tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47673221951452665142009-07-15T13:42:14.580-04:00Jessehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10119641283432820248noreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-85124453738391945462009-07-01T13:48:00.002-04:002009-07-01T13:52:29.504-04:00

More on my desktop videoconferenced class. During the class, I showed them You Tube videos and a Microsoft Word document, just as I would have done in a face-to-face class. They responded to a question by typing on the online whiteboard, providing me with a way to summarize their ideas in one place. I didn’t use powerpoint slides, but I’m not using powerpoint in this class. If I was, I could have

Gayle Steinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01555766255619778462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-2534794182131248522009-06-30T11:29:00.004-04:002009-07-06T18:18:03.048-04:00

I’m currently at the International Society of Technology in Education’s (ISTE) annual conference in Washington, DC. There are about 18,000 K12 teachers, tech staff, and administrators, university faculty, and vendors attending this conference. We’re all here for a similar purpose: to find ways to improve learning through the use of contemporary technology. It’s an overwhelming experience that I’

Gayle Steinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01555766255619778462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-68099988105338142472009-06-12T13:59:00.005-04:002009-06-12T14:48:10.495-04:00

Can a video game show us what it would be like to live on the streets? Can it show how growing up in a dysfunctional family could influence a person later in life? Can it inspire others to donate to charity to help the homeless?These questions are starting to be asked, ever since a social "experiment" began in The Sims 3, the new "real-life simulation" game by EA Games. Robin Burkinshaw, a

Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09485205606891010073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-14433126814164972932009-05-29T10:53:00.004-04:002009-05-29T11:45:45.971-04:00

I saw a tweet yesterday from Lisa Thumann at the Center for Mathematics, Science and Computer Education. She's got her finger on the pulse of the educational technology world and she mentioned a new technology from Google Labs called Similar Images. In my short play-test, I found it to be extremely successful. Here is quick walkthrough of how it works:1. Visit the site and search for an image

Jessehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10119641283432820248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-35420323824806724772009-05-25T23:58:00.009-04:002009-05-26T00:58:59.750-04:00

During Memorial Day weekend, it is easy to get caught up in barbecues and summer rituals and forget the original purpose of the observance of this holiday. I happened across this blog post that I felt would be appropriate to share during this time of remembering those who lost their lives defending our country.Sean Askay, an engineer for Google, unveiled on his blog a Google Earth layer he

Christianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01810451283906109567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-19768450514329789622009-05-23T11:10:00.002-04:002009-05-23T11:15:21.589-04:00

For those of you interested in government datasets and an invitation to play and shape the future of publicly available government data, your day has arrived!From the main page of data.gov:The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a

Jessehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10119641283432820248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-17739770620911184522009-05-19T09:52:00.006-04:002009-05-20T21:56:16.827-04:00

Tomorrow's the big day! Here are the last of the changes we will be making:Site InfoThere have been some improvements to the "Import from Site" action in the Site Info tool. You can now choose whether the material you are importing should replace your current site material or be added to what is already there. You can also now import participants from another site, adding them to the

Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09485205606891010073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-30649141805477870742009-05-18T10:10:00.002-04:002009-05-18T10:54:31.445-04:00

Sometimes, technology isn't all it's cracked up to be. More often than we'd like, some new technology that is expected to change the face of IT simply....doesn't. PC Authority gives a review of some such technologies in the recent article, Top 10 Disappointing Technologies. Their ranking:Honorable Mentions:BiometricsUbuntuTop 10:10. Virtual Reality9. Alternative Search Engines8. Voice

Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09485205606891010073noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-61362839396126926372009-05-16T16:15:00.007-04:002009-05-18T10:45:07.368-04:00

Wolfram|Alpha opened its doors to users this weekend. It is being touted as a step beyond conventional search engines. Its creator is Stephen Wolfram (of Mathematica fame), who calls it a computational knowledge engine. Briefly, this means that this engine can take specially prepared data sets and attempt to help you compute and create knowledge. The idea is that you can ask it questions like

Jessehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10119641283432820248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-42723230684576988342009-05-14T16:53:00.006-04:002009-05-20T21:56:55.377-04:00

Here is the promised Part 2. I'm going to start listing 2.6 changes based on tools from this point on.AnnouncementsYou can provide an RSS feed for people to subscribe to your announcements in a site. Only the announcements set to "public" will appear in this feed. All other announcements will only be viewable by members of the site.Chat RoomMultiple chat rooms were available in 2.5, but now

Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09485205606891010073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-56713706299187395152009-05-07T11:14:00.007-04:002009-05-20T21:57:28.392-04:00

As you probably know, Sakai will be down on commencement day, May 20. This is to perform some major upgrades to Sakai as we update from Sakai 2.5 (the current version) to Sakai 2.6.We at OIRT have been hard at work the last few weeks, doing final testing on our test servers. We are catching bugs, getting acquainted with the new system and any quirks it has, and customizing the "generic" Sakai

Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09485205606891010073noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-20227304847855405622009-05-06T09:03:00.003-04:002009-05-06T09:15:51.132-04:00

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and visiting professor at MIT's Media Laboratory. I found an interesting and timely post that he wrote on his blog the other day, which is short enough to share in full:Here are the first two question of the exam I just gave:1) My parents and grandparents would be most proud of me if:a. I did not cheat on this

Jessehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10119641283432820248noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-43511230682005445522009-04-03T15:54:00.003-04:002009-05-04T15:39:23.813-04:00

