An Idiosyncratic Tour of Web 2'0 Tools

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An Idiosyncratic Tour of Web 2.0 Tools

• Course management systems
• Homework Management systems
• Webcasting and Vodcasting
• Podcasting
• Blogging
• Wiki
• Social Networking
• Games and Simulations
• Virtual worlds Second Life
• Personal Response Systems Clickers

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About you

• Where are we?
• A quick show of hands
• How many have i-Pods? i-Phones?
• use Course Managers?
• social network accounts?
• have ever texted?
• how many of you have blogs?
• read blogs about economics?

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Frontiers of Pedagogy A Magical Mystery Tour
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Endangered Species?

• Inspiration Gap
• Just tell me what I need to know!

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Frontiers

• The "next big thing! Weve heard that before.
• Three propositions
• 1.) Web 2.0 has won. 
• 2) Today's students are different
• 3.) Learning communities increasingly have no
  boundaries. (ex i-Tunes U, MIT Open Courseware)
• Implication Economics educators can focus on
  how to facilitate student learning with the
  plethora of new tools.

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Web 2.0

• The original World Wide Webthe Web 1.0 that
  emerged in the mid-1990svastly expanded access
  to information.
• Debate on definition Web 2.0 refers to the
  improvements of the way the web is used.
• Behind web 2.0 is the idea that users can add
  value to the internet by harnessing their
  collective intelligence.
• Key principles of Web 2.0 applications
• Web is the platform
• Collaborative/participatory nature
• Ease of learning curve

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Web 2.0

• Web 2.0 is an umbrella term that is used to
  refer to a new era of Web-enabled applications
  that are built around user-generated or
  user-manipulated content, such as blogs,
  podcasts, wikis, and social networking sites.
• In many ways, Web 2.0 is about using the web as a
  global brain to make life easier? for all of us

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Demand Pull Learning

• Web 2.0 makes possible a new approach to
  learningone characterized by a demand-pull
  rather than the traditional supply-push mode.
  (JSB)
• The demand-pull approach is based on providing
  students with access to rich virtual learning
  communities.

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Demand Pull

• A Grand Transition ?
• (Supply) Push ------gt (Demand) Pull
• Education
• building stocks of knowledge --gt participating in
  flows of knowledge
• factory model of education ---gtEducation 2.0

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About you

• Where are we?
• A quick show of hands
• How many have i-Pods? i-Phones?
• use Course Managers?
• social network accounts?
• have ever texted?
• how many of you have blogs?
• read blogs about economics?

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N-Gen

• GROWING UP DIGITAL The Rise of the Net
  Generation by Don Tapscott is an examination of
  the first generation to be bathed in bits since
  birth.
• Because of their access to the digital media
  young people today learn, work, think, shop and
  create differently than their parents.

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Our students today

• Digital Natives
• Multitaskers
• Collaborative learners
• Always connected
• Device rich
• Highly visual
• Experiential action oriented just in time learners

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Students Today

• Thought process has evolved around the web
• Boomers were raised reading books Younger
  students today were raised on the web
• Books reinforce a linear style of thinking and
  reasoning?
• Younger students have developed a hypertext
  style of thinking

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Frontiers

• Traditional profs have seen teaching as a one-way
  street we 'produce' and students 'consume'.
• The new paradigm is to let students be part of
  the production, to have them help create their
  own knowledge. Students as prosumers.
• Anyone who has tried to incorporate 'active
  learning' into their classes hopes that such
  activities are the things that students remember
  most.
• It doesn't really seem like that big a stretch to
  accept that the more involved students are, the
  more they are likely to learn.

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Broadcast Learning

• The traditional system of one-way broadcast
  learning, was designed for an age when industry
  needed workers who did what they were told. The
  teacher was the sage who delivered knowledge, and
  pupils were expected to write down the sages
  utterances and deliver them back if they wanted a
  good grade.
• The definition of a lecture is the process by
  which the notes of the teacher go to the notes of
  the student without going through the brains of
  either. This largely doesnt work with n-Gen.

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The New Frontier

• The educational system is undergoing a
  transition from a heavy emphasis on teaching to
  an emphasis on learning outcomes. 
• New courseware allows students to learn anytime
  or anywhere at a pace that is comfortable for
  them, learning about topics that they are
  interested in.
• Adherents of Education 2.0 forecast that teachers
  will transition to a role in which they act more
  as guides, coaches, mentors, designers.

