Category — Uncategorized

View Module 7 feed

Welcome!

Please begin by looking at this concept map to get a sense of the content we covered in this module.  This initial concept map serves as a Module organizer only.  Check back at the end of this week to see a more interactive concept map that you can use for summative review.

To start off the dialogue, we would like you to consider the following question FIRST and post your replies here, before proceeding to our NING site.
When you hear the term “One to One Technologies” what does it mean to you?

Once you have responded to the above question, please proceed to our Module 7 website:

http://1to1tech.ning.com

There are instructions on the main page for navigating through the site.
You should be able to SIGN IN using the same email / password that you have used before, for NING.
There are many opportunities for you to engage in dialogue and discussion.
We will also provide an RSS feed so you can follow the discussion here.

Check back here throughout the week to view any posts that pertain to Module 7.
And feel free to post any comments or questions here as well.

Thank you and we hope you enjoy our presentation.
Kathleen Cavanagh, Cathy Jung, Merv LaBrash, Brian Powell, and Erica Toombs

We have also provided a video showing you how to navigate through our Module 7 NING presentation:

Pardon me if this is posted somewhere- but where do we submit Assignment #1, and does the 2500 words include the resources?
Thanks
Bev

As you go thru all the Social Technologies tabs please don’t forget to answer the polls, participate in the discussions and enrich our collective knowledge.

Hi everyone!

Group 4’s site on “Social Technologies” is now open! You can find it at: http://etec522module4.ning.com/ . You will need to create a Ning account for yourself, if you are not already a member of Ning. Luckily, it’s free!

The Social Technologies Bandwagon!

Please participate in the discussions, take a survey or two and explore the links. Most of the sections have RSS buttons, so you can pull in the feeds from the site. Probably the best one to use is the “Latest Activity” feed (http://etec522module4.ning.com/activity/log/list?fmt=rss).

Enjoy being a part of our social learning network!

Anthony, Barbara, Cari, Ed, Erik and Noah

I am not sure if I understand exactly what we are suppose to be posting here about alternative approaches but I’ll give it a shot. While reading through some of the links I recalled reading ( I think written by Thomas Friedman) about a very successful project where women in rural areas in India were given cameras and trained to be the village photographers. While trying to find more information on this I came across the following article: Jhunjhunwala, A., Ramachandran, A. & Bandyopadhyay, A., n-Logue: The Story of a Rural Service Provider in India , The Journal of Community Informatics, (2004), Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 30-38. retrieved from the internet Sept. 27, 2009

This article discusses how an organization called n-Logue that focuses on rural India, helped to establish internet kiosks through-out rural India. Kiosks, which cost less than $1000 to set up were financed by bank loans and were established by trained entrepreneurs in the villages- mostly women. Further tech support is provided by n-Logue. It was determined in the original business plan that these kiosks would need to make around $70 per month in order to break even. This amounts to about 7 or 8 cents per person per month which the authors felt was affordable and sustainable.

These kiosks provide an amazing variety of services in these communities from training children how to type, to providing farmers access to on-line veterinary services. Many of the kiosk owners also bought digital cameras so they have also become the village photographer. At the time of writing they were proposing to add internet banking services as well.

This article does not conclude how things are going, but the authors were very optimistic about the future. I think this is a really interesting idea and with over 6 000 000 villages in India has great potential.

Hi All,

Would anyone else prefer links from the blog to open in a new window? I prefer this personally rather than navigating back and forth between the blog and the link.

Cheers,

Jim

Market Focus – K-12
Type of Offering -Content- K- 12 Distance learning courses in both French and English. The courses are offered in print, online- synchronous and asynchronous or blended formats.
Who is the buyer – This product has a fairly wide market as it can be purchased by individual students, their parents, schools and school divisions who offer couses through outreach type programs.
Markets – This product is marketed world-wide to students who wished to take K-12 courses based on the Alberta curriculum.
Development of the Market -Because this program is offered in a variety of formats- print and on-line it is appropriate for many markets. A blended program is probably the most effective program so those areas which have no or poor assess to internet would be the least likely market.
Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning
-“There is already a well-developed learning system in the sector (e.g. instructor-led courses, teachers in schools, etc.) and learning technology has been fitted into the mix (e.g. to handle home schooling, to extend the reach of universities to rural communities, to handle upgrading of credentials for employees, etc.)”

The younger, safer, sibling of Second Life, Teen Second Life (TSL) offers educators in secondary education an opportunity to instruct in an immersive environment without putting their students at risk of harm from predators. Access to TSL is for teens and rigorously screened adults only. Movement of adults in the world is very restricted, but teens can move about freely. TSL is owned and operated by Linden Labs, the same company that owns Second Life.

http://teen.secondlife.com/

Face 1: Market Focus

Teen Second Life is designed for teens 13-17 so obviously they are focused on secondary education. Because of the tight restrictions higher education institutions and corporations must go to the main Second Life grid.

