Writing About Writing
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Considerations for an iPad Professional Development Program
Read more: Considerations for an iPad Professional Development ProgramThis morning, I presented a paper at the Ubiquitous Learning conference in Urbana-Campaign Illinois. Below are the slides a presented, and the associated script. As I was given some extra time, I didn't follow the script. I really enjoyed the opportunity to share my literature review findings and talk more about my research. I'm really…
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Ease-of-use and Usefulness as Measures of Attrition in MOOCs (#CFHE12)
Read more: Ease-of-use and Usefulness as Measures of Attrition in MOOCs (#CFHE12)As I reflect upon my participation in this MOOC (#CFHE12) and the MOOC that just ended (#MOBIMOOC), it occurs to me that MOOC design could be informed by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The TAM indicates that the two most important characteristics in voluntary technology adoption are ease-of-use and perceived usefulness (Davis et al, 1989).…
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How to Succeed in a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) (CFHE12)
Read more: How to Succeed in a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) (CFHE12)MOOCs are becoming more common these days. I seem to be getting notification of them on at least one per week. Having just completely MobiMOOC, I've signed up for a few of new ones this fall – EdFutures, a connectivist inspired MOOC, which starts today; a Coursera MOOC "Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society" which officially…
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MobiMOOC 2012 Reflections
Read more: MobiMOOC 2012 ReflectionsMobiMOOC 2012 ran for the last three week. The structure for this MOOC was part of a MOOC experiment. It was a tree structure, breakout out each week into more branches of discussion. This also meant that each week there was more content being presented. The idea was, that learners could choose to follow the…
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iPad Accessories for Teaching
Read more: iPad Accessories for TeachingI've been asked several times about what iPad accessories are necessary for teaching. I've been reflecting on this, and must first start by saying that there is a lot of personal preference involved. The answer to the question changes depending on what subject you are teaching, what level you are teaching, and how you use…
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Using Siri to take notes on my iPhone
Read more: Using Siri to take notes on my iPhoneWhen I bought my iPhone, one of my biggest worries was that I'd lose my ability to do dictation, that is talk-to-text. On my Android, I had purchased the Flex9 keyboard (apparently, this has been discontinued), which supported both swype and speech-to-text. I talked briefly about this feature on my Reflections on Writing post. I…
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Using iAnnotate to mark student papers
Read more: Using iAnnotate to mark student papersI've blogged before about using iAnnotate to take notes on my iPad, written with the context of academic research in mind. In this video, I demonstrate how iAnnotate can be used to mark student papers. This process is especially nice when using a third generation iPad with the dictation feature (an option available in Settings…
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Workflows – Annotating PDF Articles on the iPad
Read more: Workflows – Annotating PDF Articles on the iPadThis is an updated version of the original posting on February 5th. This version includes a updated procedures and new video clips. This workflow requires the following applications on my Mac (or PC): A browser (I use Firefox) A PDF reader (I use Acrobat 9) Dropbox Mendeley In addition, I require the following apps on…
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Setting up your personal iPad for presenting and teaching
Read more: Setting up your personal iPad for presenting and teachingIn this blog post, I describe configuration steps to help you setup your personal iPad for presenting at conferences and teaching in the classroom. iPads have great personalization features, however, not all of these features are appropriate if you are displaying your iPad screen to a large audience, such as in the classroom or at…
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My Mobile Device List
Read more: My Mobile Device ListOne of the topics of this weeks MobiMOOC involves people sharing their list of mLearning tools. There has been an interesting mix of hardward and cloud-based content management solutions presented. This got me thinking about my mobile device list, so I thought I'd share it with you. Below is my mLearning device collection (I've listed…
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How I use my iPad
Read more: How I use my iPadI've been thinking about this post for quite some time. Next week, one of the MobiMOOC topics is about sharing preferred tools for mLearning, so I thought this was a great opportunity for me to wax poetically about my iPad ;). I bought my iPad largely because I was peripherally involved in a research project…
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How I’m going to participate in MobiMOOC this year
Read more: How I’m going to participate in MobiMOOC this yearThank-you Michael for starting off the reflective blogging. Your post got me thinking about my participation in MobiMOOC and what that is going to look like this year. I feel an obligation to contribute to MobiMOOC this year, largely because MobiMOOC last year was such a valuable experience for me, and the resulting collaborations of…
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Presenting with the iPad – Part 2 Setting up an Ad Hoc network
Read more: Presenting with the iPad – Part 2 Setting up an Ad Hoc networkThis article is part 2 in a series. The first article in the series provided an Overview of presenting with the iPad. Setting up an Ad Hoc network (otherwise known as peer-to-peer network) is actually quite simple on the Mac. I think it is just as simple on the PC, however, I no longer have…
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Transcribing
Read more: TranscribingI don't do a lot of transcription, but when I do, I've found having the right tools makes the process much more enjoyable. First off, I recommend reading the article "How I Stopped Dreading and Learned to Love Transcription" (Bird, 2005). In the right mental state for transcription, I found I didn't dread it, but…
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Tablet Learning?
