Guest Blogger Fan Yang on Adrian Cheok

Posted on April 25, 2013 by

Online chat with only voice or video is outdated! Now you’re able to hug, kiss, smell, or even taste your buddies remotely! Following Adrian, we experienced a fascinating multisensory tour.

The tour started with his early study, the Real World Pacman. With a pair of glasses, real humans become Pacman picking up cookies on the real world streets. But this is just a warm-up. Buckle up, more surprises are coming!

Following the first sense, sight, one of Adrian’s students using sound transformed a regular umbrella into a katana! Different sound effects are displayed by swinging the umbrella in different ways. Certain movement combinations can trigger special sound effects, such as explosion. Added only sound, an umbrella can have much more fun!

The presentation gradually came to its upsurge when the sense of touch was brought up. With a jacket, or just a ring, you can give your loved one a remote hug. As reported by IEEE Spectrum, Adrian is making a huggable Internet! In fact, it’s not just huggable, but also kissable! Kissenger really blew away everybody’s mind last night.

The tour didn’t stop at the sense of touch. It continued blowing everyone further away by digital smell and electrical and thermal taste.

Now with these possibilities, how can we incorporate all five senses into online teaching and learning? Maybe an online “better kisser” course is a good start? :) The stimulated audience had very inspiring and funny chats too. This session is definitely this year’s “must attend” one! The public can access a recording of the session here: http://squirrel.adobeconnect.com/p86lgb32brf/

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Guest Blogger Helen Torigoe on Marisa Yamada

Posted on April 24, 2013 by

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, ‘faster horses.’” –Henry Ford

Marisa is on a mission. She is passionate about integrating emerging technologies in learning. At TCC 2012, she dazzled her audience with a presentation on Augmented Reality. This year she followed up with her culminating Master’s research project on enriching the mobile learning experience.

Entitled “’Talking is the new Typing’: Challenging Smartphone Users to Dictate Instead of Type in Order to Enrich the Mobile Learning Experience,” Marisa’s 20-minute presentation was a treat for the curious minds and for the eye. Her slides were beautiful, engaging, and meticulously crafted to tell her story. And Marisa’s study was full of compelling reasons for using speech-to-text technology in smartphones for learning.

Did you know that

• 94% of adults 16 and older use mobile phones.

• In 2012, 54.9% of adults reported owning a smartphone.

• Access to the Internet from a smartphone has surpassed access from laptops & PC.

• 6 million students are learning online and the number is growing.

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Figure 1. A smartphone in 2013 is equivalent to all the devices you see on the left.

Marisa created a totally-mobile learning module from scratch. I’m guessing that she spent many hours designing and coding to create the iPhone learning module. Dr. Peter Leong said, “The mobile learning module is very engaging. I encourage people to check it out.” You can download Marisa’s module on your iPhone from http://tinyurl.com/s2tmodule.

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After going through the module, the participants reported being motivated to use speech-to-text app in the future, feeling more confident with dictating over typing, and seeing the benefits of using speech-to-text app instead of using keypad. When others might have suggested making bigger keyboards or bigger screens on a mobile phone, Marisa “really wanted to change the participants’ attitude toward using dictation…to motivate them to feel comfortable…” I love her forward-thinking.

Presenter: Marisa Yamada

e-mail: myamada@hawaii.edu

Twitter: @marisaETEC

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Guest Blogger Rebecca Meeder on Gavon Wong

Posted on April 23, 2013 by

For the last day of TCC, I had a great time listening in on ETEC masters student Gavon Wong‘s (@naturalhawaiian) session.  What was interesting about his session was that he started off speaking in Japanese, introducing himself and his module.  Then, in English, Wong proceeded to provide a brief background of his experience with Crazy Shirts as well as his affinity for the people of Japan. For the rest of his session, Wong shared his instructional design module for training Crazy Shirt employees. Wong stated that its overall purpose was to train the employees on the language skills needed to effectively communicate with their Japanese customers.  His module was an actual application to a real-life problem, which I found very practical and fascinating at the same.

As for the conference session itself, some of the highlights were Wong’s use of humor throughout the session.  His use of visuals and graphics for the presentation were definitely eye catching as well.  As for the module itself, Wong broke it down into three simple sections.  The first one was “creating comfort” where employees would know how to welcome Japanese customers to the store, show gratitude towards them, and provide directions when needed. The second section was “describing merchandise” where the employees would explain the types of clothing sold at the store, as well as the sizes, colors, and beneficial features of the clothes. The third and final section was “handling numbers” where employees would know how to count numbers in Japanese, exchange money, and state the sales and store hours to the customers.

