If you are looking for the Navitas BuddyPress site, you may have ended up here by mistake. The correct address is http://hm.vfowler.com
Cheers,
Vernon

According to a news article on ABC News (PDF Calif. to Dump Printed Text..), Governor Schwarzennegger is trying to trim the state’s budget gap with a cheaper alternative to the traditional high school textbooks. California has a US$24.3 billion budget shortfall to face. How much is a billion? If we wanted to pay down a billion dollars of the US debt, paying one dollar a second, it would take 31 years, 259 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds. Now multiply that by 24 and you get roughly 761 years! This is just a single state’s deficit, and The Age reported that Arnold refused to increase taxes in order to fill the void. The former actor’s plan to save money pivots around phasing out hardcopy school textbooks in favour of learning over the internet.

While the Terminator star plays with the politics, let’s look at some aspects of information access and learning over the internet. I went back to the books (and blogs) and since then, most of my learning is via each university’s implementation of the Blackboard application, and readings which are scanned into the institution’s online library. Limited (so far) study resources can also be found within Google Books, such as this title on focus groups.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

http://www.google.com/corporate/

Upon reading the CNET News article Google’s digital book future hangs in the balance, one quickly finds that Google stands to make huge sums of money from advertising, book search, institutional subscriptions for access, and selling PDF copies of books. Did anyone check if Arnold has any investment in Google? If you’re also concerned over the legal issues, check out the groundbreaking agreement between authors, publishers and Google Books.

Instructional design projects differ from other multimedia projects in that the social and intellectual development of the user becomes the main focus, and the subject matter may be complex and perhaps not entertaining. (Certifications in instructional design, Wikipedia) As such, learning projects demand the input and guidance of an expert in the field, an instructional designer.

The goal of the instructional designer is to develop better, faster and more efficient learning tools.

K.Johnson, L.Foa 1989


An instructional designer determines the learning objectives and the most appropriate mode of delivery, and :

• ideally, has experience in choosing the right tools and the right mix of media;
• has a clear understanding of which learning style suits particular users;
• brings a sense of clarity to the subject matter, and is able to break it down to its basic elements, then fill them with a mix of information and multimedia enhancements.

There are several intermixable types of instructional design that involve use of computers.

CACL – Computer Assisted Cooperative Learning

Emphasizes applications that promote collaboration and cooperation, rather than individualism and competition between students. See the benefits of using Second Life as an educational tool, particularly in the collaborative and cooperative learning modes.

CAI – Computer Assisted Instruction

Applications that favour the instructive teaching method, where students are introduced to the content, they learn it, master it, then move on to more complex content.

CAL – Computer Assisted Learning

These applications are more student centric in that they encourage students to find their own learning journey, and to experience and explore at their own rate.

CBI – Computer Based Instruction

Courseware can be defined as the content and technique applied to instructional materials in electronic formats.

CMI – Computer Managed Instruction

This involves the use of a computer to manage instruction in testing, results generation, and record keeping.

WBT – Web Based Training

Offers a unique method of learning that matches the user’s level of experience with the tasks they must perform. The responsibility of training shifts from the trainer to the student, and the trainer’s role is to coach and motivate. It is a cost effective training method that can take place at the individual’s convenience and pace.

Learning theories are integrated (successfully) into teaching / learning environments when they include elements such as:

motivation

Relevant and meaningful experiences are needed to engage learners and build motivation.

individual pace

Different comprehension rates of learners must be anticipated and provided for in teaching strategies.

clear learning objectives

To help them focus and give greater chances of success, learners must be informed of what they can expect to learn.

organised content

When content and procedures or skills are organised into meaningful sequences and logical structures, learning is both easier and retained longer. Rate of information presented should be determined by the complexity and difficulty of the content. Signposts must be provided to help learners perceive the structure. Altogether, organised content helps learners synthesize and integrate their knowledge learnt.

pre-learning preparation

Learners must have prerequisite skills and knowledge to be successful in using the instructional media. Assumed knowledge must be identified and stated, or opportunities provided for them to acquire the prerequisites.