Read more: Tablet Learning?A few days ago, RJ Jacquez asked the question “Is eLearning on tablets really Mobile Learning?” and invited the blogosphere to chime in on his post. Unfortunately, after reading his post, I was left feeling that he had a very narrow view of what mobile learning is, narrowed by the constraint of associating mobile learning…
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Presenting with the iPad – Part 1 Technology Overview
Read more: Presenting with the iPad – Part 1 Technology OverviewWhen I first thought about using my iPad for presenting at conferences and in the classroom, I thought the problem I was trying to solve was rather simple, and if all I wanted to do was connect my iPad to a VGA projector, then the solution is simple. Buy an iPad to VGA adaptor and…
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Using a MOOC to Teach Emerging Technologies #MOOCMOOC
Read more: Using a MOOC to Teach Emerging Technologies #MOOCMOOCOne of the suggestions for today's #MOOCMOOC activities is to "Outline, draft, narrate, or otherwise create a plan for your own MOOC". I had actually started doing this when I noticed yesterday's involved creating a Storify document. My immediate thought when I saw the Storify activity, is that this MOOC has involved a lot of…
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#MOOCMOOC Reflections
Read more: #MOOCMOOC ReflectionsWe are midway through MOOCMOOC and I’m struggling to find my place within the community. I think part of my struggle is with the timing. The scheduling of events seems to line up too much with the Eastern Time zone business day, such that I just barely finish my real work and it is time…
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Re-tooling for Travel
Read more: Re-tooling for TravelMany people want to know if the iPad can replace their laptop when they travel. That, of course, depends on what they expect to achieve. I imagine there will be people who travel with both (kind of like towing a Miata behind your motor home), but for focused trips the iPad is a viable strategy…
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#moocmooc have they missed the point?
Read more: #moocmooc have they missed the point?On Sunday, I shall begin a week long MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) about MOOCs called MOOCMOOC. The course is six-days and espires to create meaningful dialogue about MOOCs. I think it will be interesting, but I do wonder if they are missing the point. How can you possibly garnish meaningful dialogue in such a short…
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Managing Web Links
Read more: Managing Web LinksIn order to stay current in my field (iPad professional development), I need to reach out on the web and read online news articles and blogs. I find that I read something and then when I want to refer to it later, I can’t always find it again. After several occurrences of this, I decided…
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My perceptions of Google’s Power Search MOOC
Read more: My perceptions of Google’s Power Search MOOCThis summer, I’ve decided to take a couple of MOOCs – Massively Open Online Courses – these are online “courses” that are offered for free over the Internet. Last spring/summer, I participated in two MOOCs: MobiMOOC and EduMOOC. I found them to be very different, but also useful experiences. Recently, George Siemens posted a description…
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Tall ships in Halifax
Read more: Tall ships in HalifaxThe main reason I extended my camping retreat to Halifax was so that I would not miss the Tall Ship Festival. I’ve always been a fan of the big sailing ships, and last summer in Halifax we enjoyed inspecting the various ships on the Halifax harbourfront. I spend three days at the festival – the…
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Happily retreating away
Read more: Happily retreating awayIt isn’t that I haven’t been writing, it is that I’ve been either writing notes in my literature log or working on the backlog of Ghana posts for http://goingeast.ca. My original plan had me returning to Ottawa today, but when I found out the tall ships festival started tomorrow, I mentioned it to my husband,…
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Reviewing literature on the go
Read more: Reviewing literature on the goI'm writing this while sitting at a campsite enjoying a short lull in all the noise associates with children playing and dogs barking. One of my hopes on this trip was to get some reading done. But the process of reviewing literature requires more than just reading (at least it does for me). It involves…
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Nova Scotia – Day 2
Read more: Nova Scotia – Day 2Despite driving too much, today was an amazing day. My day was filled with wonderful food, wonderful views, and great conversations. What more could I ask for? A portion of my day was spent in Halifax. First to pick up a fleece sleeping bag liner, as I froze last night. I've been using the same…
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Nova Scotia – Day 1
Read more: Nova Scotia – Day 1When I returned from Africa, I was exhausted. I was mentally and physically drained. I also felt my body calling towards Nova Scotia. It is odd really, I've been here a few time before, but never before have I felt that sense of calling. Luckly, my husband saw how drained I was, and supported my…