Overall, I felt that listening in on the session was definitely worthwhile.  Wong helped the audience understand and appreciate the confusion Japanese customers usually have at retail stores where the Japanese language is not regularly spoken.  He also described the need for employees at these stores to know at least some Japanese in order for them to assist Japanese-speaking customers.  I believe this module is definitely a prime example of what instructional designers should try to adhere to when creating instructional modules of their own.  More information about the module can be found at http://japaneseforcrazyshirts.weebly.com or gavonw44@gmail.com.

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Guest Blogger Rian Barreras on Terry Anderson

Posted on April 22, 2013 by

Review of Terry Anderson’s “Getting the Right Mix: Open Content, Quality Teaching and Supportive Community”
by Rian Barreras

Terry Anderson of Athabasca University shared an interesting perspective on how to create a quality MOOC or Massive Open Online Course; it was entitled “Getting the Right Mix: Open Content, Quality Teaching and Supportive Community”. This presentation was especially enlightening to me, because I did not really know anything about MOOCs. While watching, I learned about the history of MOOCs, about research conducted on the subject, and implications for future success. One of the most interesting ideas of MOOCs is the ability to provide affordable and accessible education to people all over the world, but in order to create a quality experience for such a large array of people, the teacher must be ready to blend interaction and content. One of the neat ways Anderson’s institution, Athabasca University, seeks to incorporate interaction with education is through a social networking site created specifically for university members. The site, Athabasca Landing, allows for interaction between students and teachers both during the class time and after the class has been completed. This type of platform not only allows for students to learn from their current classmates but also from past students. The information is allowed to remain on the site for the next group to build upon. This type of connection seems to be one more improvement in the future of education that works to make online learning more personal, meaningful, and helpful.

terryandersonTerry Anderson can be contacted terrya@athatbascau.ca
His blog can be seen at terrya.edublogs.org
The slides of his presentation can be viewed here: http://www.slideshare.net/terrya/tcc-keynote-hawaii-april-2013/

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Guest Blogger Marisa Yamada on Frank Jumawan and Eddie Merc

Posted on April 19, 2013 by

 

V-TENN: Virtual Tennis in Second Life (SL) : Frank Jumawan and Eddie Merc

What a phenomenal three days the TCC 2013 conference has been!  We had literally mind-blowing keynote and featured presentations, and educational topics with so much range and variety that there was something for everyone!

One of my interests is in virtual reality and when I attended the V-Tenn Virtual Tennis in Second Life presentation by Frank and Eddie, I was very impressed with the amount of work the two doctoral candidates put into building their virtual instructional module!

First, we all met in Blackboard Collaborate for a traditional whiteboard presentation.  Then, we were instructed to log into Second Life (which they advised us to download previous to their presentation so we could participate in this virtual field trip).  Giving us their Second Life module address (SURL) http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/UHawaii%20COE/47/50/27, there was excitement in the room as we were whisked away to their 2 story virtual building.  

The first story contained basic information about tennis – you can tell the presenters loved the subject as there were plenty of details on tennis terminology, the rivalries between top players, there were embedded Google Form surveys hanging on the walls for our avatars to interact with, and videos to watch on sleek, flat screen virtual TVs.  There were even mini tennis courts we could walk over that demonstrated the various surfaces of the courts, for instance clay and how the surface affects the ball.

After the introduction, there were two levels of learner engagement we could teleport to called a “Genius Level” and a “Gladiator Level”.  The “Genius Level” and “Gladiator Level” contained more information about the game of tennis and even provided free tennis outfits and a choice of a regular tennis racket and a Power tennis racket to equip our avatars with!  As soon as we equipped ourselves with the racket, our avatars crouched into a tennis-ready stance!  I felt like I was ready to go take on the likes of Roger Federer.  Ok, maybe not, but we all then transported to the top of the roof in which there were two large tennis courts, complete with score boards.  It really felt like our avatars were on tennis courts and it was very engaging because the courts were actually playable!

The presenters showed us a demonstration on how to play on these courts with our avatars – you have to click the scoreboard for the game to start, then position yourselves correctly on the court.  The first player serves the ball, and the other player across the net runs to it to return the ball and so forth.  It takes getting used to in order to correctly position the avatar so that the racket hits the ball, however, after a while, I got the hang of it and it was game on!