Face 2: Types of Offerings

Linden Labs is offering the infrastructure in which educators and students can create content. Instructors and students can create virtual educational spaces where all the data is saved on Linden Lab’s servers, but which they can access from their own computers.

Face 3: Who is the Buyer?

There are two levels of buyer in TSL. First, they are trying to attract institutions like school to buy land and create a presence in TSL. Second, individual instructors who are early adopters of the technology may purchase land themselves. This may occur when schools are not willing to invest and the individual teacher wants to prove the concept to a principal or a superintendant. Teens can create accounts for free, so they are not buyers.

Face 4 – Global Markets

Because all the documentation and marketing for TSL is in English, the primary market would be wired Anglophone countries, with some customers coming from European countries with language skills. It would be possible for instructors from Asia and other well wired areas who had English skills to set up a virtual environment for students who would then communicate in other languages. This would mean that TSL could expand into any market that had good, high speed internet and a population with higher end computers.

Face 5 – Development of the Market

TSL targets markets with well developed internet access and a population which has access to higher end computers with good graphics capabilities. They also need to attract instructors who are willing to go outside of their classrooms and create educational experiences in a virtual world. Within that relatively narrow niche, they compete well in the market because they have all the technology and software developed for Second Life. Other educational immersive environments have less developed infrastructures, or are based on earlier versions of Second Life released as open-source projects. Linden Labs has the economically successful Second Life to drive development and improvement of both Second Life and TSL while the smaller and open source projects have fewer resources.

Face 6 – Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning

Teaching in immersive environments like TSL is currently an adjunct to teaching face to face in a classroom. The 3D building environment competes with some aspects of traditional teaching, like lab demonstrations and lectures, and provides the opportunity for students from geographically separated locations to interact and work together. In the future immersive environments may displace some aspects of traditional teaching, but with the current level of technology and the constraints of having to have a higher end computer; TSL is still very much on the fringe of teaching and learning.

Here is my attempt at “Elluminate Cubed”. I have used Elluminate many times over the past couple of years and it grows on me each time I use it.

http://www.elluminate.com/

FACE 1: MARKET FOCUS

Elluminate provides web, video, and audio solutions for online learning and according to Elluminate.com they serve “more than 600 million annual web-collaboration minutes to over 7 million teachers and students located in 170 different countries”.

FACE 2: TYPES OF OFFERINGS

Elluminate has several offerings that are explained in detail through the links below including:

Elluminate Learning Suite™. – a full package of products

Elluminate Live!® features voice over the Internet, interactive functionality, upports multiple platforms and low-bandwidth connectivity.

Elluminate Next>™ bundle combines Elluminate Plan!™ and Elluminate Publish!™

Elluminate vSpaces™ single-room configurations of Elluminate Live!

Elluminate Bridges a tool that provides integration with learning and content management systems.

Elluminate VCS™ is an affordable  multipoint video collaboration product for desktop users.

LearnCentral™ is a social learning network for education, sponsored by Elluminate.

FACE 3: THE BUYER

School Districts or governing educational groups, individual educators and business.

If you are a BC educator you can have free access provided by Learnnowbc. A single meeting can be booked  or you can reserve a long-term meeting room for up to one year. Click here for more information: http://www.learnnowbc.ca/lnbcresources/elluminate/

FACE 4: GLOBAL MARKETS

As the internet expands and computer access improved within education there is potential for classrooms to meet and connect globally. This meeting platform allows for easy interactivity that incorporates, audio, video, text and more.

FACE 5: DEVELOPMENT OF THE MARKET

There are several reviews and articles about Elluminate:

http://www.elluminate.com/press/articles.jsp

The company is located in Calgary, Alberta and Pleasanton, California and claims to Ellumiate claims, to be the choice of “ Apple Computer, California State University, Florida Virtual School, Georgetown University, K12 Inc., London Knowledge Lab, Los Angeles Unified School District, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Novell, Queen’s University, Royal Veterinary College, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, and many more.”

According to their website they are the one of “Deloitte’s 50 Fastest Growing Technology Companies and is positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing, 2009”.

FACE 6: LEARNING TECHNOLOGY COMPETITION WITH OTHER FORMS OF LEARNING

The Elluminate services are very useful and have great potential in the market. A set back (or competition) is the every growing development of free Web 2.0, & 3.0 tools. Many of these tools provide similar functions including online chat, whiteboard, and texting capabilities. As second struggle that the company will encounter is convincing educators to change their practice to incorporate virtual meeting spaces over face to face. Ellumiate has many market challenges and must keep current with the many emerging new technologies in order to survive.

Here is a short video found on Youtube introducing Elluminate: