Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Barking Robot Goes BigTime

You may notice something new around here on the Barking Robot. Yep, I've got a new (totally awesome) header designed by BT Livermore over at BT Illustration. Pretty slick, eh?

I stumbled on BT's artwork a few years ago on Etsy. He had a fantastic linocut of Jack Kerouac, one of my favorite authors, for sale. I quickly bid on the piece and now it hangs over my desk.

I instantly became a fan of BT and have several more of his prints--ranging from robots, Abraham Lincoln, to Russian cosmonauts---hanging on my walls. Not to mention some robot buttons and a couple tee shirts to boot. BT also did the buttons featuring Earl the Owl for the Yahoo! For Teachers project.

If you're looking for some art for your home or need some illustration work done for your web projects, why not support indie artists and give BT a call?

Thanks Matt.

Related Resources

• BigTime Illustration
• Robot-A-Day Blog (RADROBOT)
• How to Survive a Robot Uprising

Note: I recieved no compensation (goods or services) for this wildly enthusiastic endorsement of BT. Vote for BT. He's a good egg. That's all. Now carry on...

YPulse: Five Things Marketers Can Learn From NECC 2008

YPulse is a leading source of daily news, commentary about Gen Y for media and marketing professionals. The site is edited by Anastasia Goodstein, the author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online.

This week I had the pleasure of writing a guest post for YPulse titled "Five Things Marketers Can Learn From NECC 2008." Here's an excerpt:

"One of my former colleagues at Yahoo! used to have a mantra: "We can do good and do well." Gen Y students are totally wired and the "Flat World" isn't an abstract view of the future, it's their reality. Increasingly teachers are looking for ways to interject global, local and other types of social awareness programs and curriculum into their classroom.

Educational programs that provide avenues for teachers and students to connect with other classrooms to "do good" can also provide you with an opportunity to build brand awareness with youth and allow you to "do well" at the same time. Tiger, Oprah, MTV, Target and Microsoft are already doing it, why aren't you?"

You can catch the whole post by clicking here. Thanks to Anastasia and the YPulse team for the opportunity.

Related Resources

• YPulse
• YPulse Mashup 2008
• Totally Wired Blog
• Barking Robot > YPulse

Digital Inclusion: Content, Community and Technology

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL CONTENT DIVIDE
Didactics World, December 2006
Derek E. Baird, M.A.

"Despite enormous strides towards digital inclusion, technology is only part of the solution. Another vital component of the digital divide that gets less attention, but is nearly as important is lack of quality, free, and open content on the web.

The key aim of the open learning movement is to have quality educational content available for students once they cross the digital divide."

ADL Students & Cyberbullying Forum

I just finished speaking at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Panel on Students and Cyberbullying held at the Cesar Chavez Elementary school in San Francisco.

I was joined on the panel by Brian Marcus (ADL National Director of Internet Monitoring) and Adrienne DeWolfe (California Technology Assistance Project). We had a great conversation with both parents and educators on Gen Y, cyberbullying and hate speech on the web.

Our message to parents and educators was pretty similar: Don't panic! Arm yourself with knowledge and understand that blocking content and web pages isn't the answer. Here are some other tips:

• Talk to your kids/students about what is appropriate and not appropriate information to release on the Internet. Take an active role in their digital life.
  

• Protect your kids digital identity by creating news alerts for their name on Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

• Talk about the implications “lifecasting” can and will have on their future.

• Remind kids that the web is that "permanent record" we were all warned about. Even though you go back and change that blog entry or delete that embarrassing photo, the information is archived on the Internet Archive and/or Wayback Machine.

• Whether it's Club Penguin or MySpace--make sure your kids learn how and why they should use privacy filters--and then double check to make sure they are using them.

• Visit the sites your kids use and read the TOS (Terms of Service) and Community Guidelines. Learn how to report abuse and share the information with your kids.

• Social networks are self-policing, if you find objectionable content, bullying or other abuse—report it! Think of it as a 21^st Century Neighborhood Watch program.

The good news is that parents are already taking the lead on web safety. A survey released last month by Common Sense Media found that:

• 85 % of parents of children who go online said they have talked to their child in the past year about how to behave on the internet.

• 88% of parents said the internet helps their children acquire skills and information needed to    succeed in school, as well as helping youngsters learn about the things that most interest them and about different cultures and ideas.

