F.R. "Fritz" Nordengren, MPH

In reviewing submission guidelines for some conferences, I am struck by some obvious advice: the title needs to be catchy. And who among us hasn’t at times written a poor title for what was probably a good presentation?

But even good advice is sometimes overlooked, or goes unheeded. That became clear to me after the last 12:10 Lunch and Learn about new ways to access and use images in presentations, the title didn’t live up to the topic. Several of those who chose not to attend, later told me said “we know how to put an image in powerpoint”. Opps. Bad title.

The October 12:10 conspiracy was to help discover and explore item 11 on the 12/10 list: exploring Flickr. And along with that we explored that the old difficult way of finding images to use in presentations has some free and better alternatives.

So as a brief recap, here are some of the key points.

The old way — of buying stock image disks, looking through pages of stock photo albums and directories, and considering whether the use of an image constituted a violation of copyright law have evolved.

The new way includes the use of tools like flickr™ (www.flickr.com) or Picassa™ and searching for images on nearly any topic or theme.

These resources make use the images shared by millions of people and the idea of tagging – a friendly folksy way of labeling content. This blog makes use of tagging and the resulting tag cloud on the right of this page. Tag clouds are intuitive for many people.

Flickr also makes it possible to only search photos licensed under Creative Commons, a new way to look at the sharing and restriction of use of intellectual property. Now, authors, publishers, researchers, scholars have a way to allow some use of their work without involving detailed licensing agreements, or disputes over ownership.

November’s 12:10 will be a very brief introduction to using audio online and in presentations.  I still have half a month to come up with a good title.

Our 12/10 goal is to explore tools to understand what they do and how they shape the current use of web tools in social and learning environments. Not everyone will like, or see a need for, every tool, but this tool represent a cross section of technology in use in student’s lives.

43things.com is a simple idea and a terrific way to learn about two concepts: social networking and tagging.

First, some background on 43 things. If you are a person who makes a list of goals, or dreams, or things you would like to do, 43 things is a place on line where you can do that. What’s gained from the social network is that if your goal is the same, or similar, to someone else’s goal, the you can see who else on the 43 things web site listed that goal.

Unlike other social network sites, like MySpace, or FaceBook, where you are linked by who you know, on 43things you are linked by what you want to do or achieve. For example, if you want to learn to speak Spanish you can add that to your list and instantly see that 1, 851 other 43things member want to do this as well.

You can view their profiles and see what other goals they have, you can send them encouragement, in the form of a “cheer”, and perhaps, you may find someone with a mutual interest you wish to explore together.

The second tool use of 43things lets you explore the concept of “tagging”. Tagging is a current trend in data collation. Unlike folders, or rigid categories imposed by others, as in the Dewey Decimal system, tags allow diverse groups of people to identify with a few works what a subject or photo or item is and how it should be grouped.

For example, I might tag, or categorize, my series to learn to speak Spanish as “personal improvement” and “language skills” or “foreign language” or “travel”. Now, I have a way of searching other goals people have that are similar to “learning to speak Spanish”. Perhaps someone want to “visit Spain”; I might find them while looking at those goals tagged as “travel”. Someone else may want to learn Portuguese, and I might find them by searching “foreign language”…Or perhaps they speak Spanish and want to learn English, and we may be able to pair up as pen pals, with me writing in Spanish and they writing in English.

43things is one way to begin to understand social networking (and the expectations our students have about how they can communicate via the web. (Students wold like to be able to “instant message” each other when they see a familiar person is also on the class web site at the same time)

It also is a visual way to help understand how folksonomy tools like tagging are changing the way we collate our information.

More resources:

http://www.43things.com/about/view/learn_more

My 43 things list:

http://www.43things.com/person/zenbasser

Conspiracy is one of those words that evokes action, isn’t it?

Soon, you will receive an Outlook® Meeting planner or notice about the Lunch and Learn schedule. They are planned for the last Wednesday of each month beginning in Septemberand will begin at 12:10 (a clue). Each session will give some helpful advice and tips on different pieces of education technology. Some will build on earlier presentations — but — each will stand on it’s own — no prerequisites!

Not everyone can — or wants to — spend the lunch hour learning about web-techno-gizmo stuff. So along with this is another program called 12:10 (another clue). 12:10 is loosely based on some awesome work done by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, set up by Helene Blowers, their Public Services Technology Director. 12:10 is an opportunity for you to explore 12 Education Technology tools and concepts and in addition to learning, be eligible for cool prizes. During September, I will post a list of 12 things you can do to learn more about education technology. Each of those items are things you can do on your own, when you want to. If you complete the item, you can record your progress. Our goal in 12:10 is to learn about 12 things in 10 months. (Yet another clue!)

All of the “things” are activities that are interactive — and will help you gain a better understanding of education technology concepts beyond pieces of software. So until later in September, be aware of the possible 12:10 conspiracy theorists… and look forward to having fun. (As preview, you might enjoy this short presentation 7 1/2 habits of highly successful lifelong learners)

We have a winner in our Trivia.quiz this week and I’m been very appreciative of the questions and the ideas for lunch and learn topics. Please keep them coming and feel free to visit, email, stop by if you want to talk about how I can best help you.

Last week we asked: According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project: What percent of all Americans have broadband access at home:

47 % or 29% or 15%

47% have broadband at home

15% are dial up.

29% are not connected. The balance of respondents had access some other place

This week’s Trivia.quiz

According to Pew (again) Which activity have more people reported they have done in the Internet:

1. Buy a product
2. Look for health/medical info
3. Search a map/driving directions

Email or post your comments to the blog. Winner receives desk-side beverage service!