emotions

Learning that involves emotions and personal feelings, as well as intellect, is both influential and lasting. Learners also have positive and negative emotional attitudes that can interfere with learning or can increase motivation. Anxiety or challenge, in moderation activates most learners and increases their learning; in excess it interferes with learning.

participation

Merely seeing or hearing is not enough. Information must be internalised for learning to take place. Active participation, as opposed to passive listening and viewing, means engaging mentally and or physically and helps learners in understanding and retention.

reinforcement

Learning motivated by success is rewarding, builds confidence, and affects subsequent behaviour in positive ways. For learners to receive reinforcement is very important.

feedback

When periodically informed of progress, learning and motivation are increased.

association

Learning information related to prior knowledge or that has many associations to it, is better and easier retained than learning trivial or isolated fragments.

practice and repetition

For long term retention to be encouraged, provision should be made for frequent practice and repetition. Rarely is anything new learned effectively after just one exposure.

application

When the learner is able to apply or transfer the learning to new problems or situations, then complete understanding has taken place.

The successful integration of these learning theories into the application are vital to every final product.

Delivery mediums and venues

At home, we can deliver applications on CD-ROM or via the internet. Advantages of the CD-ROM delivery format are that it can be completely self contained, portable, fast and robust. Through the internet, we can provide up to date coursework, interactive experiences with a wider range of resources, and feedback and evaluation capabilities too. However, the limitations of internet delivery include catering for the lowest common denominator in terms of plugins for various audio and visual materials, learners must have a connection, and congestion can slow data transfer rates. Drawbacks of CD-ROMs are that they give limited evaluation of progress, revision of coursework is limited, and they lack personal interaction.

In the classroom, delivery often is via internet and or an intranet. While use is restricted by timetables and class scheduling factors, access to learning programs can be quicker and participants mostly have a uniform level of IT savviness.

At corporate training facilities, we have the flexibility to deliver via any of the fore-mentioned mediums. The difference here is that the corporate model is traditionally aimed at the adult market with emphasis on rapid dissemination of information and clear progress goals.

New hybrid systems being developed for both the educational and the private sector will include online intelligent learning scheduling (grouping students of similar time-zones), student control of learning events, live broadcasting of important learning events with automatic calendar and reminder services, better communication between virtual classmates and instructors, and online referencing from offline media. Hybrid systems, initially attempt to lever the benefits of the various delivery mediums, then add further enhancements too.

I would be impressed with a learning package that incorporates not only collaborative learning, but also has the capacity to synchronously communicate with peers (with voice and video like Skype, but also offer screen sharing and whiteboards), and be able to have some idea of each colleague’s progress status. Cooperative development of student projects such as those mentioned in Second Life, must give a marvelous sense of achievement. High quality (video and audio) course content is always better delivered on CD, DVD or Blu-ray, but we also need a network connection for support, communication and the facility to work together.

Although initially sceptic and frustrated with the learning curve, I am starting to realise how Second Life can be beyond awesome for learners. Let’s face it, we all learn and many of us loathe the necessity due to the form that the learning takes and the lack of control. Mention a lecture and most of us cringe. You can’t pause a lecturer and you’ve got to be there in those cold, hard seats, listening… Too bad if you’re deaf or have a preference for visual or experiential learning styles.

So what makes learning in Second Life different? Virtual classrooms can be attended by a global audience, and students can learn from their safe environments, but these are features in every form of distance education. Let’s examine the benefits of the learning opportunities in this virtual world compared with those of traditional education environments and distance learning.

• The sense of immersion makes it an ideal tool for role play and re-enactment.
• Scavenger hunts create an interactive method for learning vocabulary, for instance. Surely a faster, more effective, and more interesting way than learning by rote.
• Guided tours of replica real world places that students would find difficult or impossible to visit in reality. The Sistine Chapel, or a scaled model of the interior of a Dell computer are just 2 examples of such destinations.
• Albeit via an avatar, learning by doing is highly productive.
• Collaborative development is fostered in Second Life. Educators can join groups and network with others for professional development. Collaboration and exchange is stronger and more immediate than other communication methods such as blogs, forums, or email.
• Simulation possibilities can provide understanding of what it is like for others in the real world, and aid in our preparation.
• Immersive self paced tutorials and quizzes can be carried out in virtual space, and results fed into a database.

