Purdue Virtual D-Day in Washington, DC: Omaha Beach Reborn
FORCES Virtual D-Day, also known as Virtual Omaha, launched on June 6 in Washington, DC, bringing Omaha Beach to life as an immersive history education tool.
Category: Education
Why electricity, magnetism (and radio waves) are the same thing and how should this help us understand the fundamental tradeoffs of modern telecommunication technologies
This article is a companion material to the Course COM 25100 Information, Technology, Society which I teach at Purdue University as a University core class. The course teaches trade-off thinking as a fundamental method for understanding technological choice and innovation. Where does electricity come…
The generative dilemma of the Internet
This is an introduction to a set of core concepts related to Internet communication for the Course COM 251 Information, Technology, Society which I teach at Purdue University. One of Aesop’s fables gives a clever answer to the question: “what is the…
What is the Internet edge-to-edge (end-to-end or e2e) design principle? What is it good for and what are its main trade-offs?
This is a tutorial on a set of core concepts related to Internet communication for the courses I teach at Purdue University. In a previous post about the basic architecture of the Internet, I discussed the Internet’s intrinsic decentralization and its layered…
What is the Internet? What does the Internet do? Why is it an “inter-net” and not just a simple “net? An introduction and tutorial
This is a tutorial on a set of core concepts related to Internet communication for my courses at Purdue University. For technical details, take a look at the PowerPoint presentation The Internet is not one net. It is more versatile than that. The…
Promoting competency based education through trade-off thinking
We live in a world of things. Those who make the things define the way we live our lives. Their decisions impact not only our trivial needs, such as spending a night on Facebook checking the status of our friends. Technologies that…
The importance of trade-off thinking in studying communication technologies
Technologies such as the power grid, plumbing, or mass media rely on standards that are accepted as simply being there. Electric power is provided at 120V AC, pipe gauges are measured in fractional increments, typically expressed in inches, sitcoms are 30 min…
Trade off as a way of thinking: An interdisciplinary undergraduate course and learning experience in technology / STEM education at Purdue Polytechnic
In Spring 2015, together with my colleagues, Michael Smith, Abrar Hammoud, and Davin Huston I developed a multidisciplinary learning experience whose main goal is to help students acquire competencies related to problem formulation, design thinking, ethical and critical thinking, advanced persuasive speaking,…
If All Dialects Are Rule Bound, Are They All Equal?
Agree or disagree? The Value of Admitting What We Don’t Know – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Educationhttp://chronicle.com/article/The-Value-of-Admitting-What-We/147983/All dialects are equal linguistically, in that they are regular, rule-governed, and just as effective at communicating as is standard English. They are not,…
How to succeed at everything you do
Failure is a gift from the gods, who want us to earn the privilege of success. Yet, those that fail too many times the first time they try something should change their approach. They should consider the following suggestions: You have no…
Xbox games responsible for drop in crime rates?
Do you buy into this explanation? Xbox effect: Dinner bells that summoned children from the great outdoors have long gone silent, and youths and young adults are spending more time on indoor pursuits involving high-definition TVs, gaming consoles and computers. That,…
From mirroring to guiding
State of the art research and development on online collaborative technologies. An excellent recent summary: We review a representative selection of systems that support the management of collaborative learning interaction, and characterize them within a simple classification framework. The framework distinguishes between…
The Evolution of Research on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning – Springer
What is known (and unknown) about computer supported collaborative learning? This chapter summarizes two decades of research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). We first review the key idea that has emerged, namely the fact that collaboration among peers can be “designed”,…
The impact of group formation in a cooperative learning environment
An article about group design and selection collaborative learning. This study investigates whether instructor-formed heterogeneous groups produce a more effective CL environment than student self-selected groups by measuring individual academic performance and perceptions. Results indicate the presence of…
Thought leaders in online learning
An absolutely fascinating article on how leaders modulate and stimulate learning in online environments. If fits in nicely with the Jigsaw model of teaching and learning. The growth of online learning has exposed fundamental gaps in our knowledge, both theoretical and pragmatic.…
Ex Yale professor William Deresiewicz rejects bureaucratic education and thinking in American Scholar Essay “Solitude and Leadership”
Current college students are called “digital natives.” They are heralded as a new type of intellectual foragers, who can multitask better, gather information faster, and spread it with more efficiency than their adult peers. Nothing less true, affirms Deresiewicz in this scathing…
Women Find More Value and Benefit from College Education
88 percent of women, versus 84 percent of men appreciate their college education… Apud Resource Shelf and Pew Internet. Half of all women who have graduated from a four-year college give the U.S. higher education system excellent or good marks for the…
Virtual Sociability: From Community to Communitas book sees virtual space as permanent, conflict ridden initiation ritual (free download, Smashwords, Kindle, Amazon,PDF, .mobi, ebook)
To what degree can the human exchanges we observe online be called “sociability”? In other words, do these exchanges amount to any meaningful type of social organization? Are they more than the mere froth of collective emotion discharging its energy with a…
News roundup from Matei.org: Maps added to Elsevier Articles, IBM anniversary, Blended Print and Digital Publishing
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Play “SEALs Take Down Osama:” Counter-Strike PC Game offers map of Osama Bin Laden Abbottabad Compound (.BSP Map and .KMZ model)
Osama Bin Laden’s Abbottabad Mansion is now a scenario in Counter Strike The Abbottabad compound that was the scene of the recent killing of Osama bin Laden by a SEALS team has now been reproduced as a map (.bsp) for the the…
PHP Tutorial for Beginners | Webmonkey | Wired.com
Very good stuff for absolute beginners… PHP is a powerful scripting language that fits gracefully into HTML and puts the tools for creating dynamic websites in the hands of the people — even people like me who were too lazy to learn…
Installing WordPress plugins and Buddy Press for beginners
The power of WordPress consists in its ability to be extended to perform any number of tricks. In this post I will introduce the notion of WordPress plugins for my WebProduction class and I will illustrate it with several examples, including Register…
Online Interaction Graduate Seminar to be offered during the fall semester 2011 at Purdue University
Next fall I will teach the Online Interaction Seminar at Purdue University. The class is listed as 47566 – COM 63200 – 001 and it will meet on Tuesday – Thursday from 1:30 pm to 2:45 pm PM. This is a fun…
Digital history and the future of the e-book
Cover via Amazon The Center for New Media and History at George Mason University announced last month the launch of a new Word Press extension, Anthologize, which will bring academic print and online publishing together. The idea is quite simple. Publish a…
A New Cosmopolitanism – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Y Fu Tuan, one of my favorite thinkers, on our greatest educational challenge… How might we label ourselves in the 21st century? To risk a broad generalization, I say we are either ethnics or globalists. As ethnics, we hold on to certain…
Does agenda setting theory still apply to social media?
