In fact, that’s one of the reasons for this post – to provide input that I hope will continue its improvement as an open source product made by people who really understand the value of text annotation.
As you know, I’ve been mourning the disappearance of two key technologies: the slidecast function in Slideshare (which could sync an audio file to a slidestack) and the annotation function in Flickr (which enabled mouseover notes on an image).
Then Alan Levine posted that he’d found a slidecast working in an embedded version.
At first I had trouble finding a Slidecast I’d embedded somewhere. Then I looked at some of my slideshows in Slideshare and peered at the truncated URLs of where they’d been embedded. Most were in other people’s LMSs (kind of ironic, actually) but some referred back to sites I control.
lisamlane.blogspot? I have a Blogspot blog? So I typed http://lisamlane.blogspot.com into my browser, and … oh! I didn’t find my slidecast, but I did find my annotated Flickr image of a medieval manor.
Imagine my excitement! No, wait, imagine me up several late nights for hours with Dreamweaver and 33 tabs open trying desperately to figure out how to create hotspots and make an imitation of my annotated Flicker image of a medieval manor, when I didn’t keep a copy of my notes. NOW imagine my excitement!
So I posted and Alan, being his wonderful self, figured out that Mbedr was doing the heavy lifting, and he posted about his found treasures. (Mbedr is a utility I discovered and played with in 2010, thanks to – guess who – Alan – and yes, that image still has its notes too!) And because Alan had talked about View Source in another tweet about Slideshare, I viewed the source and found my notes in the code, so I can recreate the image at 2 in the morning once I figure out the hotspots. I have my text!
Then I remembered that I had embedded a whole class of history lecture slidecasts, one at a time, onto web pages, so I could couple them with their audio transcriptions. Sixteen lectures saved!
So embedding preserved our goodies. When Flickr combined the image and the notes, and when a slidecast got embedded in a blog or page, it created something more permanent. It doesn’t solve all our problems, of course – we still can’t get these artifacts out in their original form. But access to anything we embedded seems to be restored!
Not that long ago, there were exciting new things to try in ed tech. It was easy to get enthusiastic about not only new products but the way the web was going, and to encourage faculty to jump in.
But in the last few years, the web has gone stagnant. Certain models of development, and certain tools, have become dominant, and online teaching has become far less excitiing.
1. Education is seen as a market.
Education, as Apple has known since 1981, is a market. But instead of marketing products toward innovative faculty, now products become “enterprise” and are marketed to administrators. This is a larger version of the problem I wrote about six years ago. Then, the Learning Management System, particularly the dominance of Blackboard, stifled innovative pedagogy, especially for novices who just plugged things in to the system. Now we have that writ large. We limit what’s available because restriction is seen as the only way to offer “support” (which faculty now desperately need – see #7). Educators are no longer seen as having special standing as users, with full-featured accounts offered for fee — we are just a target market like every other “consumer”.
2. The web isn’t as friendly anymore.
A couple of years ago, I got a note from an irate blogger because I was using her education blog to try out a feed aggregation plugin for WordPress. She thought I was making money off her work. Last week, I received a notice from Zoho, because my last post linked specifically to their LiveDesk page. They asked me to change my link. The link in my post. In my blog. Apparently linking to anywhere in a website other than the main page adversely affects their Google SEO standings.
We have pulled people away from the idea of creating their own web spaces, because it’s so much more convenient to just use Facebook or Google. In addition to the stalkers and evil net users we’ve always been afraid of, commercial entities like Apple and Google now collect, use, and sell our personal information and web use habits. We are watched, tracked, bought, sold, folded, stapled and mutilated on the web. It’s gone from playground to panopticon.
3. Tentative faculty were right.
When faculty were afraid to work with web 2.0 tools, we used to talk about the possible creativity. When they worried that they might work hard on something only to have it disappear, we’d talk about the transience of everything on the web, or how much benefit their work would have for students. But they’ve been right. Even though I’ve preached for years not to keep your important stuff on the web (even this post is backed up in plain text), I have been affected by the loss of tools like Posterous and the audio feature in Slideshare. Colleagues have been impacted by price hikes for Ning. Things that we created learning objects in for free now charge $49/month.
4. Nothing new is out there.
This is true pedagogically and technologically. When the new exciting thing is Haiku Deck (yet another simple tool for making what is essentially PowerPoint slides online), we’re in trouble. Tools that really do something new, like Prezi and Blabberize, are becoming very rare. This is despite the institutionalization of open source as a viable alternative to proprietary development. Now the purpose of development is to Beta a product, then monetize as quickly as possible. Almost every tool I’ve used has either disappeared or gone “freemium”, with the free version (think Blogger) being almost useless for any sort of innovative teaching. The IPO for Twitter is more than economic news — it’s emblematic of the move to commercialism in a way that creates stagnation within the product. All development will now be aimed at monetization.