Play these pertinent YouTube clips below.

References

2007. Educational Uses of Second Life

Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOFU9oUF2HA [Accessed May 8, 2009].

2007. Education in Second Life: Explore the Possibilities

Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMGR9q43dag [Accessed May 8, 2009].

Second Life – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life#Education [Accessed May 8, 2009].

As a potential client, you may consider their point of view. Building a world class multimedia product is very expensive, time consuming and extremely taxing on business relationships. The client also has a reputation to protect, and picking the right developer for the job is extremely important. Three main points that a client looks for in a producer are:

• Professionalism
• Organised
• Demonstrate a sound knowledge of multimedia

The bonus points are for producers who:

• Are leading a strong, highly skilled, creative team of developers.
• Have a proven track record of successful productions, delivered on time.

The CIA comes down to understanding the client’s intellectual property, their target market, competition, time-lines and marketing milestones. Learn all these from the client.

Client education 101

Business issues

There are 3 main phases of a development project.

1. The development phase – client awareness of when to contribute and when not; client to deliver their contributions on time;
2. Project modification – once a project has started, if the client insists on modifying parts of the project, added costs and delays will result – clients must be made aware of this fact;
3. Approval on the deliverables – both client and producer must agree on the project’s deliverable elements – including client review of colours, characters, music, and other items – quick approval can avoid delays;

During the earlier discovery phase, you may need a lawyer to check copyright agreements, especially when using existing music, videos, photos, artwork, and etcetera. Final ownership of certain elements, such as music, art, software, could stay with the developing house rather than go to the client.

Multimedia potential

One of the biggest hurdles is to convince the client to stray from the notion of multimedia as being the new way of displaying old media. Easy methods to follow include adding user customisation, such as selection of a difficulty level and character modification; and more importantly releasing control of the experience to the user, through provision of easy-to-use navigation tools without boundaries. Furthermore, we can add smarts or AI to make the product intuitive and highly interactive to the user.

Technology issues

Real world barriers exist for every multimedia project. One must identify target platforms, minimum hardware (and software) system specifications, and select which way to compromise on the quality versus delivery medium trade-off between DVD / CD-ROM capacity and various internet connection speeds (particularly in regard to video).

First, choose the best three sources found in the previous task.
Using whatever software or tool you think appropriate, record the following information about those sites:

• URL
• author
• institution
• blurb/ summary / screen shot (this can be a direct copy of an appropriate abstract or introductory paragraph on the site: but make sure you record and reference it as such)

Again, using any useful software you have downloaded, or utilising your existing software, record this information on your computer in the way that you think will be most useful to you in terms of preparing for your third assignment (that is, in terms of how easy you will find it to access, retrieve, understand, contextualise and recall why you saved it – and with what!).

* LOG ENTRY:
Record this information in your learning log, and also detail how you saved this information, what software you used and why. (Allen, n.d.)

The previous task was a search of our choosing. Mine was a query for “winter dreaming” film screening and the best 3 sources are as follows:

1. • http://www.eucalyptproductions.com/winterdreaming
   • Stephen Curtain
   • Eucalypt Productions
   • 
     Screenshot from
     http://eucalyptproductions.com/winterdreaming

     This page is self-promoting the debut of Winter Dreaming, a film by Stephen Curtain. It includes a preview, a film synopsis, cast and crew summary, and a list of screening dates and venues for 2008. Also listed are target audiences and several potential purposes for usage of the film as an educational resource. The author, cameraman, and producer has a swag of credentials including various photographic and editorial jobs for the BBC, ABC, Australian Geographic, The Age, Wild and Rock magazines. He has works in the fragile environs of Antarctica and around the world, and as an environmental – outdoor education teacher.
     http://www.connotea.org/article/e54e62c1196ecacfae6e518224af6d8a

2. • http://www.fallscreek.com.au/telemarkfestivalgreatsuccess
   • unidentified author
   • Falls Creek Resort Management
   • 
     Screenshot from
     fallscreek.com.au/telemarkfestivalgreatsuccess

     This commercial website caters to Australian snow enthusiasts. Telemark is the form of free-heel skiing promoted annually at the festival. This report from the latest news on the mountain, has no author listed, but photo credits go to festival organiser, Justin Hams. The article starts with a sales motive, then an overview of a successful festival, mentions the interest in the screening of Winter Dreaming (which was over 3 years in the making) before moving on to details of the racing results.
     http://www.connotea.org/article/0cf6e4e2bce4ea7478e9e821943ce3ed

3. • http://www.mountbawbaw.com.au/index.php?option=com_events&task=view_detail&agid=37&Itemid=19
   • unidentified author
   • Mt Baw Baw
   • 
     Screenshot from
     mountbawbaw.com.au

     This is a dedicated calendar event page for the Winter Dreaming screening. Full details of the event time, location and admission are specified, along with a contact email address for further information. Both this and the Falls Creek website are supporting the Keep Winter Cool initiative and both have an environment page. Although it is also a commercial snow resort, Mt Baw Baw’s website includes a Green Visitor page and more than a cursory splash on it’s environmental information. That being said, both the resort web pages fail to make the connection between the film screening advertisement and the initiative they are all supporting.
     http://www.connotea.org/article/0c7ab70ac4a9bf7c0003687beb1dc437

I like CiteULike but my search query isn’t exactly an academic paper. That’s why I used Connotea instead to store all these annotations. It can easily grab the HTML title based on the input URL. Connotea is simple and straightforward, even if the interface could be updated to web 2.0 standard.

• Engines
• Boolean searching
• Organising search information

Engines

Google, (in the western world at least), is such a common search engine, the very name has become an accepted slang verb! So let’s google with a query of my choosing:

[Image of] The top 5 results from googling winter dreaming screening

There were about 7,010,000 results. No surprise there as general web indexes are huge. Maintained by robot programs, web indexes amazingly contain all words from their indexed pages. (net.TUTOR, 2007) What is more, Google defaults to proximity searching by default, including results with near matches.

Jackpot! The first, http://eucalyptproductions.com/winterdreaming, was exactly the result I was looking for.

Using Copernic Agent Basic yielded only 51 results, that’s much better than millions.

[Image of] The top 5 results from a Copernic Agent Basic search for winter dreaming screening

All at once, Copernic searches employ several engines, such as Yahoo!, Lycos, AltaVista, Ask.com, and Netscape Netcenter. The relevance ranking includes criteria like identical results appearing from several engines. Our intended destination ranked 3rd along with a relevant related site coming in at first place.

There aren’t many differences in results for this particular search query. Both Google and Copernic will bold format the search term words within the results set. However, only Google also bold formatted related word forms. One of my search terms was dreaming and Google also displayed the word dream in bold format. This knowledge is useful in selecting your search tool, depending on whether you want related words included in your search.

Unfortunately the analyse feature is not available in the Basic version of the Copernic program. Some of the other Copernic features, summarising and grouping for example, look useful for serious searching.

GooglePreview is a wonderful insight, especially as a quick reminder when searching sites you’ve visited previously. GoogleEnhancer also assists with numbering and highlighting.

If you’re still stuck on how to choose the best search tool for any given search task, check out http://liblearn.osu.edu/tutor/les5/pg1.html which explains the 3 different types and cases for each. (The Ohio State University Libraries, 2007)

Boolean searching

Stupid people laboriously trawl through pages and pages of result sets looking for a gem website – sadly, yes, I’ve actually witnessed this. Lazy people give up if their desired search result isn’t listed in the top 10. Smart people refine their search terms. Taking the same key words from my last search query, winter dreaming screening, how would I best search for the following:

1. the biggest number of hits relating to these key words
2. information most relevant to what you ACTUALLY wanted to look for!
3. information coming only from university sources

To obtain the largest result set, a Boolean OR search would be the way to go! With Google one can enter winter OR dreaming OR screening to attain some 556,000,000 results. For broad topic search, this would be ideal.

For a narrow or specific search, a Boolean AND search query is required. We don’t usually need to insert AND between our search terms. Most search engines interpret a space between words in this way. Naturally our results may include other words between our search terms. For example, Winter 2004: California Dreaming… currently screening… appears at the highest rank. To improve on that, I want to search for a “winter dreaming” film screening. By using quotation marks I have enclosed the phrase, effectively searching for results with no other words between them. By adding a fourth term film to the query, the results are down to only 42 with our desired result appearing first. A fifth term freeheel is enough to narrow the results to just 4, all of them being about what I actually wanted to look for. (Marco Folio’s 10 tips for optimized Google search phrases is also full of good ideas for effective searching including wildcards, numeric ranges, and document filetypes)

For information from only university sources a good start would be to restrict your search to the .edu domain. To achieve this, add the site:.edu term to the end of your query. This won’t work for all countries however. Canadian universities often have just .ca, such as the University of British Columbia at www.ubc.ca. You could always try Google Scholar at http://scholar.google.com.au but if all else fails go to the advanced version. (Google, n.d.)

Summary of the key concepts: choose the right tool and search effectively

Organising search information

Attempt #1 at understanding this task

After completing my Conceptual Research and Reflection Project earlier, I shall, in hindsight, detail tools / methods I used for organising my information.

• Bookmarks are arranged in 4 subfolders of my NET11 folder, one for each concept.
• These are synchronised (via Foxmarks) and thus never lost. I can access them from any online Windows computer, with Portable Firefox if necessary, should this computer be unavailable.
• The bookmarks are all tagged (with help from HandyTag) to assist easy retrieval. The minimum tags used for each website were: NET11; and the concepts titles, namely Asynchronicity, Netiquette, Automation, and ‘Chat’ for The impact of text-based real-time chat.
• In a similar fashion, electronic resources were also filed into 4 sub-directories within my computer’s hard disk filing system. I’m relying on my brain to recall this redundancy arrangement.

The Firefox Library alone does a brilliant job of looking after bookmarks.

Attempt #2 at understanding this task

For citations, I’ve been using a few great tools. First, I rely on the wonderful and easy to use CiteMachine to generate standard bibliographic and in-text citations. Second, to automate the citation process as much as possible, I’ve recently been trying out Zotero which works alone on your computer.

In addition, for online reference management, I’m experimenting with CiteULike which is designed for scholarly papers, thanks Janette Treanor for pointing out this one; and thanks to Fiona Stace’s thread post, Connotea. Given the nature of the medium and the subject content, why anyone would record this information on their own computer beats me. Are we rocketeering towards cloud computing? (What is cloud computing? – on YouTube)

Finally, now it should be easy enough for me to access, retrieve, understand, contextualise and recall why I saved these resources any time in the foreseeable future. In my next post, annotations of the best 3 results sourced from my search query “winter dreaming” film screening. For evaluating sources of information, check out a later post.

References

The Ohio State University Libraries, (2007, September 19). Web Search Tools.

Retrieved August 22, 2008, from net.TUTOR website: http://liblearn.osu.edu/tutor/les5/

Cohen, L (2008, January). Boolean Searching on the Internet.

Retrieved August 22, 2008, from Internet Tutorials website: http://www.internettutorials.net/boolean.html

Google, (n.d.). Google Scholar Help.

Retrieved August 22, 2008, from Google Scholar website: http://scholar.google.com.au/intl/en/scholar/help.html

Public domain (http://ww.wikieducator.org/Copyright_and_copyleft/public_domain) comprises all the works that are free to use without permission. There are a lot of works on the internet that are in the public domain and hence, not protected by copyright. Ideas, facts, titles, names, short phrases, and blank forms are not eligible for copyright protection. These surprised and shocked me, until I read that ideas are protected by patents, and names protected by trademarks.

This leaves creative expression under the protective realm of copyright.

The Copyright Act of 1976 states that the items of expression can include literary, dramatic, and musical works; pantomimes and choreography; pictorial, graphic and sculptural works; audio-visual works; sound recordings; and architectural works. An original expression is eligible for copyright protection as soon as it is fixed in a tangible form.