Does the old fashioned newsroom still matter? Image via Wikipedia This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University by Sorin Adam Matei Agenda setting theory was proposed in the early 1970s by Maxwell McCombs and…
Walter Alvarez: Discoverer of astreroid that killed the dinosaurs at Microsoft Faculty Summit
Walter Alvarez teaches geology at Berkley and his main contribution to the history of science is the theory that the dinosaur era was brought to an end by a giant asteroid that landed on Yucatan peninsula 60 million years ago. The footprint…
Idols of the forum (Idolii forului) book introduces Romanian publishing to 2d code universe
Our second 2d book, Idolii forului – Idols of the Forum, came out a week ago in my native country, Romania. I co-edited this Romanian language book with Mona Momescu, a Visiting Professor at Columbia University. Mona and I have each contributed…
Ubimark connects print and digital media via 2D codes and iPhone app
Cell phones may seem like a distraction when reading, but our latest project, Ubimark books, can now be paired with novels to link readers to digital resources to create ubitour books. Books open our minds, and now we can use technology to…
Ubimark covered by major online sites: Gizmodo, ReadWriteWeb, Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus
Over the last few days my project, Ubimark, which turns print books such as Around the Word in 80 Days into user interfaces for the web through the magic of 2d or QR codes, has been covered by a number of very…
Tough Grader Sacked
From the trenches of undergrad education: LSU veteran professor suspended for tough grading policy. Dominique G. Homberger won’t apologize for setting high expectations for her students. The biology professor at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge gives brief quizzes at the beginning…
Twitter as an educational tool
In a larger lecture classroom, it can be impossible to facilitate participation with even a few students – and infinitely more impossible to get an entire class of a couple hundred to chime in as well. And if you have students who may be…
University of Illiniois follows University of California down the hole
University of Illinois has only received 7% of its state budget allocation and the interim president announces that its professors will be furloughed (a form of salary cut or partial unemployment). It is a move on a par to UC’s catastrophic budget…
Higher education becomes more vocational?
Image by dewfall via Flickr New York Times reflects on an emergent turn toward higher emphasis on “skills” in American colleges. Is this desirable? Should we abandon philosophy departments? How about math? THOMAS COLLEGE, a liberal arts school in Maine, advertises itself…
SIBIS – Measuring European Information Society
Image via Wikipedia European Union has developed a number of socially conscious frameworks for spurring on adoption and implementation of information technologies in all fields of life. This is especially important as Europe is extremely diverse, covering IT landscapes as diverse as…
A day that will live in infamy: Pearl Harbor Anniversary with Walter Lord’s Classic
On December 7 we remember the surprise Japanese attack that turned World War 2 into the greatest military conflagration of all time. On this day it is worth remembering Walter Lord’s wonderful book, Day of Infamy. View Larger Map
Short Guide to Evaluation of Digital Work – Mlawiki
Image by lucykimbell via Flickr Modern Language Association provides this guide to evaluating digital work for promotion and tenure in the academic world. The main criteria it proposes are: accessibility reviews expert consultations dissemination through conferences and publications linkages assessment deposit plan…
Democracy and E-Rulemaking
Democracy and E-Rulemaking: Web-Based Technologies, Participation, and the Potential for Deliberation David Schlosberg Stephen Zavestoski Stuart W. Shulman ABSTRACT. Deliberative democratic theorists and public participation scholars have become increasingly interested in institutionalized forms of citizen discourse with the state, including those facilitated…
“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” How can you find a page number for a direct citation if you do not have the print version of the book?
A grad student of mine and I were working on a paper when we realized that we have THAT citation management problem on our hands. We needed to cite the specific page number for Raymond’s famous citation “given enough eyeballs, all bugs…
Haves vs. Have-Nots at Public Universities – Room for Debate Blog – NYTimes.com
A roundup on the University of California fee raises by the New York Times. Although the respondents’ own agendas make the answers at times less than enlightening, they are symptomatic for this day and age. The University of California, which has already…
Students Drink More and More Often If Living in Coed Dorms
Drinking, socializing, a way of life in coed dorms… In the past 30 years, coed college dormitories have gone from rare to routine, with nearly all students who live on campus now sharing housing with members of the opposite sex. But a…