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An Idiosyncratic Tour of Web 2.0 Tools

• Course management systems
• Homework Management systems
• Webcasting and Vodcasting
• Podcasting
• Blogging
• Wiki
• Social Networking
• Games and Simulations
• Virtual worlds Second Life
• Personal Response Systems Clickers

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Course Management Portals

• Blackboard, Moodle
• Course cartridges now usually include Web 2 tools.

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Some Principles for CMS Good Practice

• Encourage contact between students and facultyby
  creating a faculty profile to share contact
  information
• Develop reciprocity and cooperation among
  studentsby creating a community of discourse on
  the discussion board
• Give prompt feedbackthrough the use of
  immediately scored quizzes and exams
• Emphasize time on taskby adding events to the
  course calendar
• Communicate high expectationsby outlining your
  course's learning objectives in an online
  syllabus
• Respect diverse talents and ways of learningby
  presenting content in a variety of formats
• Encourage active learningby constructing
  individualized learning paths through the use of
  adaptive release criteria ?

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Adaptive Release Rules

• An Adaptive Release rule consists of a set of
  criteria that defines the visibility of a content
  item to users.
• To view an item, a user must meet all of the
  requirements of the rule. This means that if a
  rule has multiple criteria, the user must meet
  all criteria before the item is available.
• Example a rule for a particular Assignment may
  allow all users in a group to view an Assignment
  once they had completed Homework 1. This rule
  would consist of Membership criteria and
  Gradebook criteria.

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Aplia, Connect, and other Homework Managers

• See Jen Jelinski of McGraw-Hill for more info
  about Connect

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Aplia is a web-based product offering

• Automatically graded problem sets
• Math review tests and tutorials
• Economics experiments
• Interactive economic models
• News analysis exercises
• A blog tailored economics course content
• E-book integration

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Benefits of Aplia and Homework Managers

• Encourages regular effort
• Provides students with immediate feedback
• Consistency in grading
• Students work with interactive economic models

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Homework Managers

• Instructor becomes the "answerer of the last
  resort" needed only for difficult situations.
• Class interactions can become more
  multi-dimensional
• Early research indicates that course systems
  appear to be able to help student achieve active
  learning as seen through their improved
  performances and positive feedbacks.

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Tips for using homework managers

• 'Practice' assignment/'Graded' assignment pairing
  of all homework assignments is of great value.
• It is very helpful to have practice problems
  which students may do first. These practice
  problems prepare them for the graded problems.
  After the due date for the graded problems has
  passed, students can go back and see how they
  did.
• I encourage students to read and study the
  explanations for questions that they missed.
• An incentive exam questions can come from both
  modifying both the practice and graded questions.
• E-book integration works well in my experience

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Conclusion Homework Managers

• Students in my classes prefer to use the computer
  to do homework rather than to complete pencil and
  paper assignments--even though it costs them
  extra.
• I have never had a student suggest that I should
  stop using Aplia.
• Find out more about Connect Econ at the
  conference

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Videocasting, Vodcasting, Lecture Capture

• Software Camtasia, Tegrity, Slideshare, YouTube
• It easy is to record what youre doing.
• Just in time lectures, review sessions, comments.

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Vodcasting

• Makes possible inverted class time transforming
  lecture into discussion time.
• Can free up class time to do active learning
  exercises, groups, etc.
• Classroom time may be better spent in dialogue
  among students and instructors, if crucial
  lecture material is available online for later
  reference.
• Why not personalize your CMS?

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Record your class

• With Camtasia running on a tablet, PC and a
  bluetooth mic in your ear, you can do what you
  would normally be doing for class presentations
  except that its all being recorded.

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Borrow other lectures
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Econ Lectures are everywhere on the web. You can
do it too.

• i-Tunes U
• FORA tv
• Uchannel
• ACADEMIC EARTH
• Classroom20
• Free Video Lectures

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Webcasting, Webinars

• Ex Eluminate, CCC Confer
• With web casting, you can pull together a large
  group of people from anywhere at a specific time
  on a given day, teach them something, and then
  let them all get back to their lives without the
  traditional interruptions and expenses of travel.
  
• Web casting enables you to literally present just
  about any type of information or educational
  material you want.