For more details on the specific forms of literary, musical, dramatic, visual art, and sound recording works that are covered by copyright, see the http://www.benedict.com/Info/Law/What.aspx web page. One would register their work of expression with the national copyright office to enable them to sue for plagiarism and statutory damages.

When “The Pacifier” was shown online by a Chinese website without permission, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA) complained to the National Copyright Administration of China last October.

The copyright agency then ordered www.116.com.cn to stop the piracy and fined it US$11,140.

On the international stage copyright law is successful in some cases. The above example from China Daily of China to improve copyright protection has a good outcome for the artists, but I’m not convinced there is complete understanding.

Wang Bin, with the Internet Society of China, yesterday said that to curb Internet users’ habitual downloads of pirated music, software and other products, it is important to technically enable copyright-holders to monitor use of the products and cut their sometimes unduly high price.

I’m afraid it’s more a catch 22 when it comes to the price of art and creative expression. Furthermore, in the proposed Free Trade Agreement between China and Australia (21 June 2005) there was some concern expressed by copyright owners on the protections of their rights.

18. This is even more so the case as a consequence of the move by the copyright industries to the digital delivery of copyright works and the adoption of this technology by educational institutions. The particular circumstances and particular nature of the use of copyright works in a digital environment, such as perfect reproduction and ease of copying and communication, make copyright owners even more concerned that their rights should be protected when trading in their copyright goods with China.

The WIPO disclaimer states that international copyright protection is automatic, it exists as soon as a work is created, and this principle applies in all the countries party to the Berne Convention. According to the list of contracting parties in the Berne Convention, Australia has been there since early 1928 and China since late 1992. Although the creations are copyright and need not be registered in any of the 164 contracting parties, with the ease of digital reproduction and the proliferation of markets for cheaper pirated copies, I can understand the concern of copyright holders.

Can we get around copyright? Well, provided you meet the Fair Use criteria, yes it is possible to use copyright material. There’s some fancy mathematical equation for working out the balance of four factors:

• purpose of use
• nature of work
• relative amount
• market effect

So what is unfair use? Plagiarism and piracy. People go for illegal choices because there is no legal way to download this stuff. This argument in the LiveWire section of yesterday’s The Age article ISPs join the copyright fight by Lia Timson, indicates we have become spoilt with ab/use of broadband connections. It appears our impatience results in rather direct theft from film-makers and the like.

Have I used images or words on my website that contravene copyright laws? Perhaps for interest and with ease, I have used copyright material on my website. Whilst it all complies with Fair Use, I’d like to start notifying the rights holders before using the material.

From my experience, this request-permission-granted system has worked well for me in further publication of several of my flickr hosted photos. Flickr does a good job of explaining the different licences of use under the Creative Commons area – http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ Also of interest to programmers would be The art of the open-source license by Dave McAllister.

Would you be in breach of copyright if you put the Curtin logo at the top of your web page for an assignment? No, provided the logo is copyright-owned by Curtin. Naturally, acknowledge the source, as always.

Assignment 1 for CHN11 finally came back. I reckon 85% is a bloody good mark.

I’ve organised the lovely librarian at Hawthorn to be my invigilator for the Chinese exam. Assignment 2 is now under way, along with other assessable items for my other study units. It’s starting to get a bit hectic!

So if you asked me right now, How’re things going? zěnmeyàng?
I’d have two words to reply with, Very busy hěn máng

wǒ huì yìdiǎnr zhōngwén.

References

How to put Pinyin with tone marks on Web pages.

I’m studying Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) 1A through Griffith University. It’s worth doing a search through Firefox add-ons for Chinese within language support for things like

• Chinese-Japanese-English Character Hint Bar
• Moji side-bar and dictionaries can be found at http://moji.mozdev.org/
• Chinese Perapera-kun: Chinese Popup Translator
• Try tunes from Petrol Exotic‘s Shanghai: The Sex, The City, The Music like track 2 The Wandering Songstress Remix by Chow Hsuan