David in Carroll Land: Winding Up, Winding Down
Ruminations of a Curious, Retiring Professor of Psychology
Though Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have different original purposes, they continue to become more like each other. Still, I find that I can use them to serve complementary purposes. In the screencast that follows I try to show those similarities and differences. This is a draft of thoughts for a future student/faculty book.
Here I use Camtasia3 Mac with Iglasses and a Yeti mike. I am almost ready for a comparison of Camtasia, Screenflow, and Capto.
This year’s Carroll Campus-wide year-long theme was “Citizenship” so I thought it might be appropriate to share this discussion between two “senior citizens”:). Alison is one of my two graduating senior research assistants. She will be attending graduate school at Illinois State in the Fall.
I had a few “extra minutes” at work today for reflection. I’m awaiting (dis)approval of seeking Crowdfunding financial support to expand my students’ capabilities to self publish books. I am also writing a few small grants to fund some modest research comparing several different “brain fitness” programs (e.g. BrainHD and Lumosity).
Just for fun I chose to document my rambling ruminations by creating a screencast. I still find Screenflow easier for me to use than Capto or Camtasia. I favor using Skitch for Screenshots from my Mac. It is indeed hard to teach an old dogged professor new tricks (or to discard old tools).
In the screen cast below I am thinking out loud as I experiment with the camera software (iglasses) and the microphone (a Yeti). I am leaning towards using both for our next Student Guides to Internet Learning Tools (if funded). The first volumes of the new works will most likely focus on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Screencasting tools. Oops, time to go for a walk with my canine companion!
While my undergraduate research students have independently of me been working hard on their ebook project (which they hope to share with me next week), I have been investing some time (and money) exploring different WordPress “themes” (visual layouts), playing with a new video camera that promises better screencast quality on YouTube and Vimeo, and investigating some of the additional features available to LinkedIn users who pay for a premium account. In addition to my students writing a WordPress blog piece about LinkedIn which can be found here, I explored the LinkedIn platform blogging capabilities and published two pieces there: this piece—and a second one. My thanks to the numerous LinkedIn “connections” who viewed the posts (especially to Carroll alumnus Steve Thomas) for giving us “LinkedIn novices” some helpful guidance!
Here is a screencast of some of my (mis)adventures exploring the paid-for premium versus free versions of LinkedIn:
And here are are some additional LinkedIn resources I have found useful in getting a better understanding of how LinkedIn could serve the needs of my students and my interests:
Winding up; winding down. As I shoveled cleaned out organized books, folders, software, and files in my office today I came across materials from the First-Year Seminar “Pioneering Web 2.0 Learning Tools” I taught to 25 freshmen in the Fall of 2008. To toss or not to toss—that is the question. I ultimately rejected Marie Kondo’s advice.
It’s fascinating to see how technology tools have evolved since 2008. My electing to teach that course was based upon the positive learning experiences I had for a year blogging for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. That’s where I met you, Pamela Gustafson—once, in person! You helped me bridge the Kindergarten to Higher Education gap.
Without doubt my most formative and informative learning about blogging and internet learning tools came from someone I have never personally met but to whom I am eternally indebted—the indefatigable, ubiquitous, Friend and Colleague across the pond Jane Hart. I urge all my readers to visit her web site on a regular basis and avail yourself of the rich resources.
As I re-examine my teaching, writing, and personal professional development records across the past 1o years I time and again find ample, wide-ranging evidence of her constructive impact on what I know, how I teach, how I learn, and how I consult. Thank you, Jane Hart. My research students and I will be dedicating our student guides to you for your profound influence upon us.
—David
With baseball season approaching (and a vague but definite retirement date in sight of no later than May, 2019), it is time to focus on accomplishing a number of things in the near future. One goal is to better master the capabilities of WordPress. A good way to do that is to write a lot. I’ll be experimenting with different WordPress “themes” (and different widgets). I welcome your feedback or advice.
I also want to master creating screencasts and to “publish” electronically some student-written guides to the use of internet learning tools. I envision continuing to write, to teach, and to learn even after I formally leave “Carroll Land”.
I’m discovering that one can indeed teach an “old dog” new tricks:
This semester I have much more time to reflect, to learn, and to finish tasks (some of which I began up to 10 years ago!) because my Research Seminar was canceled for not having at least 10 students. Hence, I am teaching only one class PSY205 (two sections) with its two laboratories. Fortunately I have four VERY good student research assistants who are willing to learn with me so we’ll have fun, learn much, and be productive. Right now two of them (Arianna and tia) are next door preparing a Camtasia Studio screencast. Let’s see what they have produced. What I am sharing below is TOTALLY their “production” after my giving them guidelines of what I wanted. I am impressed.