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Searching for the demand
Read more: Searching for the demandAt the eLearn Africa fail faire, I learned about the idea of need versus demand. The idea is, that although something may be needed, there also needs to be demand for something to be successful. In the case of computers for schools in Africa, a lot of places will express a need, but the development…
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Testing the Blogsy app for the iPad – part 2
Read more: Testing the Blogsy app for the iPad – part 2This is a second post. I'm just testing the offline functionality and just hope that I didn't loose what I just wrote. To test the offline functionality I'm writing this with my iPad in airplane mode. The app certainly has a different set of functions when you are not online. One idea that drew me…
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Testing out new iPad blog software
Read more: Testing out new iPad blog softwareOne of the issues we ran into while in Africa was that the iPad blogging app we were using didn't work particularly well when we were offline. Actually it was particularly poor such that both My husband and I lost posts that we had been working on. Now that I'm planning another trip, we're I'm…
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Insights from STLHE 2012 Conference – Montreal Quebec
Read more: Insights from STLHE 2012 Conference – Montreal QuebecMy initial comment after attending the opening reception of the STLHE conference was that they didn't do much to help facilitate networking. I had connected with the person I already knew, and no one else. Fortunately, my first impressions of the conference could not have been more wrong. It turned out to be an awesome…
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eLearn Africa – Day 3
Read more: eLearn Africa – Day 3Friday was the last day of eLearn Africa. Rather than going to the parallel sessions where paper were being presented, I decided to try out a couple of sessions that were less conventional. I went to the Fail Faire (an opportunity for people to share their experiences with failure in eLearning projects) and a roleplaying…
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eLearn Africa Day 2 – First full conference day
Read more: eLearn Africa Day 2 – First full conference dayToday was a busy day for me at eLearn Africa. I attended the plenary, two parallel sessions, presented a round table, and attended the participant reception. Below are some random thoughts for the day: Speaker at the opening plenary from Tanzania (Theophilus E. Mlaki) at one point said “If you have sex without knowledge, you…
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eLearn Africa day 1 – preconference
Read more: eLearn Africa day 1 – preconferenceSince I have never been to Africa before, and never been to eLearn Africa, I decided to attend the workshop for first time attendees at eLearn Africa. It presented a good opportunity to meet a few new people, and get a sense of the conference. It was a pre-workshop event in the afternoon before the…
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Managing references
Read more: Managing referencesAs some of you are aware, I had a little hiccup with my reference management while I was writing my comprehensive exams. Unfortunately, I did not take my own advice, and tried out a new tool for an important time-sensitive paper. Fortunately, I had a back-up plan that saved me. What I really need is:…
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Blogging from my iPad
Read more: Blogging from my iPadI’m writing this post on my iPad. This is partially a test to see if it works, but also, to see how easy it is to blog from my iPad. On my next trip, I plan to only bring my iPad (not my computer). So, if I want to blog while I’m away (more like…
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Finding my tribes … the search for the right academic conferences
Read more: Finding my tribes … the search for the right academic conferencesPursuing a PhD can be a lonely journey. Finding like-minded people to support you in your journey can help reduce the loneliness. The idea of searching out these like-minded people is often called “finding your tribe”; there is a great blog post about it titled “how to build your tribe – finding ‘your people’“. Over…
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Design-based research chain of inquiry
Read more: Design-based research chain of inquiryThe "Design-based reserach chain of inquiry" is a section in a paper that will be published in the AACE eLearning conference proceedings. For the full paper, please see: Hogue, R.J. (2013). Epistemological Foundations of Educational Design Research. AACE eLearn 2013 – World Conference on e-Learning. Las Vegas, NV, USA. =============================== It seems that the theme this…
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Reflections on writing
Read more: Reflections on writingOver the last couple of weeks I’ve been working diligently at writing a couple of papers for my comprehensive exams. Throughout the process of writing, I’ve been observing how I write and where I get my inspiration. I was struck by how writing processes are similar to design processes. I found myself working through multiple…