This module is great for the learner who is interested in the fundamentals of the game of tennis and virtual reality is really a perfect tool for people to quickly and visually learn about a topic while also being able to participate in it if not able to in real life.  Furthermore, this was a very engaging presentation because we, as the audience, got to get out of our “seats” in Blackboard and take a trip to another destination.  It was a nice change and a great way to stretch our “virtual legs” after back to back Blackboard presentations and I hope we can have these virtual field trips more often for future TCC conferences!  

For further information you can contact the presenters at:

Frank Jumawan fjumawan@hawaii.edu, @frankjay808

Eddie Merc emerc@hawaii.edu, @edkopletko

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Guest Blogger Youxin Zhang on Veronica Diaz

Posted on April 19, 2013 by

  • What is so interesting about the speaker?

Dr. Veronica Diaz, Associate Director of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, gave us an impressive presentation about the usage of the MOOC. She has years of experiences and rich knowledge in open online class and design. Her speech is actively engaging, easy-followed and dynamic which made me feel the 40 minutes-presentation went by quickly. A lot of information and a speedy voice allowed me to intensively focus on the presentation at all the times.

  • What makes the conference session a worthwhile experience (for those that missed the session)

From my perspective, the MOOC is an attracting topic to follow in current academic field for both ETEC and non-ETEC audiences. TCC conference provides a good platform for international scholars and educators around the world to come and share ideas without geographic limitation. Through Dr. Diaz’s presentation, we got to know about MOOC Model, we scrutinized what is achieved and what changes we need to make within our own institution, and we thought about how we can integrate MOOC Model with our daily teaching and/or educational course design so as to fit our participants’ needs with a better course design.

It was a really good chance to listen, talk and share our mutual ideas and our teaching/learning experiences, get direct answers on what we felt puzzled by, and contribute to the whole community education. Also this is an effective, efficient and engaging way to learn from others.

  • What is the highlight of the session?

An informative presentation started from an eye-attracting educational delivery model. There were also considerable successful practices and examples of how the MOOC is being utilized by most of institutions. The abundant statistics in this presentation help us to understand the past, present and future of MOOCs. Lots of graphics, diagrams,  bar graphs, and less text reading were put together to make the presentation more vivid.  Polls (several short survey questions relevant to MOOC) on the right top panel during the entire presentation which made it more interactive with all the participants.

  • Speaker’s contact, social media and website information

Veronica Diaz, PhD

drvdiaz@gmail.com

 http://tinyurl.com/TCC-Diaz

http://tinyurl.com/elimooc

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Guest Blogger Nan Ketpura-Ching on Helen Torigoe

Posted on April 18, 2013 by

A featured student presentation, Helen Torigoe’s Developing an Effective E-Textbook for CS101 Students at UH Hilo: An iBook Instructional Module is an interactive demonstration of how emerging mobile technology could be utilized in education. Helen is currently a lecturer at University of Hawaii, Hilo for Computer Science (CS101). Her course focuses on Microsoft Office suite and HTML. She’s noticed a trend with a fewer students reading the textbook and coming to class unprepared. Helen wonders if her digital native students need a more engaging platform to learn the material. Thus, she developed a prototype of an interactive e-textbook for CS101 students at UH, Hilo and measured its effectiveness in increasing learning, motivation, and engagement.

First, Helen researched the criteria for effective e-book.


Next step, she considered device and development platform for e-authoring. She ended up choosing iBooks author since it’s free and easy to use. She then spent lots of time creating the iBook through iBooks Author.


Her iBook, “Web and HTML” is available via http://etext.weebly.com/. The iBook contains small chunks of content interspersed with interactive widgets: slideshows, YouTubes, labeled diagrams, quizzes, and a “try-it-yourself” HTML editor. The weebly site contains thorough tutorials on how to navigate through the iBook.


Based on the data from Helen’s project, the iBook did increase learning, motivation, and engagement with 93% of participants said “it all makes sense” or “I understood the basic concepts”. Interestingly, the interactive widgets that participants enjoyed most are the visual type: slideshows, videos, and images/screenshots. A majority (80%) also found the “try it yourself” widget to helpful or somewhat helpful. The design itself could be improved to strike a balance between content and simpler layout.

Most interesting piece of information is that more participants would consider e-textbooks and are aware of its drawbacks.

What’s on the horizon? Helen hopes to perform an action research while continuing the needs analysis, evaluation, revision.

There’s definitely been a growth in e-readers in the past year and this trend will continue to grow. Will educators be ready for the next generation of digital learners? or e-book natives?

Presenter: Helen Torigoe

e-mail: htorigoe@hawaii.edu

Twitter: @torigoeh

Website: http://etext.weebly.com/index.html

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