We’ll see what the other two team members can do when they come in shortly.
As always your feedback is welcome.
Despite the semester only being a month old, I have been unusually busy with other Carroll matters at times when I ordinarily would be working side-by-side with my research assistants. Fortunately, they are reliable, competent, and motivated enough to delight me with independent work. I assigned to several of them the task of investigating the relative strengths and weaknesses of several kinds of screen-casting software. Here is what they produced as part of an e-book project we are about to engage in.
It’s my research day. I just helped Leo the Great Pyr onto his Central Bark Doggie Day Care bus
and had a team meeting with Lizzy and Alison, two of my student research assistants. Before I gave them research assignments, I shared with them my Christmas ritual of opening up Jacquie Lawson’s marvelous Advent Calendar App. Thank you, Jacquie, for giving us reasons to smile and be in awe.
While we are working I receive a Facebook communication (and feedback) that Katerina and Tim Miklos, now in England, enjoyed the wedding video that Alison produced with Imovie as one of her research projects with me on Tuesday. I hope in the near future to research and develop with my students global communication tools such as Skype by communicating with Katerina in England, Ben in Hungary, Maren in Madagascar, Andrew in Switzerland, and Hersonia in Mexico. Who else abroad is willing to help us learn together?
I’m monitoring my Twitter feed as I write this blog piece and find 10 ideas, resources, and thought-leaders worth following. The dross is outweighed by the nuggets as I refine my Twitter filters and make better use of Twitter applications. I still am not quite ready to explore Twitter Chats. Just because a technology learning tool HAS capabilities, doesn’t mean that I need them –or that I should change my teaching to accommodate them.
Thank you Teri Johnson and Jane Hart for firmly but gently nudging me into exploring the use of Twitter.
Here are 10 tweets that informed me or guided my personal learning today:
YIKES! Tempus fugit (or as Mrs. Bode, my Howland High School Latin teacher often punned, Time fidgets!)
Time to protect myself against Internet Distractions.
Dog tired as I try to bring the semester to a soft landing, I rely more and more on my student assistants to provide support in my research efforts.
I invited student research assistants Alison and Arianna to investigate the usefulness of Scoop.it.” as a teaching/learning tool. Here are their preliminary thoughts.
Scoop.it is a curating media web tool that allows individuals to find content for any topic imaginable. From these topics, it then creates an organized online magazine format. The components of Scoop.it are users, topics, and scoops. The potential users are anybody that has a Scoop.it account and can share articles about any topic. The topics can consist of anything, your favorite sport, a paper for school, current news events, and multiple endless possibilities. The scoops are the articles that are stored under the topic board/page for that specific topic. The free account for Scoop.it allows users to create two topic boards, connect two social media accounts, and scoop 10 articles a day.
To create a topic, one selects the “create a topic” button that is located on the user’s profile page. Once the button is selected, Scoop.it will then prompt you to fill out information about your topic. One inserts the name of the topic, selects the language, and then inserts a couple of key words about the topic. Inserting these key words allows Scoop.it to search for content that may be germane to your topic.
To find content yourself, a search bar in the top right corner allows one to type in keywords. The search will then produce three tabs related to the keywords; posts, topics, and users. The posts tab finds articles and content that is related to the keywords that were searched. Based on the keywords, topic boards that are created by other users will also be pulled up. If one wishes, one can follow a topic board which is then added automatically to one’s “follow” list. By following a topic board, one will be notified of the new content the user scoops into that topic board.
The topic board is a page that displays all of the curated content on the selected topic. In an organized fashion, the topic board arranges all the content you selected for that specific topic. By default, the content and articles are published in chronological order on the topic board.
When one finds an article that they want to scoop into their particular topic board, there is a scoop.it button on the article. This button allows one to select which curated topic board to add the scoop in, add additional text to the article, share this article with other social media sites, select a schedule of publication for the article, and add tags to the article.
Scoop.it allows individuals to share scoops with other social media sites without publishing the scoop under one of their topic boards. On the bottom right of a scoop is an arrow button that give you options of your other social media platforms to share the article with. Some versions of Scoop.it also provide the embedding code to include in a blog piece or to a website.
For convenience, Scoop.it has a web based platform and an app for mobile devices which syncs everything automatically across devices and platforms (e.g. desktop, iPad, iPhone, and Android).
There is an education version of Scoop.it that allows for 30 co-curators or groups to collaborate on a project. One is able to search for topics that may aid in papers, research projects, and class presentations. Teachers can create topic boards for a class and attach additional readings of articles that may enhance understanding of the material for the students. It can be used in conjunction with other learning tools such as SlideShare and PowerPoint.
We welcome any feedback or experience with Scoop.it.
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