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Webcasting

• You can do everything from a simple "radio" type
  presentation where people passively listen, to a
  multimedia presentation complete with Power
  Point slides and live tours of actual websites.
• Some instructors find webcasting to be a useful
  tool for holding office hours.
• Synchronous, but can archive
• See Maria Gamba (University of Findlay) for
  further details on Eluminate Live and using
  Chatrooms

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Podcasting

• Podcasting is on of those technologies that can
  supplement traditional lectures.
• Students who can access the lectures as podcasts
  can replay detailed or difficult parts of the
  class material.
• An article New Scientist detailed a recent
  psychological study from the State University of
  New York - Fredonia. The study, Can Podcasts
  Replace Professors?, conducted by psychologist
  Dani McKinney, indicates that students who listen
  to class lectures in podcast form score better
  when tested on the lecture material than students
  who heard the lectures in person.
• Why not vodcast and podcast especially in econ?

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Podcasting

• Audacity is an easy to use open-source software,
  which can record and edits audio files, for
  podcasts. The software is free it makes creating
  podcasts and editing audio files pretty easy.
• Great Econ Podcasts can be found on
• i-Tunes U
• Planet Money
• EconTalk

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Facebook - what is it?

• Social networking website of over 200 million
  registered users
• Expect 90 of your students to be registered on
  Facebook
• They may well regard it as "their" space

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Facebook demographics

• Average age of a Facebook user is mid-late 20's
• Older over 35 users are fastest growing group
• 70 of Facebook users are outside of the United
  States
• More than half of Facebook users visit at least
  once a day
• Average user has 120 friends, Me, not so many!

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Social Networking Facebook

• Students are supporting each other on Facebook by
  passing on books / references, debating issues,
  asking for help
• As it is "their" space communication is easier
  and less formal
• Could be a place to hold informal study groups

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Social Networking

• Consider a separate teacher profile for sharing
  with students.
• Link to interesting and interesting blogs, casts,
  etc.
• Be aware of security / privacy settings.

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Facebook Model?

• The Facebook model is weird. Facebook seems to
  be trying to get people to use and enjoy the
  Internet within the confines of Facebook.
• Seems like the old days of CompuServe and AOL?
• When I work I have multiple tabs open on my
  browser. There is so much stuff on the Internet,
  why would you limit yourself to the stuff your
  friends posted?

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Over the top?

• Lets face it. You would live on Facebook if you
  could. Imagine a world where you could manage
  your entire life from Facebook its not that
  far off! Right now, though, one thing missing is
  your academic life. You have to access a
  different system to get your course information
  and you dont always know when something new has
  been posted or assigned, so its difficult for
  you to stay on top of your studies. We get it.
  Thats why Blackboard is offering an application
  that delivers course information and updates from
  Blackboard to you inside Facebook.

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Opportunity Cost of Facebook

• A recent study indicated Facebook users have
  lower overall grades than non-users, according to
  a survey of college students who also ironically
  said the social networking site does not
  interfere with studying.

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Linkedin

• LinkedIn is a large professional network with
  over 37 million members and growing rapidly.
• LinkedIn helps the user exchange knowledge,
  ideas, and opportunities with trusted contacts.
• LinkedIn is a social network that is business
  oriented.
• You will find several elearning, online learning
  and higher education groups.

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Ning

• Ning lets instructors set up workspaces that
  include web feeds to pull in relevant resources,
  chat spaces (synchronous or asynchronous),
  forums, profiles, shared documents, calendars,
  music, and many other tools.

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Cyber Study Groups!?
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Twitter

• Twitter is the latest fad. It's a mass
  text-messaging service that allows anyone to send
  short--140 characters or less--updates about
  anything, from what you are doing at any given
  moment to news.
• Asks what are you up to right now?
• Twitter is a phenomenon which seems to be really
  catching on among the younger internet users.
• Part blog, part social networking site, and part
  IM tool

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Twitter

• Tweets can be sent and received on twitter.com,
  traditional e-mail accounts, mobile phones, RSS,
  and Facebook.
• Allows you to follow other organisations such as
  World Economic Forum, FT.com, Freakonomics, The
  Economist
• Everyone is tweeting these days, in its 14
  million users, who visited its site 99 million
  times last month to read posts tapped out with
  cellphones and computers.
• Twitter reverses the notion of the group, said
  Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley futurist. Instead
  of creating the group you want, you send it and
  the group self-assembles.

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Twitter - possible uses

• Pointers to online resources based around a
  course
• Student reminders about deadlines
• Breaking down barriers and getting to know others
  over this "virtual water cooler"
• Keeping up to date for you and students
• Instant lecture feedback - are you twittering
  about this presentation?