Yesterday’s Insider Higher Ed Insidehighered.com reported on a meeting over the weekend of the American Psychological Association. Research presented there reporte on how students evaluate textbooks and the factors that make them more or less likely to read textbooks. I think there is a corollary to other instructional media from this report, more on that in a second. The research suggested 4 factors:

Four factors (not all of which professors can control) best predicted whether students would spend more time with the textbook: gender of the students, the quality of visuals and the quality of photographs in the books, and the extent to which professors link assigned textbook sections to lectures and other in-class work.

What I don’t have from the InsideHigherEd piece is the definition of “quality”, but I can share from my experience: even in matters of taste and aesthetics, the lack or presence of quality is obvious, even to those with the most unsophisticated creative eye. (For example, a photo out of focus is obvious and a negative to most everyone.)

If want to ask you to indulge a leap of logic. Let’s explore “engagement” as one dynamic of whether a student reads the book. Can we borrow this idea of visual quality to explore engagement in other media? If so, then better quality images and visuals create higher engagement.

Quality images, quality visuals, quality audio are skills easily learned. With some simple skills, and a basic understanding of the fundamentals of media, everyone can make better presentations, better hand-outs, better, media. It’s not that quality visuals replace quality writing and instruction, it’s that poor quality visuals detract.

But as one of our learning partners mentioned to me in passing “I don’t even know what questions to ask,: which is a common sentiment when it comes to some things technical.

So I’d like to hear from you — what kinds of things you would like to know in a series of short (I do mean short) focused seminars on media production:

Graphics 101 I can’t draw a straight line, but can I get the computer to do it for me?

Photos: Why are my small photos SO BIG and my BIG PHOTOS so small?

Sound: The secrets of making audio work in your presentations

Video: The still / slide show vs full motion? Why, when and where?

Others? What would you like to learn to do better?

Trivia.Quiz UPDATE:

We had a number of guesses to last weeks quiz and the answer is: If MySpace were a country, it would rank between Brazil and Pakistan (8th!) , based on MySpace subscribers in July and the 2007 CIA World Fact book. I imagine MySpace will move to 7th place yet this month. (6th place will take a while!)

THIS WEEK’S Trivia.Quiz

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project: What percent of all Americans have broadband access at home:

47 % or 29% or 15%

Same deal as last week, send your answers, the winner gets the deliver of the beverage of their choice to their desk. (In the event of a tie, a random drawing will determine the winner)

Learning Partners,

As many of you know, this is my first official blog in my new role as Education Technology Strategist. Without a doubt, the longest job title that will physically fit on a business card.

First, what exactly is an Education Technology Strategist?

Let me see if I can answer that by using examples from other practices and work worlds:

The role of a strategist is part architect, part engineer, and at times, part day laborer. Most everyone who reads this has learned and discovered that the rate of change of technology in our learning environments is accelerating…perhaps exponentially. Just like the role of an architect and engineer is to translate the client’s wants and ideas into a plan that can lead to a finished space, the role of an education technology strategist is to translate the clients wants into a virtual learning space.

That makes sense, why is this the best time for an Education Technologist Strategist?

There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of technology solutions marketed to both students and to faculty. Many, if not most, are excellent products….but like people…not all “play well with others”. Equal with the number of solutions is the number of expectations. There are probably as many different technology expectations on campus as there are people.

Those of you who saw my interview presentation saw the Apple® Macintosh® television commercial from 1995 where the presentation won’t load and the audience starts shouting out “tips” (“try typing sysedit.exe”). 12 years later, the audience is still shouting out ideas: “try this software”, “we need to be like Facebook”, “we need more Flash®”…So where do we turn?

This is what I hope to bring to the table ….

my role is to help all of us, as learning partners, choose the path for our use of technology in the learning environment.

Just as Mac® and/or Windows 95® were not the perfect answer in 1995, there are few perfect answers today in 2007. Some learning situations, indeed, should be totally self paced and available on-line. Other learning situations, are difficult if not impossible for most people to learn without one to one in person contact.

So what you can expect from me:

Weekly (or so) I’ll publish a blog covering learning environments and technology. I’ll try to include a tip to two along the way. I can send it to you by email so it arrives in your Outlook. If you want a different way to receive the same information, you can subscribe to the blog as an “RSS” feed (RSS is a way you can have information sent to you when a web site changes.) Many people use RSS to receive updates on news and their favorite sites. If this all sounds like hi-tech mombo jumbo…..no worries….. for now you’ll get this via email. and if you choose later, we can spend some time sharing how RSS works and you can decide it it will make your world any easier.

I’m also working on a series of digital media presentations that help explain the basics of digital media so that you can understand how to make better use of clip art, photos, video, and some common software tools.

I’ll seek your help and guidance on what you are interested in learning and working with. (Seriously, some of it is pretty dull like pixels, and lossless or lossy compression algorithms) but in the end, it helps explain why your photo suddlely looks awful in PowerPoint, or why it takes 12 minutes to download a video that taks 30 seconds to watch.

Trivia.quiz contest question of the week: the first DMU learning parter to email me the correct answer wins this week’s prize: a beverage of their choice delivered to their desk, courtesy of me!

QUESTION: If MySpace was a country, it’s membership population would place it between which two countries in world ranking?

• Between Brazil and Pakistan ( 7 and 8 )
• Between Japan and Mexico ( 12 and 13 )
• Between Turkey and Congo ( 19 and 20 )