Virtual worlds and online communities can be great tools for conducting experiments. It's not uncommon for an experiment that would be costly, unethical, or simply hard to manage in "real life" to find an easy transition into the digital world. In fact, sometimes even virtual mistakes and oversights can unintentionally cause situations of interest to the research world (I'm thinking

Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09485205606891010073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-58461595078010259802009-04-02T12:50:00.004-04:002009-04-03T14:28:24.031-04:00

A proposed treaty, The Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, between various nations of the world raises several concerns in consumer privacy, the free flow of information on the Internet, and legitimate e-commerce, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF argues that despite the agreement's obvious cracking-down on counterfeited physical goods, its scope has been broadened to include

Christianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01810451283906109567noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-47553724868925058262009-04-01T10:25:00.003-04:002009-04-01T10:58:22.719-04:00

According to Google, the Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE) was switched on at midnight and is now preforming initial functions. While Google cautions that there is a long and difficult road ahead, they were pleased to see CADIE deduce design principles, after a quick scan of the visual segment of the social web, from which CADIE produced its own home pageThe Rutgers

Eric W. Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02461513108571538273noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-31391876396656779252009-03-30T09:06:00.006-04:002009-03-30T12:07:00.353-04:00

I stumbled upon the latest version of the provocative Did You Know? video this weekend. This presentation was first created a few years ago, but went through a nice revamp in late 2008. Watch the most recent version below and leave your thoughts in the comments section.My main question for you: What skills does the university need to provide to our students so that they will be able to thrive

Jessehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10119641283432820248noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-67029586766204260632009-03-23T13:49:00.003-04:002009-03-24T09:50:46.690-04:00

Fantastic Contraption is part puzzle part learning experience. You are given a limited set of materials (Tinkertoy wheels and connectors) and the simple goal of move one block across the screen. By the end of the series of puzzles, the solver has developed an intuitive feel for torque and elasticity as well as invented many of the common structures known to engineering.http://www.kongregate.com/

Eric W. Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02461513108571538273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-16936320347978150042009-03-20T13:54:00.004-04:002009-03-20T14:08:03.597-04:00

I came across this video which gives a brief (7 minute) history of the Internet. Visually appealing and entertaining, it's quite simple and straight forward. It's not comprehensive of course, but the video does a good job of getting at some of the big ideas. The complete accuracy is questionable in places, but even so I think it's a good overview, especially for those who know little on the

Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09485205606891010073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-79712932309688940562009-03-19T22:58:00.005-04:002009-03-19T23:17:01.111-04:00

NJEdge is having its cyberinfrastructure and high performance computing conference today, Friday. The goal of this conference is to promote and facilitate an understanding of advanced computing technologies to share high performance computing successes from NJ institutions. Whether your interest lies in the physical sciences, life sciences, social sciences or the arts as an educator, researcher

Eric W. Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02461513108571538273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-46603097842268353702009-03-19T09:36:00.005-04:002009-03-19T09:45:27.206-04:00

There is an increasing amount of attention being drawn to cases where jurors have used wireless devices in the courtroom. In recent events, court proceedings have suffered due to accessing information that otherwise would not be permitted (or have been thought of as permissible) by the judge into the case.As the linked article explains, just last week a juror assigned to a Florida drug trial

Christianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01810451283906109567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-1950369777386299802009-03-17T11:16:00.002-04:002009-03-17T11:43:02.505-04:00

On March 16, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article entitled, "Students stop surfing after being shown how in-class laptop use lowers test scores." In the article, an associate professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder found that the students surfing the Net during class scored 11% worse, on average, than their peers.A June 13, 2008 article, found quite the opposite. A survey of

Gayle Steinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01555766255619778462noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-47750215432109935492009-03-16T11:54:00.006-04:002009-03-16T12:20:00.372-04:00

"Explainers" are important these days. That statement alone needs a solid explanation (hence the hyperlink).Unfortunately in our information age, people are left behind when it comes to understanding complex ideas. This is why it is important (as the article to which I've linked above explains) to sometimes shift your focus from information to explanation. This is part of my job everyday: to

Jessehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10119641283432820248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-16445622654637128522009-03-11T13:11:00.005-04:002009-03-11T13:35:26.683-04:00

Late last semester, OIRT and the Aresty Research Center started a video series called The Undergraduate Research Spotlight. The goal of the series is to recognize the contributions of those students who are at the heart of this university's strong research tradition. We asked faculty to nominate their outstanding undergraduate researchers, and we got an amazing response: 34 faculty nominated 87

Jessehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10119641283432820248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-29170316827686065492009-03-09T10:40:00.002-04:002009-03-09T16:17:28.868-04:00

Don't have five hundred extra dollars to spare for diagramming software? I don't blame you. Gliffy is an online application that provides the tools necessary to create various types of diagrams, share and collaborate with others, and publish the finished product quickly and easily. It's like Google Docs meets Microsoft Visio.The service boasts a comprehensive shape library with the ability to

Christianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01810451283906109567noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4767322195145266514.post-9823577383991051082009-03-07T11:16:00.002-05:002009-03-07T11:32:10.682-05:00

Mobile learning is one of the new buzzwords circulating among teachers these days. It involves using cell phones, iPods, and portable gaming platforms, devices that most students already have, to encourage anywhere, anytime learning.The Sesame Workshop recently published a report about using mobile technologies in learning. I think that it contains some really interesting examples of what can be

Gayle Steinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01555766255619778462noreply@blogger.com1