Tag: education

Vancouver students to get Olympic break?

Post ImageI guess the 2010 Winter Games is a pretty good excuse to give students two weeks off, eh? Well, post secondary students at least, because they might be able to work or volunteer at the games. Nothing is certain yet, but a nice break for students definitely seems likely:

Spokeswoman Renee Smith-Valade said Vancouver’s Olympic organizing committee wants “to ensure that every child and youth has some opportunity to touch and feel the experience of the 2010 Winter Games.”

As you might have guessed, there is definite opposition to extending the break to students in elementary and secondary schools. B.C. Teachers’ Federation president Jinny Sims had this to say:

“I cannot imagine this government, led by this premier who has brought in legislation after legislation to show that education is an essential service, condoning school closures for two weeks.”

I don’t know how I’d feel if I were a parent about such a break. I’m guessing I probably wouldn’t approve. I’d certainly want my child to experience the Games, but there’s no reason to miss two whole weeks.

Read: CBC News

Podcasting Professor Has Website Suspended

Post ImagePodcasting and education – I think it’s only a matter of time, once the issues that make educational institutions uneasy are worked out. And to be sure, educators are already experimenting with podcasting, like communication and technology professor Robert Schrag. The problem is that he decided to charge for his podcasts, and NC State University didn’t like that too much (via Podcasting News):

Schrag had made his lectures available to students and the general public online for a fee of $2.50. The University questioned whether this practice was ethical, referring to the inconsistencies in opinion concerning intellectual property and decided to ask Schrag to suspend the Web site until copyright-issue clarifications could be made.

Besides wanting to make a small profit, I don’t know why Schrag was charging for his podcast. I highly doubt he gave the money to the university to cover his (probably very small) bandwidth costs. Interestingly enough, when he asked his class about the situation, only four of them said the podcasts should be free, and no one said the site should have been taken down.

This situation brings up a bunch of questions. As a paying student, is recording what the professor says for my own consumption any different than frantically trying to write everything down? Does the university own the content that the professor delivers, or does the professor himself/herself retain ownership? Why should I as a student have to pay extra to get an audio file of the lecture?

And perhaps most important of all, is podcasting just something universities need to embrace in order to keep up with the times? I think it might be, kind of like replacing blackboards with whiteboards or overhead projectors with digital projectors and computers. Schrag has the right idea:

“I’m not sorry I made the choice and I hope I can get back to giving the information,” Schrag said.

After all, isn’t the primary function of a university to disseminate information? We call it teaching or learning, but really, a university is just a fancy way to spread information and knowledge to the population. Podcasting then should be viewed by universities as just another tool to help them spread information.

Read: Technician Online

My final school year begins

Post ImageI started what had better be my final year of University yesterday. Three classes on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and one on Tuesday/Thursday. In every single one, the first class was just a review of the course outline and nothing else. In a way that was good, because we got to leave early, but in a way it was bad too – I had lots of time to kill yesterday. Here are some notes about the “back to school” experience thus far:

  • This year is going to be great: I can walk from my house (remember, I just moved) to class in Tory (northernmost part of campus) in under 20 minutes.
  • I am always amused by the first years running around like crazy people, worried because they don’t know where their class is. I was probably like that too, I know. I think part of the problem is orientation – the University itself should offer a simple, no-frills orientation that is a tour of campus and getting your ID card and nothing else. The SU puts a lot of work into their orientation events, but I skipped mine because there was too much “lets all be friends and sing songs and dance and play games and wear stickers all day.” I wonder if lots of students skip orientation?
  • Wireless in CAB seems much faster than it used to be. Maybe it’s just that hardly anyone was using it on the first day?
  • Also on the topic of CAB (I had to stop there, for old times sake) I found out you can buy stuff from the cafeteria using your OneCard now! Apparently this isn’t a brand new development…but it’s not like I was really on campus last year to know that 🙂
  • I met Andrew, Megan and Renee for lunch at the PowerPlant. It was good to see them and we had a good time, but the service was absolutely horrible. The Plant has a “new look” and stuff this year, but they apparently chose to ignore how impossibly slow their service is. I remember now why I stopped going there. Next time we’re gonna try the new Hudson’s (where Scholars used to be).
  • Construction on the new Sciences building is moving along! Well sort of, the are still demolishing the old buildings, but still, it was a very busy and active place.

