The Blackboard discussion board system is really quite amazing, in that it couldn’t have been designed any worse. It is easily the most awkward, clumsy, and deliberately obtuse discussion board software I’ve ever used.
There aren’t many things in life that are more fun than using the Blackboard discussion board system. But if we find any, they’ll be dutifully documented here.
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I’m reading up on Likert scales, and came across this section on the Wikipedia page:
Rensis Likert, the developer of the scale, pronounced his name ‘lick-urt’ with a short “i” sound. It has been claimed that Likert’s name “is among the most mispronounced in [the] field.” Although many people use the long “i” variant (‘lie-kurt’), those who attempt to stay true to Dr. Likert’s pronunciation use the short “i” pronunciation (‘lick-urt’).
also, I did a whole bunch of reading before thinking to look at the Wikipedia page – I was hoping to find links to other original sources. relax.
bite me.
- mr. grumpy pants
I had a conversation with a prof today, who was wondering which app to use for hosting the activities and discussions for her online course. We were discussing the pros and cons of various options, including WordPress (via UCalgaryBlogs) and Drupal (via campus IT) and others. I wound up saying something along these lines:
Once you switch from Blackboard, everything else is so many orders of magnitude better that it really doesn’t matter what you choose.
The biggest shift is to get out of Blackboard. Everything else will flow from that.
That’s pretty scary. And the article sounds pretty accurate.
While there is a public perception that cyclists are usually the cause of accidents between cars and bikes, an analysis of Toronto police collision reports shows otherwise: The most common type of crash in this study involved a motorist entering an intersection and either failing to stop properly or proceeding before it was safe to do so. The second most common crash type involved a motorist overtaking unsafely. The third involved a motorist opening a door onto an oncoming cyclist. The study concluded that cyclists are the cause of less than 10 per cent of bike-car accidents in this study.
The available evidence suggests that collisions have far more to do with aggressive driving than aggressive cycling.
Also, the U of T has an article with an interview with Dr. Chris Cavacuiti, who is looking into cycling safety.
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I was really excited that a TEDx event was being planned for Calgary. I was looking forward to TEDxYYC, and was planning to attend and help out in any way that I could. The website for the event went live today, so I went to register.
I got to the registration form. Except it’s not a registration form. It’s an application-to-register form. okaaaaaay… That’s unusual…
I proceed to fill the form in.
First Name. check.
Last Name. check.
Company/Organization. (hmm… whatever.) check.
Job Title/Role. (ummm… why is this relevant? fine.) check.
Email address. check.
Address. (maybe they mail the pass?) check.
Phone. check.
Tell us about yourself. (maybe for a bio on the website? um… okay.) check.
List some of your lifetime achievements. (wait. what? To attend? Really? No. Not appropriate. Closetab.)
The demographic info, I get. The address, sure, for correspondence. The company and job title may even be okay, but questionable for just attending the event.
But Lifetime Achievements? What the fuck? That’s not cool. That’s an elitism filter. That’s exclusionary. Even if they “allow” people with lesser lifetime achievements, it sets the tone for the event. It’s about Awesome People™ being hand picked to hang out together and watch Even More Awesome People™ talk about Awesome Stuff™.
I told my wife about this, and she wondered why I was so upset. “Hey, you’d probably get in. What’s the problem?” She may be right. I don’t know. But there shouldn’t be a worthiness filter to register to an event about making the world a better place.
Not interested. I’ll stick to the TED Talks website, where I don’t need to prove my worth to gain access.
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trying to figure out how to describe various options to faculty members. this diagram’s been flashing in my head for awhile now. it’s rough, but it’s a start.
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In setting up WPMU sites for classes, I often wind up using the Text widget to add a bunch of important links – login, Dashboard, Add Post, Add Page, etc… to each site. Manually. I finally decided to save some time and just write a plugin that provides a generic widget to give the links on any site that uses it.
If you’re not logged in, it provides a link to login:
If you are logged in, it gives you some handy links:
I’ll eventually add a way to customize the widget (display Add Page? display Add Post? something else?) but for now, it’s an easy fire-and-forget widget for the most common links used by people in a course blogging site.
Get your copy over at the WordPress plugin repository: Important Links Widget
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I wrote this for an assignment in the Conceptualizing Educational Technology grad course I’m taking. I figure it’s worth planting my flag publicly as well…
“Educational Technology” is one of those terms that makes me squirm. I’m not comfortable with any of the definitions of it, primarily because they posit that “educational technology” is a separate, different thing that somehow needs to be integrated (somehow) into the “real” education. It positions technology as being “hard” and needing “experts” and “support” in order to be used by mere mortals. It raises the anxiety to a level that scares many people away. They don’t have time for “educational technology.” Or they don’t have the training. Or the budget. Or the support. Or the infrastructure. Or any of a long list of things that are suggested (explicitly and implicitly) by defining something like “educational technology.” It also aligns with the notion of a consumer-based society – educational technology is something to be produced in a laboratory somewhere, to be consumed in the classroom.
My personal stance is that there is no such thing as “educational technology.” Was chalk labeled “educational technology”? Were there educational conferences spawned around the notion of pen and paper? Perhaps there were, but more likely, these technologies were adapted and integrated because they were inherently useful to the practice of teaching and learning.
The idea that we can have a 360 page textbook that bills itself as “a definition (of educational technology) with commentary” boggles my mind. It sets the field up to be esoteric, distant, and isolated.
The one-liner definition provided by Januszewski and Molenda – that “educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological proceses and resources”[1] – is not a bad definition. But this usable version of their definition leaves so many unanswered questions as to be nearly meaningless. It requires an additional 360 pages to define all of the terms, and to describe implications and strategies. Any definition that complex is not likely to be relevant or useful. It seems more like a definition written by a committee, designed to appease an untold number of stakeholders.
My definition, if I’m pressed to give one, is probably “educational technology is whatever stuff you need to use to support the practice of effective teaching and learning.” Sure, it’s overly simple, and doesn’t additionally define any of the terms, but this concise definition leaves the definition open enough to be useful.
There isn’t really such a thing as “educational technology” – there is technology, used in the context of teaching and learning.
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