• An Harris Interactive poll found that more than 93% of those surveyed said they have taken action to make sure the web sites their children visit meet parental standards.

There are lots of great resources out there to empower parents and educators on social media safety & cyberbullying. The ADL, Yahoo!, Media Awareness Network, and MySpace (to name a few) all provide free web safety guides for parents and teachers on web safety, digital literacy & social media.

Thanks to Lianne Baskin and Johnathan Bernstein from the ADL for inviting me to participate in the conversation. I hope that those of you who attended were able to leave with some good information and insight into the digital world of Gen Y.

Additional Resources

• Totally Wired
• Yahoo! Safely
• BJ Fogg > What Makes a Website Credible?
• Tapping the Tools of Teen Culture in the LMC

NSDL 2007: Content Cookoff

On November 6th I'll be attending the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Annual Conference in Washington D.C. where I'll be on a panel discussing educational user generated content and online community. I'll also be sharing Yahoo! For Teachers and the Gobbler with the NSDL membership.

If you haven't already, check out all the great science resources that the NSDL has collected in their repository.

One of the really cool things about this "Content Cook-off" conference session is that everyone on the panel gets to work with a local teacher who will build a project using the tool that each of us are presenting.

I love when we're able to put all this digital pedagogy and web 2.0 theory into an authentic classroom experience. I'm looking forward to attending the conference and meeting with science educators from around the country. It should be a good time.

If you're in town, come by and join us. But if you can't join us, don't worry, I'll be blogging and Twittering my way through the conference so I can share all the cool things I learn about at the NSDL Conference.

Related Resources

• NSDL
• Upcoming > NSDL
• Yahoo! For Teachers
• Yahoo! For Teachers + Twitter

Mashup Edu: A New Digital Pedagogy

Dr. Mercedes Fisher and I just finished a new book chapter titled "Pedagogical Mashup: Social Media, Gen Y and Digital Learning Styles" that will be published early next year. I'll have more details in a future post, but in the meantime I wanted to share the bounty of resources we culled together for the article.

We've saved the links for all the resources and references cited in the book chapter over on the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us, which you can find here: http://del.icio.us/mashup.edu

If you have any questions, or know of a great Education 2.0 resource that we should include, let us know!

Related Articles by Mercedes Fisher & Derek E. Baird

• Making mLearning Work: Gen Y, Learning & Mobile Technologies
• Social Software & Online Learning Design
• Social Media & Digital Learning Styles

mLearning: The Next Wave

Yesterday I got the reprints for my latest article on mobile learning (mLearning). You can read the abstract here. If you want to know more, or need a cure for insomnia, let me know and I'll send you a copy. Actually, it's a pretty interesting read.

Thanks to Mercedes Fisher and the rest of the National College of Ireland community who participated in the study.

And a special thanks to David O'Loghlin and Brendan Tangney, both from the Computer Science Department in Trinity College Dublin. They created a mobile application called Virtual Graffiti that we discuss in the article. It's a slick tool, so check it out.

Related Resources

• Looking Forward: Thinking About mLearning
• Learning 3.0: Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
• Leonard Low + mLearning
• MoSoSo, Gen Y & Digital Learning Styles

Making mLearning Work: Gen Y, Learning and Mobile Technologies

Journal of Educational Technology Systems (JETS )

Volume 35 , Number 1 / 2006-2007

Making mLearning Work: Utilizing mobile technology for active exploration, collaboration, assessment, and reflection in higher education

Mercedes Fisher, PhD.
National College of Ireland

Derek E. Baird, M.A
Educational Technologist

Abstract

The convergence of mobile technologies into student centered learning environments requires academic institutions to design new and more effective learning, teaching, and user experience strategies.

In this paper we share results from a mLearning design experiment and analysis from a student survey conducted at the National College of Ireland. Quantitative data support our hypothesis that mLearning technologies can provide a platform for active learning, collaboration, and innovation in higher education.

In addition, we review mobile interface and user-experience design considerations, and mLearning theory. Finally, we provide an overview of mLearning applications being developed in the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland including, Virtual Graffiti, BuddyBuzz, Flickr, and RAMBLE.