Now that the “course outline classes” are finished, the real lectures will begin tomorrow. I am taking two 300-level economics courses this term, a first year astronomy course, and a 200-level EAS course (as you can probably tell I am filling in the gaps for my program requirements). So far it’s a tossup between the astronomy course and the environmental economics course for which one looks most interesting. Astronomy is the clear winner in terms of scenery though 😉

Podcasting University Lectures

Post ImageBlogMatrix has a post up today about podcasting university lectures – particularly appropriate since I start classes again for the Fall semester bright and early tomorrow morning. While I fully intend to go to at least the first week of classes, all bets are off after that. And no, it’s not because I am lazy, or going shopping or anything like that, I simply have a business to run. Sometimes business and school conflict, and you need to make a decision – which is more important, this meeting, or a lecture? Most times, for better or for worse, I choose the meeting.

I wouldn’t miss anything though if the lecture was being recorded and made available as a podcast.

While the BlogMatrix post is more a point-form plan for how to implement such a thing, and how it would work, it touches on a few important points that deserve to be highlighted.

Podcasting a lecture is for the students in attendance too!
Of course there will be people like me who skip the lecture to do something else and simply want to listen to the podcast later. More importantly though, podcasting a lecture is useful for the students in attendance, as BlogMatrix points out: “students, instead of taking notes (or only notes), would record the time of a particular interesting or salient comment”. That would be incredibly useful. This point needs to be made very clear to the decision makers in a University, as they will most certainly protest the idea initially, citing fears that no one will go to class. I think such fears are baseless – there is value in attending the lecture, such as being able to participate in the conversation.

(As an aside, if the lecture contains no interaction and is just the professor standing at the front talking, then I’d be GLAD if podcasting it made attendance drop to zero. It’s ridiculous that students pay $500 for something like that, because you know most of the fees go to paying the professor anyway. It’s examples like this that show just how antiquated and bureaucratic the university system can be.)

The Wisdom of Crowds
Or in this case, the wisdom of students in the class. Let’s assume students can bookmark parts of the lecture – perhaps the most important or interesting parts. As noted in the BlogMatrix post, this is powerful stuff: “Collecting all these bookmarks across all students (and potentially across time) will provide collective intelligence/data mining/insight into what is really import in the lecture”. The ability to tag lectures and specific segments would further this collective wisdom.

Is security really an issue?
I don’t think so. The University doesn’t want people getting the lectures for free – I understand that. But how is making an MP3 file available any different than having some random person walk in off the street, sit in the class for an hour with a recorder, and put it online later? Especially in a lecture with 400+ students, I am surprised this doesn’t happen more actually. As long as sensitive or personal information is not included in the podcast, I don’t see security being much of an issue. I do agree with BlogMatrix though: “I don’t believe it’s the place of the vendor (i.e. me) to dictate requirements to a client”. If a university really wanted to integrate security, it shouldn’t be that difficult, as all universities have pretty extensive systems in place already.

Now, let’s look at this from the perspective of Podcast Spot (if you want a test account, email me). Could our technology support such a thing? With a few tweaks here and there, I believe so. We’ve got all the basics covered (like tags and comments), as well as a few of the more interesting requirements (such as random access). And there’s a bunch more features on the way too (such as improved methods of working with segments). It’s not going to happen (because I better graduate in April) but it sure would be cool to see Podcast Spot being used in my school. Maybe I’ll see it as an alumni 😉

I think podcasting will catch on in schools and other similar institutions, but it will take time. People inside the education world need to grok the benefits of podcasting, and still more have to lose their fear of the technology. When that happens, I think everyone will benefit.