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Educational uses of Twitter?

• Could Twitter be a valuable option for
  communicating with students both in and out of
  class?
• I have resisted setting up a Twitter account
• I am sitting on the pedagogic fence.

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Twitters Downsides

• Twitter seems to be a voyeurs dream.
• Who wants everything broadcast for anyone to see?
  
• While using Twitter it is almost like we can see
  what others are thinking. Are they thinking at
  all?

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Blogs

• Blogs are online journals that display the most
  recent content first
• Can combine text, images, and links to audio and
  video files.
• Readers may often leave comments and interact
  with the writer.

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Blogs

• Uses
• Commentary
• Deliver news
• Personal diaries
• Blogger.com offers free blog space.
• Blogger is the first and only blog tool that I
  have used, and I think it is pretty good.
• Read 100s of economics blogs at the Economics
  Roundtable http//www.rtable.net/

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How might you use a blog for economics education?

• Potential teaching and learning uses of blogs
• Replacing standard class web pages
• Professor-written blogs which cover interesting
  developments that relate to the theme of the
  course
• Organization of in-class discussion
• Requiring students to write their own blogs as
  part of their grade
• Discussion Board topics
• Extra credit

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Some of my favorite Blogs

• Naked Capitalism
• The Baseline Scenario
• Marginal Revolution
• Calculated Risk
• naked capitalism

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Educational value of blogs

• Individual blogs
• Write a blog for students in your courses or
  department link to articles, news items, videos,
  conferences, etc. and get student responses
• Have students create blogs for journaling
• Group blogs allow and engagement
• For each work or topic that you cover in a
  course, have small groups publish blogs on how
  their assigned theory would analyze or interpret
  it
• Quasi blogging can also be done on a Discussion
  Board

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Econ Teaching Blogs

• http//economicsforteachers.blogspot.com/
• http//jerryslezak.net/pedablogy/

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What is a Wiki?

• Web pages designed to allow multiple users
  contribute to the pages.
• Think of a wiki as a community forum, where
  people can think aloud, comment, and correct one
  another.
• Open source textbook wikis are coming
• See Professor Arianne Schaurer, Marymount
  College Using Wiki to Engage and Assess

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Wikis

• App Assigning group reports Enable students to
  create a report using a wiki. They can see who
  has posted what and when, and write the report on
  the wiki.
• App Tracking group projects Members can track
  their research and ideas, along with everyone
  else's information. The wiki provides a central
  place to collectively prepare the final product.
• Wiki could help eliminate endless meetings.

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YouTube and Videocasting

• YouTube has been used as a video blogging
  facility
• Similar to podcasting, users can subscribe to
  channels on YouTube and can also vote for
  popular videos, as well as comment.
• Making comments on videos is quite popular.
• Videos are limited to ten minutes
• Use YouTube to add comedy, embed in CMS

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You Tube

• Yoram Bauman, Ph.D. claims that he is the
  world's first and only stand-up economist."
• Click here to see his comedy shtick on economic
  principles translated for the uninitiated from
  You Tube.

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Virtual Learning Environments

• Virtual Learning Environments
• Second Life was the hot thing
• There are many ways that Second Life could be
  used for teaching/learning
• office hours in Second Life for (adult) students
• meet new people (economics educators)
• there are also already many learning resources
  in-world (museums, simulations etc.).
• virtual study groups, etc.

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Second Life

• You will need to take some time to get to know
  all the different possibilities, but a good place
  to start is either the SimTeach Second Life Wiki
  or the Second Life in Education wiki.
• On these sites you can also find a list of
  institutions that are already using Second Life
  for teaching, and also some examples of how SL is
  used in education.

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Games and Simulations

• Video gaming in the U.S. is simply huge, both as
  an activity and an industry. A whopping 97
  percent of American teens aged 12 to 17 play
  video games using the Internet, personal
  computers, consoles or hand-held devices, and
  half of them do so every day.
• Adults do it too. In 2008, the average age of
  gamers was 35. And collectively, gamers in the
  U.S. fueled 9.5 billion in computer and video
  game and video game sales in 2007.