Keywords:

mLearning, social media, mobile, Flickr, BuddyBuzz, RAMBLE, Gen Y, mobile interface design, mobile user-experience design, participatory media, community generated content, rapid serial visual presentation, mobile learning theory, Ireland, Yahoo, Google, Tivo, PSP, iPod, open source education, YouTube, Claroline, National College of Ireland

YackLearning & Learning via Interpersonal Podcasting

YackLearning.net is a powerful new way to teach and learn through audio messaging. Various Internet companies allow you to create and share audio messages. We recommend using YackPack, because it's private, it's easy to use, and it offers true interpersonal podcasting."

I'll be posting more about YackLearning soon, but I wanted BlendedEdu readers to be among the first to know about this fantastic interpersonal podcasting resource.

I'm also excited to announce that I have agreed to join the YackLearning Educational Advisory Board. I'm looking forward to working with BJ Fogg, YackPack, and the other advisory board members!

If you're using YackPack in an educational setting, drop me a line so I can share it with the YackLearning team. Who knows, we just may feature your pack on the YackLearning site!

Links

• YackLearning
• YackPack
• debaird.net + YackPack

Learning Styles 2.0: Digital, Social, and Always On

“We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” -Peter Drucker

Raised in the "always on" world of interactive media, the Internet, and social media technologies, Generation Y has different expectations and learning styles than previous generations.

What happens to student learning when a course is revised to incorporate self-directed learning opportunities? The learning that students achieve goes far beyond the boundaries of what they are taught because individuals create meaning for themselves beyond solely the intent of the teacher.

Digital learning styles include fluency in new media, online communities, guided mentoring, video games, or collective reflection via blogs, podcasts, moblogging, wiki, Flickr, and other forms of social media. Effective online learning design should provide engaging content which allows the pupil to draw connections between the context of the learning objectives while utilizing various forms of social media.

Another vital design element is the users ability to mediate their level of communication within the virtual learning environment. Understanding and incorporating these digital learning experience attributes into your frontline and online curriculum will increase student motivation and enhance the delivery of instruction while meeting the needs of today's digital learning styles.

Digital Learning Experience Attributes

• Interactive: Engaging content and course material that motivates them to learn through challenging pedagogy, conceptual review, and learning style adaptation. Students expect to pick and use various types of media and create a personalized “mash-up” of content. Students also use social media as a way to express their identity and creativity through creation of user-generated content.

• Student-Centered: Shifts the learning responsibility to the student, and emphasizes teacher-guided instruction and modeling. The role of the teacher is to help novices clear cognitive roadblocks by providing them with the resources needed to develop a better understanding of the topic. This requires the student to take a more active role in their own learning process.

• Authentic: Learning and knowledge acquisition takes place only when situated in a social and authentic context. Teachers should find ways to reconcile classroom use of social media to the authentic way teens are using outside of the classroom. The use of technology (video games, blogs, podcasts) use should be tied to a specific learning goal or activity.

• Collaborative: Learning is a social activity, and students learn best through observation, collaboration, intrinsic motivation and from self-organizing social systems comprised of peers. This can take place in either a virtual or in-person environment. Collaborative work and peer feedback supports motivation by giving students a sense of active involvement within the learning community.

• On-Demand: Student's have the ability to multitask and handle multiple streams of information and juggle both short and long term information and/or learning goals. Course content should be made available "on-demand" so the learner can view course materials when, where, and how (PC, mobile or handheld device) they want to view the content.

These trends in online and lifelong learning are being fueled by changes in the characteristics of student learners and the ways in which they use new technologies to exchange information. One thing is clear: the convergence of social software technologies and a generation of web-savvy learners are rapidly changing the face of education.

In light of these socio-cultural changes, educators need to “keep abreast of change” and embrace digital learning styles through curriculum design which integrates the authentic ways that students use social media to collaborate and interact with peers as a means to achieve short and long term learning goals.

Looking Forward: Thinking about mLearning

"The fates guide those who go willingly; those who do not, they drag" ~ Seneca

In late 2005, Dr. Mercedes Fisher and I began a new case study looking at the ways in which mobile technology, coupled with (mobile-based) content, can provide students with a platform for active learning, collaboration, and reflection in higher education.

The future of education, beyond the integration of Web 2.0 technologies into the classroom, is the migration of social media and learning from the PC onto mobile and handheld devices.

The European Union, in addition to their ongoing mobile education research, is also actively working on implementing several mLearning initiatives.

Moreover, mobile-based learning may (finally!) provide a way to close the digital divide and provide educational access and equality for children in developing nations.