Read: BlogMatrix

Visualizing Information

Post ImageOne thing that really interests me is the different ways in which you can visualize information. Most often, text is simply not the best way. A picture really is worth a thousand words! Audio and video or animation of some sort can also be quite helpful in trying to comprehend something that may be difficult using just words. A good example is this post put together by Matt at the Signals vs. Noise blog:

Science presents some of the most interesting challenges for information designers. How do you help people grasp sizes, distances, and ratios that are nearly unimaginable?

You’ve got to check out some of the images he found, especially if you’re a teacher or parent. There’s some really interesting stuff! My favorite is the image of our solar system.

Read: Signals vs. Noise

Students using Wikipedia

Post ImageWikipedia has become pretty popular in the last couple years, and I am sure that most students have at least seen the site, even if they don’t use it regularly. I think the online encyclopedia is an excellent resource, full of really great information. I also think it should be treated like any other resource, whether online or offline – with caution. That said, I don’t think there’s any reason students should not use it. An intern at CNET News.com thinks otherwise:

Wikipedia is one of the Internet’s latest additions to the information revolution. More importantly, it’s the reason I was able to finish my massive second-semester AP English research final project in less than 45 minutes.

As the deadline loomed, I knew there was no way I would be able to sort through thousands of Google search results or go to the library to research while simultaneously performing other vital homework completion functions like talking online, reading celebrity gossip and downloading music. So I did what any desperate, procrastinating student would do–I logged on to Wikipedia, pulled up the entries on Renaissance literature and filled in the gaps until I had a presentable product.

Until recently, many kids in my high school, myself included, used Wikipedia without questioning the integrity of its content. Before Colbert highlighted the unreliability of the site’s information, I doubt many people even realized it isn’t an authoritative, credible source.

So please take my advice, students: Wikipedia is a great place to find out about local bands or start doing research. However, before including Wikipedia information in a term paper or using Wikipedia entries to study for exams, make sure you support your findings with more legitimate sources.

So let me get this straight – you’re an advanced placement English student, with a major research project, and you’re waiting until the last minute? Then you rely solely on Wikipedia entries and a few blanks you filled in? As one student to another, I hope you failed. And are you really so unable to think for yourself that you just assume Wikipedia is the be all end all of accurate information? Pretty sad it takes a comedian on television to teach you that it isn’t.

Wikipedia has been found to be just as accurate as Britannica (granted, I would like to see some additional studies back this up). The difference is that Britannica entries are shorter and contain a neutral perspective, while Wikipedia entries can be longer, include multiple perspectives, links to other resources, pictures and other multimedia, and much more. Wikipedia is also able to offer a much wider range of topics, including some very specific articles on niche subjects. There’s no reason to think that Wikipedia can’t be as comprehensive or accurate as traditional encyclopedias, though it varies from article to article. In fact, on average, I bet it is better.

I guess this really isn’t so much about whether students should use Wikipedia or not – to me, it’s clear they should. The point that needs to be made is that students always need to find multiple sources for information they want to use, and they’ve always got to add something extra. Even in a research paper, a little commentary and anaylsis will help your paper rise to the top of the pile when the time comes for it to be graded.

Don’t use only Wikipedia, but don’t be afraid to use it in addition to your other resources either.

Read: CNET News.com

Podcasting more popular than beer?

Post ImageYou may have heard the recent story about iPods and how they are more popular than beer among US students according to a biannual study. It’s apparently the first time since 1997 than beer has been knocked from the top of the list. Naturally, one wonders why the iPod is so popular? Managing partner of Student Monitor Eric Weil thinks he knows why:

Part of the explosion in its popularity may be due to the iPod’s use as a learning tool in the form of “podcasting”, technology that allows students to download lectures directly into their handheld devices to be listened to and viewed at their convenience, suggested Weil.

“Professors are using whatever way they can to jam information into students’ brains,” said Weil.

Wishful thinking Eric! I don’t seem to recall any colleges or universities making a big deal out of podcasting just yet. Sure there’s a few professors who have started using the technology, but hardly enough to cause students to give up beer!

A more likely reason is that there are simply more students who like music than who like beer. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there are a bunch of students who call their MP3 players “iPods” even if they aren’t. I’m expecting beer to be back on top again next year.

