THEME - Final in A Multipart Series: Technology Support Issues

UPFRONT - Without Support-It Just Doesn't Happen!
FOCUS - Support Solutions, Ideas and Tips-From You
SYSTEM NEWS - Web Based Learning System To Use WebCT
HOT TOPICS - Wireless Alliance Prepares to Oppose Microsoft, The Future of Videoconferencing
NEW TECH TERMS - Zero Latency Concept and Training, Fractal Models for Internet Traffic
NEW TECH TRENDS - HP CapsShare Portable Scanners, MindShare for Web Outreach, NYU Goes For-Profit Online, New Acoustics
ETC. - Setting E-Book Standards, iMac Makes a Statement, Bandwidth Boom, V- Commerce Voice Recognition Standard
NEW ON THE LIST - New Monthly Subscribers
FYI - News, Conferences and Institutes
ENDNOTE - Bill Gates Paints Glowing Technology Future
NOVEMBER ISSUE FOCUS - A Multipart Series: Taking a Look at Authorware

 

UPFRONT

Just a week ago, I was one of a group of presenters at the Wisconsin League of Municipalities 100th Anniversary Conference. During our session, in the process of discussing the various technologies that municipalities have available to use as communication tools, I asked if anyone had used their community cable PEG channels. Several people raised their hands. "Well," I said to the lady in the second row, "How did it work for you?" "Terrible!" she replied. "The person we talked to didn't seem to know what to do. We gave him the tape and when it was supposed to be played, there was just snow." Another woman spoke up and said that in her community they used their channels a lot ...that they had people responsible for the different areas of support and training and that it worked very well for them.

Having worked with community cable for many years, I knew just exactly what had happened. Some communities had thought that having the infrastructure and buying the equipment was enough and that things would just happen after that. And then there were the communities that knew better. They knew that funding, support and training were absolutely critical. And here at the conference session were excellent examples of both perspectives.

As I continue to work with technology, now distance education, I have an ongoing sense of 'deja vù'. There are still those who think that building the infrastructure and buying the equipment is enough and then there are a growing number that know that without all of the areas of support - "it just doesn't happen!" This is certainly reinforced by the comments of those of you who have provided us with solutions, Ideas and Tips in this month's FOCUS article. (Rosemary Lehman)

 

FOCUS

Support Solutions Ideas and Tips - From You

"Faculty Support"

1- From UW-Milwaukee's Learning Technology Center (LTC)...a new initiative has been created to increase awareness of how educational technology is being used and to increase communication, collaboration and support among faculty and staff. It's called The Technology-Using Faculty (TUF). It includes a database of faculty/teaching staff using educational technology. The database lists:

* faculty contacts
* descriptions of courses taught
* designation of technology or technologies used
* the needs the courses address
* the greatest successes and problems in the courses
* the pedagogical issues that surfaced and
* advise for colleagues

2- Bruce Brown, formerly of UW Colleges, states that support for faculty in the area of presentation skills is essential:

* gestures need to be slower and more predictable in close-up shots
* place the camera next to the monitor so that it appears that you are looking THROUGH the camera at the participants
* what you wear matters - avoid red, stripes, bright white. Wear pastels and plain colors, if possible
* your materials and visual aids are as visible as YOU choose, they need to be poster size if you use them on a document camera and
* visual aids are very important - students will be more attentive to what you show them than what you tell them.

3 - Christopher Ford NY Dept. of Health is grateful for the support he has received from staff. Two ideas that have been particularly helpful have been:

* videotaping his sessions, then looking for things that do and don't work and
* taking the time to practice

4 - Dick Cleek, Assis. Vice Chancellor of IT, UW Colleges is attempting to gather together resources that will help faculty. He's posting on the Web:

* a set of nifty handouts and materials developed by Pat Fellows, a faculty member at UW-Richland County and
* has asked other faculty to add to the resources

"Client Support Solution"

1- Stop, Look and Listen To Your Clients says Chris Beard, Director of Operations at Horizon Live Distance Learning (www.horizonlive.com). Horizon makes a web-based distance learning solution that permits real-time, live instructor led training via the Internet. As no two computers (and no two Internet connections) are alike, Horizon receives calls for help with their software.

Though it's never a bad idea to have scripted solutions for recurring problems, there are always those issues that scripts don't address. In those cases, you should know:

* what questions to ask
* listen for details and
* probe for more

It sometimes can be difficult for clients to put their problems into words. Knowing your product or service well, and knowing the words to supply clients, can save their time and yours.

* use your imagination
* construct scenarios for the problem to extrapolate the problem and the solution
* never assume knowledge, but never, ever patronize
* remember that your clients' time is important and
* be respectful

2- Elliott Masie of the Masie Center and Technology and Learning says:

* observe your clients' learning
* do follow-up research on your clients
* follow their progress
* map their transfer
* go over products with them and
* give them product maps and ask them to color-code the segments according to value

"Student Support "

Solutions, ideas and tips in this category come from UW Colleges, ICS and Ariel, Inc.:

1- Bob O'Donnell, UW-Marathon says, We sometimes incorrectly assume that incoming students understand all there is to know about technology - email, word processing and Web browsing. I've been drafted to:

* conduct short intro's to email and
* do weekly mini-workshops.

2- Voila! answers Dave Gibbs, UW-Marathon, it's on the books as CPS 101, and could be taught in the first few weeks of the semester by either CPS faculty/staff or other approved faculty.

2- From Bruce Dewey of ICS - formally orient students to distance learning. An Orientation should discuss Protocol and should help students:

* take responsibility
* become involved
* engage the subject
* listen effectively
* speak effectively
* get to know their classmates and
* show respect for others

3 - Peter Gibeau received an email from a conscientious non-traditional student complaining about her chatty and distracting classmates. His solutions for support were:

* to talk about the situation during the next class and ask the students to tell others to be quiet. They are ALL responsible and have a right to do something about noisy classmates and
* to call more on students who tend to "goof around"...they will be more attentive as the hour goes on

With videoconferencing, it's also an option to set up a quad screen, and use Continuous Presence. This mode allows for 5 sites to be seen at a time and lets the faculty have somewhat more control over the course (Ginny Divine of ICS).

Marnie Dresser, UW-Richland answers that, perhaps the students are enjoying the class and talking about class related things and need more support for interactive learning.

Mark Weinberg, UW-Rock, agrees that perhaps the benefit of DE is a kind of interaction which may seem problematic, but really is active engagement in the learning process.

4 - On the Q & A and discussion side, Bob O'Donnell and Dave Gibbs, UW-Marathon, say that students must be actively encouraged to answer questions and interact. This support must be built in. 'Hoping' that students will engage the instructor in discussion is fatal in distance learning. Two solutions are to :

* update student lists for each site and then use them by regularly calling on students by name and
* have a list and check each name as you call on them

5 - Cathy Lawson of GCC keeps the following in mind to help support student individuality in distance learning:

* view everything from multiple viewpoints in planning sessions, students have varied backgrounds and learning styles
* ask for feedback so students can share in the teaching/learning process and
* use small groups and pair advanced users with beginners

"Site Support "

1- According to Ali Rendall of Collaborative Media, not enough time is spent thinking about the rooms where learning will take place. Take time to look at the rooms that you'll be doing your distance teaching or training in. Consider the:

* room size
* flexibility of furniture
* lighting
* acoustics
* wall color
* room clutter

Then adapt the room so that it will provide an atmosphere conducive to optimal learning.

2- Kari Salkunen of HUT Dipoli, Finland notes that a European consortium of Universities that has recently published a handbook "Classrooms for Distance Teaching & Learning: A Blueprint", that provides practical information and advice on setting up and using interactive telepresence classrooms for teaching purposes. The universities in Belgium, France, Italy, Finland and Ireland have worked since 1996 with technology instructors and users and have developed a range of:

* functional demonstration teaching facilities
* a working laboratory environment for testing and evaluating technologies
* support systems for teaching at a distance and
* guidelines and advice for designers and users of systems

The handbook is published by Leuven University Press. Further information see: http://www.linov.kuleuven.ac.be

"Resource Support"

1- Maggie McVay of Franklin University describes their electronic library system, called Discovery Place. Centered in the public library, most of the colleges and universities are a part of this system as well as other entities (e.g., businesses, K-12 schools, individual government and non-profit agencies). It provides:

* resources to all who are members of the consortia
* electronic access for online databases and
* anyone who has a library card from the consortium with access to these resources from their computer at home or at work

2- Norm Coombs of EASI says that people with disabilities must have the same access to information and resources as everyone else. They must be able to access:

* on-site and on-line workshops
* publications and videos
* e-mail discussion lists
* web sites
* electronic journals and
* be able to participate in a wide variety of conferences

 

SYSTEM NEWS

WEB BASED LEARNING SYSTEM TO USE WebCT - Ed Meachen, Associate Vice President for Learning and Information Technology at UW-System (UWS), recently announced that UWS would provide system-wide support for two years to develop a web based learning system (WBLS). Using a "utility" model with WebCT as the delivery tool, WBLS will provide the entire UWS with access to and support for a web based learning environment physically housed at the Division of Information Technology at UW-Madison. The WBLS will be available for piloting about 25 courses in early summer '99 and be available to UW Institutions for 300 or more courses and at least 15,000 students for the fall semester '99. To read the article, go to http://www.uwsa.edu/olit/ttt/index.htm, and click onto "New This Week: Latest Articles and News!" (Hal Schlais, IT Development Coord., UW System - wislrntec v3 #4)

 

HOT TOPICS

WIRELESS ALLIANCE PREPARES TO OPPOSE MICROSOFT - An alliance was cemented that is intended to block the Microsoft Corporation from dominating new consumer communications markets. Motorola Inc. said yesterday that it had completed an investment in a European joint venture that is developing an operating system for a future generation of digital wireless phones. The alliance, known as Symbian, was originally announced in June. It already has the backing of the two largest European makers of wireless phones - Nokia of Finland and Ericsson A.B. of Sweden - as well as Psion P.L.C., a British maker of handheld digital devices. Symbian's purpose is to license and promote as an industry standard Psion's Epoc operating system, the basic software to run the microprocessors that will power the next generation of wireless phones. ( John Markoff, 29 Oct 98) For the full article see:
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/10/biztech/articles/29wireless.html)

THE FUTURE OF VIDEOCONFERENCING - appears to be assured with annual growth rates projected to be 44% over the period of 1998- 2002. Videoconferencing offers a wide variety of applications and benefits: improving business efficiency through reduced travel cost and time, creating equal educational opportunity via distance learning and saving lives via telemedicine. It will establish itself as a mainstream tool as the available offerings reach the necessary levels of quality and operating cost. The wide adoption of MPEG compression standards is one element of this progress. It brings broadcast quality into range. At the same time worldwide investment in network infrastructure is proceeding at a $60 billion-per-year rate and there is growing availability of ATM-based services in an increasing number of countries. The net effect will be to significantly reduce the cost of bandwidth needed for high-end services. The sum of these trends will have a decided growth effect on videoconferencing. (AV Video Multimedia Producer Oct 98, pp 15-16)

 

NEW TECH TERMS

1. ZERO LATENCY CONCEPT & TRAINING - Watch your CIO's emails for use of a new term: Zero Latency. This concept, introduced by the well-respected Gartner Group, is focused on using the latest technologies and business processes to reduce toward zero the amount of time it takes for vital information to reach applications and people that can act on it. It was the buzz of their recent CIO conference and you will see it rapidly appear in IT strategy memos.

Zero Latency creates a strong role for a flexible learning department. As the emphasis is placed on integrating technology and business processes, it is a green light for training approaches that can assist with productivity, aimed at both reducing cycle times and integrating the power of data and business processes. To read an article about Zero Latency: http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek /news/0907/09egart.html

FRACTAL MODELS FOR MANAGING INTERNET TRAFFIC - Researchers at AT&T Labs and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab are looking for new ways to manage networks that carry more data than voice traffic, and suggest the mathematics underlying so-called fractal behavior could serve as a basis for more efficient models of data networks. (A geometric object has fractal characteristics if a magnified piece of the object resembles the original pattern.) In the case of data traffic, bursts of activity show up in approximately the same spiky pattern over a wide range of time scales - from milliseconds to minutes. Finding the fractal nature of Internet traffic can be viewed as a promising start toward solid characterizations of Internet traffic. (Science News 17 Oct 98)

 

NEW TECH TRENDS

DUE OUT IN DECEMBER - is a new breed of "portable" info scanners, HP CapShare, that creates instant digital versions of paper documents. You simply run a sensor down a page and a digital version is stored and displayed on a built-in LCD screen. The captured document can be transferred to a PC or handheld organizer for emailing, faxing or printing or beamed directly to an infrared-enabled printer. It can store approximately 50 pages. And - if you're wireless, you can fax and email from the road. (Working Woman Nov 98, p 48)

MINDSHARE - is that ephemeral quality that causes Web surfers in large numbers to think of your site first. An upcoming Growing Mindshare Workshop focuses on Outreach for Web Sites. It's a six week workshop conducted entirely by email and the World Wide We (WWW) to help achieve a favorable mindshare for Web sites. Workshop Topics include:

* Positioning sites for maximum advantage on search engines, portals and indices.
* Setting up tags using standardized approaches like the Dublin Core.
* Understanding how XML-based search engines work.
* Advancing mindshare through promotional activities.
* Gaining visibility for information in an environment where content is increasingly being made open.
* Making Web sites configurable and adaptable to changing needs through database publishing and effective interface design.
* The ins and outs of transactions processing.
* Analyzing server log statistics in order to maximize Web site effectiveness.

The Workshop is November 2 through December 11,1998. Taught by Thomas P. Copley, Ph.D. To sign up email: majordomo@arlington.com and in the body of the message, place subscribe grow. The cost is $35 US with a discounted price for past participants of Copley's workshops. Either an up-to-date version of Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator is needed.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY - creates For-profit Subsidiary for Onliine Learning. Moving to become a major player in the emerging market for education on the Internet, New York University plans to create a for-profit subsidiary that will develop and sell specialized online courses to other colleges, corporate training centers, as well as students who simply prefer to attend class at home.

The move is a direct response to what many educators see as the biggest challenge to higher education: the rise of profit-making institutions, like the University of Phoenix, which threaten to use the Internet to siphon off some of academia's most profitable courses - continuing education for adult learners - and leave universities only in the expensive business of undergraduate education. They are even flirting with taking the new venture public through a future IPO. See details at: http://www.ny times.com/library/tech/98/10/biztech/articles/07nyu.html

RESEARCHERS AT THE MIT MEDIA LAB - are vying with acoustical engineers at American Technology Corporation to be the first to deliver an addressable audio beam that can carry a narrowly focused sound to a specific recipient. The technology under development uses a parametric array to send sound through the air in a tight beam. The result could be a public address system that could target a specific worker on a shop floor or a museum loudspeaker that could describe an exhibit only to the people standing directly in front of it. (# 74 TechLearn Trends Masie 8 Oct 98)

 

ETC.

GROUP STRIVES TO SET E-BOOK STANDARDS - a group of publishers, software makers and electronics manufacturers have pledged to work together to set technical standards for electronic books. Supporters of include: Microsoft, SoftBook Press, Bertelsmann, HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin Putnam, Simon & Schuster, and Time-Warner Books. The standards are based on HTML and XML coding systems. Publishers are attracted to the e-book, because of the savings on printing and distribution costs, and also because they could include more illustrations, charts and even raw data - material that might be excluded now to save on printing costs. On the other hand, publishers still have reservations regarding the security of the technology and fear that e-books will provide a new channel for copyright violations and intellectual property piracy. (Chronicle of Higher Education 30 Oct 98)

THE iMAC MAKES A STATEMENT - Intel chairman Andy Grove thinks that the extremely rapid growth of the Internet is leading the industry into "the Valley of Death" - a destructive period in which "the technology and the devices will change." He says computers are essentially designed as standalone general-purpose devices to which networking has been added as an afterthought, whereas future computers will have to be designed as networking machines that also do computing. What would they be like? "The iMac embodies a lot of the things I'm talking about. Sometimes what Apple does has an electrifying effect on the rest of us." (Time 5 Oct 98)

BANDWIDTH BOOM - Industry analysts see a communications bandwidth boom on the horizon, with AT&T, WorldCom and Mindspring making major enhancements to their networks and with four other companies (Qwest, Level 3, ITXC, and Williams Communications) building "the equivalent of 80 AT&Ts" (according to North River Ventures). Whereas in 1985 it took six fibers in a fiber-optic line to broadcast a football game, one fiber today could handle 700 such broadcasts. Experts say that these developments could drive the cost of a long-distance phone call to 1 cent a minute within a year, and should soon thereafter make possible full-fledged TV over the Internet. (USA Today 8 Oct 98)