In a recent speech, Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel pointed to some trends in terms of Internet access and mobile devices:

• 900 million people connect to the Internet via a PC
• 2 billion cell phones, many of these are web-enabled
• 50% of those outside the US will connect to the web via a mobile or handheld device, NOT a PC

One thing is clear: The convergence of mobile technologies and student-centered learning environments will require academic institutions to design and implement new and more effective user experience strategies for use in mobile learning environments (MLE).

I'm looking forward to sharing more of our research on mLearning, including our final case study, with BlendedEdu readers soon!

Additional Readings

• The Real Wireless Revolution is Just Beginning
• E-Learning on the Move
• Gradeschoolers Learn on handheld
• Mobile Phones in Education
• mLearning Research at the University of Birmingham
• Welcome to Convergence Culture (pdf)
• Professor joins Yahoo! to study sharing

More on FlickrEdu...

                    

Many thanks to BlendedEdu readers for such a positive response to my article on using Flickr as an educational social networking tool.

Since its publication in the November 2005 edition of techLearning, I have received email and feedback from educators from all over the world.

I'm thrilled that so many of you--from Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Japan, U.S, and elsewhere--have found the article a worthwhile addition to your arsenal of curriculum and teaching resources!

Thank you, again, for your feedback!

db

Links

• techLearning: FlickrEdu
• FlickrEdu Group
• Flickr + Art History
• debaird.net + flickr

FlickrEDU: The Promise of Social Networks

FlickrEdu: The Promise of Social Networks >>TechLearning:

"While not originally developed as an education tool, Flickr, and other social networking technologies have the ability to play an important part in student motivation, retention and learning—especially in distributed learning environments.

Social networking technologies and media are important tools because of their ability to foster interaction and communication between students. This is especially important in online learning communities, where students may have limited face-to-face time to build a support network with their peers."

How do you use Flickr in the classroom?

• HTML Version (requires registration)
• PDF Version

Web Resources

• Flickr
• Flickr + Creative Commons
• Flickr > Groups > FlickrEdu

FlickrEDU | Social Software Goes to School

Flickr, the popular online photo sharing and social networking community, is popping up in lots of classrooms as teachers find interesting and creative ways to integrate its many features into their curriculum.

Why is Flickr so popular in the classroom?

Perhaps the June 2005 Adaptive Path newsletter said it best:

“Flickr recognized that people wanted a better way to share their photos. They also recognized that people might have myriad ways of doing that. Flickr lets people derive their own value from sharing photos…Instead of attempting to define your experience, they simply provide a sandbox, and give you the means to create a meaningful experience within that.”

Sounds like social constructivism to me.

So how do you use Flickr in your classroom? I've started a Flickr community group where educators can share curriculum ideas, make suggestions, share student Flickr projects, or learn more about using social software in the classroom. So please join the discussion!

And for a more ideas how to use Flickr in your classroom, be sure to look for my article, FlickrEDU in the Nov 2005 issue of TechLearning.

Nov 11 Update: The article has been published.

Social Software & Online Learning Design

Online Learning Design That Fosters Student Support, Self-Regulation, And Retention, Campus-Wide Information Systems : The International Journal of Learning and Technology, (2005) Volume: 22 Number: 2

Authors Mercedes Fisher, PhD. Derek E. Baird, M.A.

Purpose: Investigating the social structure in online environments helps us design for and facilitate student (user) support and retention. Provides data showing how design and use of social media networking technologies provided collaborative learning opportunities for online students.

Design / Methodology / Approach: A study of computer-mediated groups that utilized social networking technologies and a web-based collaborative model in an online learning program. Participants were put into groups and observed as they used both online dialogue (synchronous and asynchronous) and social media technologies, such as blogs, as tools to support their learning.

Findings: The integration of web-based learning communities and collaborative group assignments into the course design has a positive influence on retention in online environments.

Research limitations / implications: The research was limited to the online student population at Pepperdine University, and did not include data or research from similar online programs at other universities. Future research should include data collected from students outside the U.S. to find out what role cultural mores, attitudes, and gender play in online learning.

Practical Implications: Provides curriculum design strategies that foster community, utilize social / participatory media, and support online student learning and retention through effective course design.

Originality / value: Current research on distance learning curriculum has focused on the instructor’s perspective. We feel that research from the student’s perspective can also yield some valuable insights for online course design.