Read: Yahoo News

Red Deer Trip Recap

Post ImageMy trip yesterday to Red Deer with Tom went very well! He is all registered now and ready to start classes in September. My many years of registering for classes and creating timetables came in handy as Tom was one of the first to be done registering. The only thing left to do now is find a place to live!

I had never been to Red Deer College before, so I learned a lot about it. Here are some thoughts on the college:

  • The college is not nearly as big as I thought it was, in terms of physical space. I can’t seem to find out how many students are registered at the college, but it can’t be that many.
  • They did have wireless networks all over the place, but you need a student username and password to access it, which didn’t surprise me.
  • There was apparently the largest number of students ever at the registration day for kinesiology yesterday. Most of them were female.
  • In fact, I have decided I am in the wrong program. There are a few girls in computing sciences, and a few guys that look like girls, but Tom’s program has a ratio of about 4-1 girls to guys, and they are all extremely attractive.
  • Speaking of computers, they do have a technology program at RDC, but it’s clearly not the focus. The computer labs and stuff were excluded from our tour, described only as “being in the basement and sort of dark.”
  • They need to fix the signs for public parking, as it was quite confusing to figure out where to go!
  • The campus itself is quite nice – lots of grass and trees outside. Inside there seems to be a mix of old and new.
  • Parking is WAY cheaper than the UofA. The daily maximum is only $6! We ended up not paying for parking though, which was fine by me.
  • Everyone we encountered was friendly and helpful.

I think Tom is excited to get started in the fall. Looks like he’ll be quite happy at RDC!

Off to Red Deer Tomorrow

Post ImageMy brother, Tom for those of you who don’t know him, is planning to go to Red Deer College next year, so I am his transportation tomorrow (bright and early!) for the open house event for prospective students. Thus, I’ll be in Red Deer most of the day. I don’t know much about the college, but it looks pretty good. Tom is planning on doing the university transfer program for the Bachelor of Kinesiology and Sport Studies degree, which sounds pretty interesting but way over my head! From the About page:

Red Deer College has one of the top athletics programs in Canada – the Kings and Queens have the best overall record at national competition of any college in the country. The Kings Volleyball team has been Canadian College Athletics Association champions for the past six years.

Sounds like the right place to be starting a degree in kinesiology and sports! Like just about every other post secondary institution in the province (at least that’s the way it seems), Red Deer College is currently in the midst of a multi-million dollar expansion, building a new Healthy Communities Complex.

I wonder if they’ll have accessible wireless for me to tap into? I doubt it, but it would be a nice surprise 🙂 I guess I could always track down a Starbucks…sigh…still such a long way to go to reach “wireless everywhere.”

Read: RDC

NAIT to be Canada's largest tech school

Post ImageAccording to an article in today’s Edmonton Journal, it appears that the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology is planning to spend a ton of cash in an effort to become one of North America’s largest technical schools. The project sounds fairly ambitious:

A brand-new campus twice the size of the current main campus will be built somewhere in the south side, and the main campus in north-central Edmonton will be expanded to include a “student village” with residences and possibly an LRT station.

Over the next 25 to 30 years, NAIT’s other eight locations in the Edmonton area, such as Souch campus at Gateway Boulevard and 71st Avenue, will be consolidated into the two main sites.

The $750-million project will attempt to increase enrolment to 95,000 students from the 65,000 to help in easing Alberta’s “critical shortage of skilled workers.” One of the highlights is a new Centre for Health and Wellness, to be completed as early as 2009, that will include a fitness centre, aquatic facilities, and a health clinic.

I admit I was a little surprised when I first read the article, but I think it’s great that all of our educational institutions are expanding, and not just the University. This project probably wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago, when the south LRT extensions had not been approved – the south side campus is a reflection of the direction Edmonton’s growth is heading, and in fact has been heading for quite some time.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this project unfolds. It’s too bad they didn’t announce it a couple months ago, when they could have been featured in some of the Edmonton real-estate and growth publications!

Read: Edmonton Journal