GETTING THE WORD TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB - Motorola, SAP, Visa, Broadvision, and the Nuance Communications unit of SRI International have formed an alliance to extend the Voice Markup Language (VoxML) speech recognition standard to various commercial applications. Called V-Commerce, the new standard will allow people to use voice commands to interact with the World Wide Web or corporate Intranets via phone, pager or personal computer. Nuance chief executive Ron Croen says, "So far, electronic commerce has been constrained by the PC. We're intent on making the audience larger by an order of magnitude." Visa has created some prototype applications for financial services, including credit card activation, lost and stolen card replacement, travel planning, voice banking and bill payment. (New York Times 6 Oct 98)

 

NEW ON THE LIST -

NEW ON THE LIST - WELCOME to: Fred Vornbrock, Sb Rock, Bill Weinhoff, Lew Napolitano, Peg Evans-Brown, Melaine Kenyon, Robert Cooper, Elizabeth Rosemond, Thomas Jones, Barry Beckett, Hans Rupp, Linda McCubbins, Garrett Glodek, Bret Vincint, M. Helms, Gregory Posey, Geert van der Smon, Christy Czajka, Arjun Gupta, P. A. Gantt, Elizabeth Vahlsing, I. Murphy, Irene Kilcoyne, Wesley Poynor, Courtney Campbell, Lewis Thornton, Jerry Kearns and Michelle Simms.

 

FYI
News, Conferences, Institutes

CAUSE98, "The Networked Academy," December 8-11, 1998, Seattle, Washington, http://www.educause.edu/conference/c98/c98.html Steve Jobs, Charles Garfield, and Molly Broad will be the featured speakers. See http://www.educause.edu/conference/c98/c98.html

EASI at http://www.rit.edu/~easi/ schedules weekly interviews. Last night EASI's weekly roundtable webcast interviewed Dr. Larry Scadden from the National Science Foundation's Program for Persons with disabilities. This program included more than 2 dozen grants involving some exciting and innovative projects to make the fields of science and math more accessible to students and professionals with disabilities.

In the coming weeks and months, the roundtable will host people from these NSF grant projects so that listeners can get an inside view of what is happening. Next week, November 5, our guests will be from the University of Southern Maine's biotechnology Works Project. Tune in on Thursdays posted at 9 Eastern, 8 Central, 7 Mountain and 6 Pacific Times. All webcasts will become part of our archive for you to listen to later.

On March 14-16,1999 St. Philip's College will be hosting the 22nd Annual Society of Educators and Scholars Conference. The Society was commissioned by the US government as a part of the bicentennial celebration. Over the years, the organization has grown to international status with members representing premier colleges and universities throughout the U.S. as well as educational institutions in Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa.

The conference theme is "Bridging Differences in a Culturally Diverse World: The Role of Education." Conference tracks will include Teaching and Learning, Leadership and Administrative Initiatives, Preparing for Diversity in the Workplace and Technology in a Diverse World. Deadline for proposals is October 31,1998. For more information see: http://www.accd.edu/spc/it/ses

 

ENDNOTE

In a speech to Indiana University students, Bill Gates painted a glowing future for computing and predicted more change in the next 10 years than we've seen in the last 25. He sees as common- place: car computers that will give directions to drivers and respond to spoken commands, electronic books that will approximate the look of the printed page and an expanded internet that will be used for an incredibly wide variety of things. (The Chronicle of Higher Education 23 Oct 98, A25)

 

NOVEMBER ISSUE FOCUS - Multipart Series: Taking a Look at Authorware

DESIEN ARCHIVE: An Archive has been created for past issues and interaction comments. Locate at: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/desien/

DESIEN has been created to encourage information exchange and discussion of distance education issues concerned with: 1) UW Systemwide distance education progress and institution course/program development, 2) faculty/team development, 3) technology, 4) policy, 5) funding and 6) research. List recipients outside of the UW System are also welcome to join in with information contributions and discussion.