Adaptive Learning Envronments

We are fortunate to have some great contributors to the Best Practices blog so I am going to quote one, Steve Friedland, here:

“One area where the horse already has left the barn involves learning environments.  In the 20th Century, the environment was entirely linear:  teachers taught, students learned, students studied in the library and then returned to class to learn some more.  In the 21st Century, that linearity has disappeared and a multidimensional set of environments has taken its place.  Learning is not so much a function of place anymore.  Students learn on the go — have laptop or Ipod, will travel.  Law school should adapt to the portability of learning in the 21st Century, encouraging TWEN, CALI, laptops and Ipod learning — because while these adaptive environments may be uncomfortable for us 20th Century dinosaurs, 21st Century students learn in this fashion.”

I can’t wait to hear how his experiment with interactive outlining turned out.

Here are several examples of adaptive 21st learning environments used at Albany Law:

• In two of his courses, a professor is having students use their laptops during class to individually post responses relevant to what is being discussed.  He then projects on a large screen to the whole class selected student responses.
• In another class, a professor digitally recorded the class and posted it after class so that students did not have to take notes during class and could follow along with the textbook and listen to the professor explain a difficult concept.  On a TWEN poll when asked:  ”Does it help to have the class recorded?” 21 out of 40 responded: Yes – I don’t worry about taking notes & can listen to it later and only 4 responded: No – I won’t help me because I wouldn’t listen to it.

  
• In an externship course, a professor is using TWEN’s discussion forum to have student reflect on their experiences each week and comment on each other’s as well as having the student use the TWEN assignment drop box to submit weekly journal entries.
• The clinic faculty plans to record their students’ practice interviews and use MediaNotes software to annotate the videos with comments/critques and then post them to CALI for students to download to their own laptops.

A Vision of Students Today

This is a video that was created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University. It summarizes important characteristics of students today – “how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime.”

It was so inspiring that I decided to watch it again and post it here.

Annual Conference for Law School Computing

“This year’s conference is all about change – transformational change.  It is time to put the divisiveness of laptops in the classroom behind us. It is time to face our fears. Fear of USNews ranks, fear of the student debt implosion, fear of technology and change itself. It’s time to consider the ideas of Carnegie and decide how technology impacts professionalism and ethics in legal education. What does transformation mean to you and your institution and does technology have a central or supporting role in accomplishing our goals?” – John Mayer

The Keynote Speaker will be Paul Maharq

Some of topics at the conference will be:

• technology in the classroom
• distance learning
•  exams on computers/policy and technlogies
• video annotation of student performance
• custom course materials and ebooks
• content management, course management, community management systems
• software patents in education
•  webcams and videoconferencing
• main campus computing negotiations
• clickers in the classroom
• the zen of classroom presentations
• everything is digital
• open commons education
• iTunes U

More info on the conference is located here:  http://www2.cali.org/index.php?fuseaction=conference.home

Professor Moriarty and I decided to to a presentation on his CPS/Clicker experience.  University of Texas School of Law also submitted an RFP to do a clicker presention.  They use Turning Point Audience Response Systems.   We decided to share the limelight and share the time slot.  The attendees will learn about 2 clicker experiences and 2 different technology tools.

Exam Software Debate

With the increase of students coming to law school with MAC laptops, we are faced with the decision whether or not to switch from SoftTest to another company.

SoftTest only works on the Windows platform so if a student has a Mac, he/she can use it if BootCamp is installed on the laptop.  Many schools, including us, do not allow students with Macs to use SofTest  because of the security risk associated with rebooting during the exam.

Secure Exam has a Mac version but with all the problems on the NYS Bar Exam last July, we will not use this software.

Exam4 by Extegrity is used by 50 law schools.  It seems simple to use with no need to upload and download answer files.  Is there a security risk?  According to them – NO! According to SofTest, students can use copy paste macros.

Electronic Blue Book by CompuTest is another company with a Mac version. According to SofTest, the same security problems as Exam4 exist with this software.

Examsoft (SoftTest) is by far the most popular software used.  110 law schools use it and it is used on the NYS, FLA, PA, VT and many of the Bar Exams.

This blog has a good summary:  http://www.maclawstudents.com/blog/law-school-exam-software/

Microsoft OneNote is Cool!

Examples of what to put in a notebook section:

• Articles you find on the Web
• Photographs or images from the Web
• Related documents
• Microsoft PowerPoint presentations 

Tips:

• Create a page for each topic you research. If you are researching something that requires you to gather a lot of materials and information, create a Research notebook.
• To insert files onto a page, on the Insert menu, click Files.
• If you want to view and annotate the contents of a file directly on the page in Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, on the Insert menu, click Files as Printouts.
• Copy information from a Web site into OneNote 2007 as text. If you use Windows Internet Explorer, look for the OneNote button in the toolbar. Select the information you want to copy and click this button to send the information to OneNote 2007 in the Unfiled Notes section.
• When you copy information from a Web browser and paste onto a page, a reference link is inserted on the page so you can always return to your source.
• You can capture whatever you’re looking at and insert it into OneNote as a searchable image. To do this, on the Insert menu, click Screen Clipping or press Windows Logo Key + S.
• You can scan paper materials directly into OneNote 2007.
• Use the Send to Microsoft OneNote 2007 feature
  to print from any Microsoft Office program directly into OneNote 2007.

More Tips:

• To save e-mail messages in OneNote 2007, use the Send to OneNote feature in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.
• To e-mail your travel information from OneNote 2007, go to the page you want to send, and then, on the File menu, click E-mail.
• Need to print everything out? Press the CTRL key and click the page tabs of the pages that you want to include. On the File menu, click Print.
• You can record your meetings. To do this, on the Insert menu, click Audio Recording. Click the audio icon next to the line in your notes to play back what was said when a line was written.
• Put meeting notes on a shared notebook so everyone on the team can get access to them.
• To quickly find what you are looking for in OneNote 2007, use the Find feature (CTRL+F) . OneNote 2007 searches text, text within images, ink writing, and audio recordings.
• Want to start organizing some of these pages? Click the page tabs that you want to move, and then drag them to the notebook or section where you want to put them. If you change your mind, you can drag them back to this section.
• YOU CAN POST DIRECTLY TO YOUR BLOG!!

“Nobody is in the room. The professor is just another open browser window, 1 of 10.”- CNET News.com

Read the complete article here.   Reaction from EdVentures in Technology Blog- click here.

Many professors may hear the above statement and want to ban laptops.  This would be treating the symptoms not the cause.  Professors today need to engage students while they are in the classroom.  There are many tools and technology is only one of them.

 

Look at the photo above.  The students are ALL paying attention to the professor even with their laptops in front of them and Internet access.  Why?  They are engaged. – perhaps by using a student response system such as CPS, customized TWEN poll, Cali InstaPoll, or others means to make students feel that they must pay attention and their particpation in class is valued and enhances their learning. 

WiZiQ

This my blogging presentation. Click here to watch it.

WiZiQ is 100% web based with no download or installation requisites. It enables its members to Learn & Teach from home, and live through internet. As a member on WiZiQ you can:

1. Invite your contacts to build your network
2. Schedule online sessions/discussions with your contacts
3. Use Virtual Classroom to conduct sessions live