Unbound by Facts, Decency or Even Consistency

Unaccountable political cynicism ... will partisans provide consequences or continue to reward politicians based on the color of their jersey?

E.J. Dionne Jr. - Gulf oil spill offers a lesson in capitalism vs. socialism

Group Raises Issues About Online Drug Marketing

Group Raises Issues About Online Drug Marketing
By Juliana Gruenwald
The Center for Digital Democracy is raising concerns about proposals at the Food and Drug Administration to allow pharmaceutical companies to market drugs on social media and other Web sites...

http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2010/05/group-raises-issues-about-onli.php

Lifelong Learning - Increasing its feasibility

N.Y. / Region
Returning to College, Without the Beer
By ARIEL KAMINER
Published: April 29, 2010

One Day University offers people who got their bachelor’s degree years before e-mail a chance to go to university classes again, but without all that drinking and flirting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/nyregion/02critic.html

Useful Data related links

FINRA: 2009 National Financial Capability Study http://www.finrafoundation.org/resources/research/p120478

"The National Financial Capability Study established a baseline measure of the ability of Americans to manage their money, benchmarking four key indicators of financial capability and evaluating how these indicators vary with underlying demographic, behavioral, attitudinal and financial literacy characteristics. It consists of findings from three linked surveys ... "

Gapminder http://www.gapminder.org/

[From TED] Where to get Pivot http://blog.ted.com/2010/02/demo_where_to_g.php

IOM: Bridging the Evidence Gap in Obesity Prevention: A Framework to Inform Decision Making
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2010/Bridging-the-Evidence-Gap-in-Obesity-Prevention-A-Framework-to-Inform-Decision-Making.aspx

PRISMA http://www.prisma-statement.org/

US Bureau of Economic Analysis http://www.bea.gov/

US Government DATA.gov

The Policy Studies Organization and Berkeley Electronic Press: World Medical & Health Policy
http://www.psocommons.org/wmhp>/

http://www.bepress.com/journals/

Post # 5: A Reflection

I dreaded the blogging assignment because I thought it would be too much preparatory technical reading - - instructions written by engineers and not actually for anyone to read and comprehend. While it seemed that it would be good to know how blogs work, given that I read them every day, I did not feel that I would have anything to say to the universe in general. It turns out that I was wrong about both setup/operations and posting.

There were four free hosting sites offered in the assignment and I had no reason to select one over the other. I did, however, want to avoid the one(s) with the steepest learning curve. Online evaluations were not particularly helpful so I asked people whom I know who do blog for their recommendations among the four and why. Blogger became the clear choice – it was simple yet powerful, linked with Google so it would have a coordinated interface, and the price was right (free).

As I start to think more about blogging post this assignment I think I will move away from Blogger and toward a paid site. It is my understanding that whatever is posted on Blogger becomes the property of Google. As much as I believe in social capital and contributing to the commons, I want to have more control over what could be a longer term body of communications.

Easy though Blogger is easy, and it is easy, almost every step had to be retraced and redone. With some repetition this quickly became less so, but I still sometimes wonder how to get to where I want to be from where I am. After the basics I experimented with a different format, with embedding and with gadgets. It has been fun to see some tangible results. Perhaps best of all, and unexpected, the comments from my friends (even if not posted) generated discussion and, for me, further reflection. That may have been the best result. As an asynchronous communication, blogging loses some of the person dimension that synchronous technology has, but the comments on the posts and the ability to receive comments in return, with all communications open to view by others, makes it more communal and less impersonal. Although Bates and Poole’s Table 3.1 A Classification of Educational Technologies by Structural Characteristics in Bates (2003) would place blogging under asynchronous two-way communication, its support for more varied information (personal profile, other links, following, favorites) made it feel like a hybrid between asynchronous and synchronous, even though it is not.

There have been more supports for generating ideas than I had expected - even deciding what to include in this reflective exercise: there was an article on "Application of Blogs to Support Reflective Learning Journals” (Pang 2009). The specific readings for this unit are all timely and address different dimensions of DE, however, I think that in addition to being good practice, it was critical that the assignment be based on readings beyond our two class texts. Neither Moore and Kearsley (2005) nor Bates and Poole (2003) have “blog” as a separate indexed item, or even listed as “web log,” in the back of the book.


Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance Education: A Systems View. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Pang, L. (2009). Application of blogs to support reflective learning journals. Retrieved from http://deoracle.org/online-pedagogy/teaching-strategies/application-of-blogs.html

Online Demos Should Be More Like Dating and Less Like Marriage

In class we are experimenting with different products that support online instruction, basically course management systems – mainly by reading articles about different media and technologies and through viewing demonstrations. It has been an awakening for me – the first link for a demonstration led me to a moodle’s site, where after two clicks I was at the demonstration page. At that point, I had to login using one of three different predefined names and passwords depending on the perspective I wanted to see: administrator, student or teacher. The screen was busy and even after I logged in as one of the three standard categories, I could not determine how to run the Demo. Not an auspicious beginning.
________________________________________
Moodle Demonstration Site
Welcome! This site is for you to try using the most recent stable released version of Moodle and to explore some courses which demonstrate a few of Moodle's many features.
Here are some demo accounts for you to use:
• Admin - username admin, password FunMood1ing!
• Teacher - username teacher, password FunMood1ing!
• Student - username student, password FunMood1ing!
The database and files are erased and restored to a clean state every hour on the hour, so don't worry if you make a mess.
Also note that you might not be the only person using one of the demo accounts at the same time, so you may see unexpected things happen occasionally
________________________________________

The next site, Blackboard, was slightly better – although I had to login for this one, it was a straightforward process. The site was hosted by North Carolina A & T State University’s Center for Distance Learning (http://fac.ncat.edu/dist/blackboard_demo.html ). Once logged in, the Demo units were clearly identified in each section of the webpage (Courses: Quick View, and My Courses) – much more intuitive.

Actually, I went to three different web sites for Blackboard – the first from the University of Minnesota School of Business Online (http://online.msbcollege.edu/online-support/blackboard/ ), but when I clicked on the clearly indicated Blackboard Demo on the home page, I was directed to a page that stumped me so I abandoned the site. It said:

Globe Education Network (The Network) provides academic support and manages shared resources, including Blackboard Academic SuiteTM, for the benefit of students of Network colleges and universities. The Globe Education Network name appears on the Blackboard e-learning Web site. Classes, however, are delivered by individual member colleges:
Globe University
Minnesota School of Business
Utah Career College
Institute for Production and Recording (IPR)
Duluth Business University

Have an Account? Login Here.
Enter login information here and click the Login button below.
Username:
Password:

Forgot password?

Blackboard Academic Suite™
© 1997-2010 Blackboard Inc. All Rights Reserved. U.S. Patent No. 6,988,138. Additional Patents Pending.
Accessibility information can be found at http://access.blackboard.com.



I did *not* have an account so I tried another web address for a Blackboard demo.

The next was at the University of Missouri (http://mudirect.missouri.edu/getstart/_step1_Demo.shtm ) and it worked similarly to the one at North Carolina A & T State University’s Center for Distance Learning.

Elluminate’s site is better organized (I think). The Demo with word and Icon are clearly indicated at the top of the home page. Better still Elluminate offered the option of scheduling a live online demonstration. Bates and Poole (2003) identify different learning styles, citing Barbe and Swassing (1979): “auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic.” The effectiveness of a technology depends in part on the fit between the technology and recipient / student’s the learning style. For me, auditory linked with visual is essential if I am to learn in a reasonable period of time. Alternatives are painfully slow.

My assessment is that those who provide course management products, or at least my small sample of those mentioned above and one more, have lost the view of the novice and speak ineffectively to someone who wants only to view the demos and *then* commit to the time and resources to learning more about the product.

That is, there should be more emphasis on showing what it can do, with less on the how and demanding too much up front commitment just to get acquainted.

Barbe, W., & Swassing, R. (1979). Teaching through modality strengths: Concepts and practices. Columbus, OH:Zaner-Bloser.

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Elluminate.Home page http://www.elluminate.com/

Moodle. http://www.elluminate.com/

Distance Education, Part-Time Faculty and Migrant Workers

Moore (2007) provides abundant challenges to conventional beliefs about higher education. With stark assertions such as “… we must grow beyond the old idea that instruction should be the monopoly of people full-time on the college payroll” he also raises concerns that he has too sanguine a view on the higher education enterprise, that higher education governed by administrators would in some way act in the best interests of students. The theory that doing otherwise would self-correct by market mechanisms, espoused by Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman, is directly implicated in the current financial crises (). What seems logical and rational in theory turns out to be simply wrong in practice.

Greenspan, 82, acknowledged under questioning that he had made a “mistake” in believing that banks, operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions. (AP, 2008)

Similarly, faculty governance is a critical safeguard to quality control and open investigation – hallmarks of higher education. A university comprised of only part-time or consultant faculty may be responsive to customers in the short-term, but with what threats to quality and mission in the long term? Such a university lacks a countervailing power to administrative governance and we have seen how aberrant this can become in the extreme.

Accreditation standards for academic programs rightly ask about the adequacy of resources for programs undergoing review for accreditation, and consider full-time, terminally credentialed faculty a critical resource.

Absent governance by full time faculty with a long term interest in higher education and in the institution they serve, and accreditation requirements, the economic imperative when using less than full time faculty is the seasonal harvest worker model. Despite Moore’s many insights, on this matter his theory leads to a conclusion that empiric results are unlikely to support.

Moore, M.G. (2007).Web 2.0: Does It Really Matter? The American Journal of Distance Education, 21(4), 177–183.





AP Associated Press. Greenspan admits ‘mistake’ that helped crisis. October 23, 2008. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27335454/