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Gaming

• 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls play
  video games
• 65 percent of daily gamers are male and 35
  percent female
• The average gamer is 35 years old (25 percent are
  under 18 49 percent fall in the 18- to
  49-year-old category and 26 percent are 50 and
  older)
• 76 percent of students, but only 49 percent of
  non-students, report playing games
• 53 percent of American adults age 18 and older
  play video games -- about one in five adults

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Games

• I have used various games to spice up a course
  and to stimulate class discussion.
• Edward Castronova, a professor of economics at
  Indiana University, studies virtual
  macroeconomics in synthetic worlds. Castronova is
  excited that for the first time we have big
  online societies with thousands of people in them
  that may allow us to explore questions about how
  the macro economy operates. He calls large
  online computer games "Petri dishes of macro
  economic theory."
• Next big thing?

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Economics 100 at UNCG
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Game Play Benefits

• If video games lower tolerance for traditional
  learning styles such as lectures, is that
  entirely a bad thing?
• Lectures may not be an effective way for anyone
  to learn regardless of how much video game
  playing the learner has done.
• Games offer
• Pattern recognition sense making galore
• Continuous decision making
• Conquering immense complexity
• Immediate feedback
• Joy from mastery of skills
• Bottom line oriented scores matter

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Clickers

• Clickers are a remote control-like personal
  response system
• NPR ran a story on them, and The Chronicle of
  Higher Education provided an analysis of clicker
  economics and a critique of their use.

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Clickers Knowing what the students dont
know-right now?

• There are several applications of clickers
  including attendance, exam-taking and classroom
  contests.
• The "killer app" of clickers is to use them to
  ask questions during lecture.
• At intervals during a class lecture, the
  instructor can display a question and students
  can respond to it using their clicker.
• The questions can come in any of several forms,
  including multiple choice, true-false, yes-no,
  and numerical answers.
• The system collects student responses, displays
  the distribution of responses on the screen, and
  records the student responses in its database.

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Benefits

• Encourages students to remain engaged
• May increases the comfort zone of quiet students
• Allows instructor to keep tabs on class progress.
• Clicker effectiveness is, of course, limited to
  what you do with the information you receive.
  Facilitating some discussion in response is
  probably the key.

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Clicker costs

• Cost is an issue.
• No research (that I have found) demonstrates any
  particular learning benefit from clickers as
  opposed to raising hands.
• You have to write good clicker questions, and
  that takes some time.
• Most of the current clicker technology does a
  fine job with multiple-choice questions it don't
  do as well in letting students respond quickly
  with words, sentences, or phrases.
• Other devices and technologies have better input
  systems allowing for written responses.

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Geeky Mom Critique

• I really don't like clickers. I recognize that
  there are certain classes, mostly large lecture
  classes, where they seem necessary. Buy why do
  they seem necessary? Because there's a
  recognition that students don't always learn well
  in those settings and so the clickers are used to
  determine if the students are learning and if
  they're not, in theory, to go over material again
  or differently so that they do learn. So rather
  than deal with the root of the problem, they
  throw technology at it. This is the worst use of
  technology in education and unfortunately, it's
  the most commonGeeky Mom

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Conclusions

• We must be realistic about what good pedagogy
  can accomplish. It is not a panacea it will not
  create a society of lovers of learning in which
  our social ills will finally be cured... Even the
  best teachers will not convert every student into
  a lifelong learner who embraces knowledge for its
  own sake. That is a commitment that must come
  from within it is an intentional decision to
  swim against powerful cultural and economic
  currents...Economics for Teachers blog

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Content not form!

• Ultimately content, not delivery, determines
  whether one is or is not a good teacher. No
  matter how well you deliver it, if you do not
  have something to say, you are not going to be a
  good teacher...David Colander

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Conclusions

• Teaching is an iterative process. Whatever isnt
  working you can fix the next time around.
• I'd like to hear experiences (benefits/costs)
  from folks who have already jumped into using
  Web 2.0 tools.

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Resources on Web 2.0 and its impact

• Educating the Net Generation Diana G Oblinger
  and James L. Oblinger, Editors
• www.educause.edu
• Growing up Digital by Don Tapscott
• Pew Internet and American Life Project
• I would recommend taking a tour around Educause,
  especially their "7 Things You Should Know About"
  series

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More Resources

• Online Handbook for Economics Lecturers from the
  Economics Network of the UK's Higher Education
  Academy Handbook for Economics Lecturers
• The Art of Teaching Economics,
• David Colander, International Review of
  EconomicsEducation, volume 3, issue 1 (2004), pp.
  63-76 Available at
• http//www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/iree/i3/colander
  .htm

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Thanks for attending!