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Days to form a habit
Read more: Days to form a habitI’ve read it before in many places. The number of days isn’t the same, but the idea is – repeat a process enough times and you will form a habit. This morning I got up and found myself at a bit of a loss. In order to read all the articles on my comprehensive exams…
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Design-Based Research and Instructional Design
Read more: Design-Based Research and Instructional DesignIn looking at design-based research (DBR), I struggled with the different between research and practice and wondered where my research fits in. One big difference is in the need to inform all the design decisions with research, another is in the detailed documentation of the enactment of the design, and the evaluation of the enactment.…
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Comprehensive exams and qualitative research
Read more: Comprehensive exams and qualitative researchAs many of you are aware, my comprehensive exams are fast approaching. I’ve talked to several others about their exams and have learned that the process is very institution and faculty dependent. Given the horror stories I’ve heard about others, I’m glad that our comprehensive exams are actually useful. They are one more element in…
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Re-defining myself
Read more: Re-defining myselfToday’s “ah-ha” moment isn’t about my academic learning so much as it is a learning about myself. At dinner last night, I was chatting with my husband about the current iteration of my thesis idea. I’m developing various components to a program that supports iPad adoption among higher education instructors. In talking about the various…
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Misappropriation and mixed-methods research
Read more: Misappropriation and mixed-methods researchThe other night I was reminded of the idea of cultural misappropriation – as a Unitarian Universalist (a faith that draws upon all world religions), we are particularly aware of the issue of cultural misappropriation, that is, using the symbols or practices of other faiths in a context that does not respect the spirit of…
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Justifying my iPad – some empirical evidence
Read more: Justifying my iPad – some empirical evidenceI decide to do a quick experiment to see just how much my iPad has saved my in printing costs over the last few months. In addition to printing costs, it saves me an immeasurable amount in organization – in that it is a critical component in my literature review process. For this experiment, I…
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A comparison of eBook ecosystems for academics
Read more: A comparison of eBook ecosystems for academicsOver the last month, I’ve struggled with my choice of eBook ecosystem. I’ve found that the price of academic eBooks on Amazon has increased to the point where eBooks aren’t really always cheaper than print books (Diffusion of Innovations 5th Edition by Rogers was my first example of this). However, I prefer eBooks to print…
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Context is king
Read more: Context is kingIn the 90s and early 21st century, a common expression in eLearning was that “content is king”. What that meant was that when you created eLearning, its measure of value was based mostly on its content. If you were delivering good content, then you were creating good eLearning. There was a lot of eLearning out…
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The “net generation” – a new way of thinking about technology
Read more: The “net generation” – a new way of thinking about technologyToday’s big idea comes from an article titled “How computers change the way we think” (Turkle, 2004). Now, before I talk about it, I should talk a little bit about myself and my relationship to technology. My background is in Computer Science (that is where I started my academic career with a B.Sc. in Computer…
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Design-Based Research – What does “better” mean?
Read more: Design-Based Research – What does “better” mean?Design-based research (DBR) is ” a systematic but flexible methodology aimed to improve educational practices” (Wang & Hannafin, 2005, p.6). That is, DBR is all about creating “better” learning designs, but that begs the question – what is meant by “better”? Reigeluth & Frick tell us that what we consider better is based upon our…
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Theories – descriptive/prescriptive learning theories / instructional design theories
Read more: Theories – descriptive/prescriptive learning theories / instructional design theoriesToday’s big idea is about theories – the different between descriptive theories and prescriptive theories and two specific types of theories: learning theories and instructional-design theories. I began the day by reading about activity theory – a descriptive theory that was being used to describe some aspects of faculty development. Descriptive theories are concerned with…