And the tools themselves just perpetuate the same ways of doing things. We have failed to move beyond PowerPoint. Although we are better at designing slides (huge slides of text are now the exception), it’s still the same idea. Slideshows with audio were not exactly innovative (they duplicated the teacher talking through a filmstrip, if you remember those), but they were at least useful until Slideshare did away with the soundtrack (my last post tried Thinglink and Soundcloud to do something similar). The emphasis, unless you are a professional web developer or video-maker buying big products, is on easy sharing. Pinterest, the most recent “new” way of doing things, is just an easier version of CoolIris, which is just an easier version of posting images on a web page. Blogging plugins are aimed at monetization and search standings. And none of it ever got easier – wikis are still as hard to use as they always were. Sure, we can shrink-a-dink stuff for mobile. But I see little that is new (my online colleagues tell me gaming has seen all the innovations).
5. Online teaching has institutionalized in the wrong direction.
There were initially two models for online teaching. One was the DIY, faculty-driven, creative, early adopter, free development model. The other was the enterprise system, LMS-for-sale, cookie-cutter classes model. The latter featured scalability via automated grading and servers that could handle hundreds of students. When MOOCs became popular about five years ago, both models were in use. In adopting the standardized model as an answer to high college expenses, and promoting it in the best universities, the standardized, commercial model has won. When big universities other than its originator (Stanford) become commercial partners in Coursera, for example, that’s pretty clear.
6. The field has professionalized, also in the wrong direction.
cc BK at Flickr
Instead of faculty becoming experts in educational technology as part of a creative process, and being supported by their employers to get certificates and degrees to teach others, educational technology and online course administration are now their own fields with their own PhDs. This means that individuals who have never been teachers and have very little experience create small-sample studies and get degrees that net them jobs administrating experiences for faculty. The entire process promotes the idea that ed tech is too complex for ordinary faculty, promoting dependence and lack of agency.
7. Creativity is being outsourced.
A correlary to this trend is that the fun part (or second most fun part, depending on how much you like students) is being done by others. Creativity in teaching online comes in three places: course design, course materials development, and interactions with students. Most online teachers have great potential for developing good techniques for the latter, especially if they have teaching experience in other settings. But the creative fire, and the development of ones own online pedagogy, is being outsourced to “course developers” and “teams” who take the “burden” of creating courses off overworked faculty.
What seems to be advancement, then, has stifled online teaching.
Lessons of technology
I am a historian of technology – it’s what I do. In discussing some of the above disillusionment with my colleague Scott Johnson, he mentioned how prepping an online course is seen like housework – an ongoing process that people need relief from. Back in the 1980s, historian Ruth Schwartz Cohen wrote a book called More Work for Mother. It was about the changes in domestic technology at the turn of the last century (washing machines, vaccuum cleaners) and the way they were supposed to save labor. But instead, they caused a change in standards for cleanliness that increased their necessity. In addition, they put more of the burden on women, since they no longer needed help beating rugs and hauling laundry tubs.
The promise of technology for improving learning has been realized to a certain extent on the learner end – it is now much easier for the self-motivated, research-oriented students of information and perspectives to save, share and innovate within their own learning experience. But for teachers it’s “more work for mother”, as technologies, instead of relieving a burden, place too many demands on our time for too little return. That not only leaves teachers tired and willing to give up their pedagogical freedom to the nearest ed tech PhD, it leaves the students who need a lot of guidance out in the cold.
A silver lining
There are a number of ways to deal with all this. Most involve some pruning, and even a return to previous ways of thinking.
Select the right tools
When we create something on the web, we should only do so in places where we can download a copy in a typical format, like mp4. Otherwise, we should avoid the product.
Focus on one technology that works
Online courses could be simplified. Select one technology (video, audio, slides) and make that your own. And by “own” I mean created in a way where you can save a copy before uploading to YouTube.
Return to basics
If the technology is turning into a time-suck, return to the more personal way of doing things, like assignments and feedback by email.
Use the technology when it truly saves labor
An automated gradebook where students can log in and see their grades saves labor. Automated grading for multiple-choice or formative assessment saves labor. Other aspects of technology (internal messaging systems, clunky captioning tools, things you have to spend 15 hours learning) may not be good time investments.
Outsource the things you hate
Take advantage of whatever systems or people are provided to you for free, and learn the features or tasks they provide that make these tasks easier. But prioritize first based on what you like – if you love course design, keep it for yourself.
Play with a purpose
It used to be we’d play with the newest gadgets and apps so that we could build permanent things, but this doesn’t work. So play with the intention of learning about technologies in general. All the skills can be transferred to other web technologies.
Go to where you are
If you love your LMS, stay there and learn to use it well. If you prefer WordPress, learn all about it. If you’re a Google fan, become proficient. Don’t worry about going to where other people are (Facebook or mobile apps) if that’s not your thing.
When technology causes loss, or bad changes, instead of improving our lives, we should evolve. I got rid of my dishwasher because it was a continual source of disappointment – it didn’t get dishes very clean, and it got to the point where I was pretty much washing them by hand anyway. So I bought a bigger dish drainer, removed the dishwasher, and gained some badly needed kitchen space. But before that happened I wasted a lot of time and effort working with the machine’s inadequacies, because after all it was supposed to save me time and trouble.
Sometimes it’s hard to recognize when technology is controlling us instead of the other way around. If the web isn’t providing exciting options anymore, it’s time to adapt and get some of our space back.
I thought, that’s a nice picture of her. And the audio is playing over it. Would it be possible to make that a set of images that changed? After all, I’m still smarting from Slideshare’s cavalier decision to delete all my carefully synced audio lectures from my slide sets. So I put “soundcloud images” into DuckDuckGo, and somehow ended up at this page saying how you could add SoundCloud audio to an image in ThingLink, which I’ve never used. So I got a ThingLink account, uploaded an image, tagged it “LACMA”. Then I went into SoundCloud, used its new Record feature to record an audio test, then went back to ThingLink.
I added another tag and put in the URL for my SoundCloud audio, and changed the link image to a play button. Then I clicked Share to get the embed code to put it all here. Here’s what happened (mouse over if you don’t see the link buttons):
Starting a new year means starting a new semester, and this time it will start a week early.
The issue today was IM. My classes are in Moodle, but I’ve always used a status button so students can communicate with me instantly if I’m online.
Moodle has something called Messages. Back in version 1.x, I couldn’t tell which class a student was in when they Messaged me. Instead of fixing this in 2.x, they made it worse by removing all user information outside the courses completely, making it not only impossible to tell which class a student was in, but impossible to get back to where you were working in your course site.
I used to use Google Talk Chatback Badge instead. It didn’t tell me which class a student was in, but at least it was easy to let them know I was available, and they didn’t have to have a Google account or log in. That’s gone. The option now is Hangouts and other stuff where they have to join Googleland. I can’t be responsible for making someone violate their own privacy that way.
Then it was Plupper, which I routed through iChat. It’s been down all week. I don’t know if it’s coming back, but all week isn’t OK, so I went hunting again.
I was getting miffed that I couldn’t find what I wanted. I was running all over the web trying to find a free service. I began to realize I didn’t really need “chat”, but some sort of help-desky thing. I was at first delighted to find Zoho LiveDesk (link removed at request of Zoho) which I could adapt. i could even create different badges for different classes. Then I discovered that this multi-button feature was only available on paid accounts – it turned out I had somehow entered a 30 trial that would expire. So much for that.
Then it occurred to me. I rent my own server space – I wondered what open source stuff was hanging out there? I found Mibew, and installed it. It even built its own database (though I had to go in and tweak a bit).
Their button was not exactly what I needed (I won’t be turning blonde and I’ve never looked that happy):
So I got into GIMP and made my own:
Then I made one for offline:
After installing Mibew, I was able to set up each class as a “group”, then create button code for each group, so I can see which class they’re coming from! A unique button went onto each class site – I tested them and they work.
I used the Localization feature (which was highly customizable) to change “Live Support” to “For My History Students”, my designation as “operator” to “teacher”, and the language of client and user to student.
It may not be perfect. It may fail. It may crash. Keep in mind, I don’t code. I just know enough to change other people’s code.
But as I was doing this today, I suddenly realized I was Reclaiming the Web, a goal of many smart people for 2014. Happy New Year!
To take students through the text of a historical document, I downloaded a sample UK voice called Peter from Infovox (free for 30 days, then $20 for the one voice). It works through my Mac’s Universal Access system. It’s quite awkward to have it read just text, since even at high-threshold settings it wants to read aloud all the computer commands and window changes. By putting the Magna Carta into a TextEdit document and recording with Snapz Pro, I did this:
What if I could give a bit of history lecture “on location”?
Continuing with looking at animation, I downloaded Tellagami (which I first read about on Greg Kulowiec’s blog) to my iPod Touch and was able to do this:
It saves as mp4 to the Tellegami website, and their Share button gives embed code. Or I suppose one could download it using one of those sneaky browser extensions.
The limitations were that I had to upload photos to the iPod, and that the audio was a little dicey – I had to make sure the Touch was a couple of feet away from me to not get static. Oh, and it’s limited to 30 seconds!
I don’t have an iPad so it hadn’t occurred to me to look at apps, but now I will.
And next I hope to borrow an iPad to try Explain Everything, the other app from Greg’s post.
I spent almost two hours the other day trying to embed a Skype status button into Moodle.
First, I copied the code wrong on Skype’s page for making the button . It didn’t have the </div> tag at the end. Until I figured that out, I kept thinking it was Moodle not letting me add the Javascript, so I spend time on the Moodle forums trying to figure out how to trick Moodle into allowing it. It was important, for example, to turn off the HTML Editor in my profile.
So then I finally get the button added, and it looks like this:
I log into Skype. It looks like that. I log out of Skype. It still looks like that. Why isn’t it indicating my status? I go to Skype’s website again (it made me log in every time I opened a tab and went to the page).
Apparently the “new” button does not indicate your status. I can’t imagine the usefulness of putting a Skype button on your webpage that doesn’t indicate whether you are available or not. But search the support forums and follow the trail and there it is:
It only works if you have the OLD button? So I start thinking – how do I get the code for the old button? I keep searching around the forums, and found someone had posted some old code that they couldn’t get to work, with a “mystatus.skype.com” URL so I used that as a search in the forums, but no joy. I even tried to reconstruct his sample with my parameters.
Then I remembered – I keep a file with code snippets. I’ve got bits like how to write <object> and html, and the code for making a YouTube video play at a certain spot, and how to zip a folder in ZipIt, and all the other stuff I was afraid I’d forget.
The software is Plotagon, which is free and in beta. It was shared with me by Tom Hodgers, a member of the POT Cert class, because I was looking for a replacement for the now defunct Xtranormal. I ran it on Mac OS 10.6 even though it requires 10.7. Then I uploaded to Vimeo, until I realized they (still) don’t have captions. So I uploaded to YouTube, put in the script for the new transcribing service, and then used a special embed code (cc_load_policy=1) to force the captions to show.
OK, so pedagogy. Students have trouble understanding the old poems and epics, unless translated in a way that makes them distinctly unpoetic. For one of my major topics in early Western Civilzation, heroic narratives, they need to encounter Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, and Beowulf (so they can work on – like last week’s class, epics like Star Wars, Shrek, and Forrest Gump – yes, that’s what they chose).
Short of spending weeks in Second Life, I don’t have an easy way to create characters in settings that would portray the text, and I’m not sure I want that. There’s something more pure about a reading rather than a performance for these epics, which were, after all, in the oral tradition. In this program I can create a “reading” instead of a show, like one might see at the reading of a play. No costumes, sets or production values. This imitates that, and I confess I came at all this backward after playing with the program, which I could not at first find a use for. So now all the people who will say, “That’s not pedagogy first! That’s technology first!” will feel vindicated. And I should probably double-post to ds106.
Yes, it’s supposed to be to share pinboards, like a edu-Pinterest. But that’s not what I need. I need a presentation tool.
Trouble is, I’m not very linear anymore when it comes to lecturing. I used to be. I used to have outlines, both on the overhead projector (my specialty is medieval technology) and on my notes (notes? what are notes?).
But over the years I’ve become less linear. But I’ve also become more visual. Powerpoints don’t do the trick – they’re linear too. I don’t like going back five slides, or keeping to multi-slide view open so I can see where to go next.
I tried CoolIris for this a year or two back. It was kind of OK, but clunky. Had to be installed on my classroom computer, which has the RAM of a small treadle sewing machine. I tried installing it on my own server. But then I had to download and upload folders and, well, those little tiles were kinda hard to see unless you moved the mouse just right to see down the…line.
So, pinboards! This is great, I thought, when I first saw Pinterest. So I tried it, but it compressed the images, and when you clicked on them it didn’t make them that big, not in good enough resolution for that big screen at the front of the classroom.
Along comes Educlipper, and that’s working better. I can add not only images from wherever on the web, but pdf files (the homework and documents) and video clips (don’t want to miss that cool Darmok episode where Picard does Gilgamesh).
