Terence Armentano - eResume & ePortfolio

As any reader of my blog knows, I have written about the important role I believe web 2.0 will play in academia. (See Web 2.0 and Higher Ed, Blogging in academia, Blogging Academia, and the Stanford Blog Directory,and University 2.0)

Not being one to just sit idly by and talk about the important role web 2.0 will play in academia, I decided to put words into actions and design a weblog and podcast system for Bowling Green State University. I built the system on the technological framework of WordressMU with many personal customizations. The system is in perpetual Beta so we can test new features, collect feedback, and continue to refine it. There are so many creative ways to use this system (See our About page for some examples). Below are several real life examples of ways the BGSU community is already stretching the creative boundaries of the system:

One English instructor at BGSU, Amanda McGuire Rzicznek, is using the system to podcast her lectures and blog her writing tips, news, and announcements (see her English 111 blog & English 112 blog). She is also having each of her students create their own weblogs on the system, which they use for reflective writing, collaboration, and feedback (see one of her students blogs here).

My office, IDEAL, is using our IDEAL @BGSU weblog as a web 2.0 portal to communicate our services to the university and to display our distance learning Resources, Announcements, Newsletters, Podcast, and Photo Gallery. The nice thing about our weblog page is that it is very dynamic and enables email subscription, RSS feeds, Podcast Feeds, and lots of other things the tech junkies of the world love). Plus anyone with admin rights can update the site without having to know any HTML. One of our instructional designers, Michael Kudela, is a huge flickr fan so we can even manage our photo gallery from his personal Flickr account. Now that is cool!

Did I mention that I built this system using all open source tools? Yeah. That’s pretty cool too.

Sports and Recreation is a huge part of the BGSU culture. If you ever go to an intramural flag football game at BGSU, you would think you were at the superbowl. Well, the sports and rec people at the university saw the potential of a community blog for their users and contacted me to help them get it set up. It required a little more programming and customizing, but in the end they will have a community of sports rec bloggers. I can see the bragging rights go up even more with this outlet. Their community weblog will be launching soon so I look forward to seeing how that community uses the web 2.0 environment. Check out the Rec Sports Wire to see what they are doing.

The MBA department is using their weblog to give current students the opportunity to share the ins and outs of their daily life so if you’ve ever wanted to know what’s it like to be a graduate student, you’ll want to check it out at - BGSU MBA

The benefits of blogs and podcasts are far reaching and are transforming the way people interact and learn from each other. BGSU faculty, staff, and students can all reap benefits from blogging and podcasting.

Thanks to Connie Molnar and Dr. Bruce Edwards, my bosses at IDEAL, for allowing me to dream, innovate, and design this system for BGSU. They are both great leaders and visionaries at BGSU.

Well, I got an announcement in my inbox today from Google informing me that they have finally incorporated JotSpot (a wiki application) within the Google framework. They call it Google Sites. It can essentially function as an intranet and workspace for a school, team, organization, etc. The unique thing about it is that it functions like a wiki though they are not using the term wiki. Instead they are just calling it a Site. What is different about this wiki platform is that it is designed to seamlessly integrate many of the google apps right into the Site using an Insert button. So if I am working with a team we can all edit the site easily and add documents, spreadsheets, videos, calendars, blogs, etc right into the Intranet. They are close to making the web an easier place for all people to create content and work together, however, the design of it all is still a bit lacking. Here is a video that explains Google Sites a bit more. If you have used it before, let us know what you think of it and how your team is using it.

Ok. This is a little freaky, but also interesting. I’m thinking The Matrix/Minority Report. What kind of impact might this have on virtual learning environments? Any thoughts? How long before blackboard integrates this technology as a building block. haha.

Gamers will soon be able to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone.

A neuro-headset which interprets the interaction of neurons in the brain will go on sale later this year. “It picks up electrical activity from the brain and sends wireless signals to a computer,” said Tan Le, president of US/Australian firm Emotiv. “It allows the user to manipulate a game or virtual environment naturally and intuitively,” she added. Read More…

I posed the following question in my online teacher training course, and thought the answer given by Dr. James McKean from Ohio University, would be beneficial to share, with his permission, on the blog. How would you respond to this question?

After participating in this course, how would you describe online teaching and learning to faculty that are curious but skeptical about quality. What advice would you give the faculty about how to best prepare to teach online? What advice would you give students to help them become successful online learners.

I will describe online teaching to other faculty who are skeptical about quality in the same manner that a qualitative researcher explains the underlying theoretical construct of naturalistic inquiry in a qualitative research project–there is more than one path in our quest for knowledge. Quality in online classes like quality in traditional classes is dependent upon sound pedagogical practices, development of learning outcomes and appropriate learning assessments. Students learn when they are actively engaged and online teaching offers a variety of pedagogical aids to facilitate learning. For those faculty who as Parker Palmer stated possess the “courage to teach,” I would encourage them to embrace online teaching as another means to the same end–learning.

The best advice I would give faculty is to broaden their knowledge of course design and online teaching by completing an online teaching and learning course. Experiential learning is powerful as I have discovered over the past two weeks. I would advise students to shift their learning paradigm and understand that online learning requires them to devote the same or an even higher commitment to the learning process as a traditional class–or as my statistics professor used to say, “junk in, junk out.” In the final analysis, online teaching can be a rewarding and satisfying experience for both students and faculty.

I wanted to share this video testimonial about Becky Tirabassi’s experience as a distance learning student at Bowling Green State University. I am the Assistant Director of Distance Education at the university so if anyone has questions about our program, feel free to contact me or visit our site:

Happy 2008! I’m back from break and ready to begin a new year of exploring the horizons of technologically enhanced education, critical thinking, global impact, resource gathering, and blogging to share it all with you. To get started, here is a great list of Learning Resources you can sift through to add to your collection. Yes, the information is abundant, and seemingly endless, but those that do something with it, apply it to life, and make things better is what really counts. Plus, it is a wiki so you can add to it if you are so inclined. Institutions of higher education should be excited about an information based economy and the revolution of knowledge that is going on in the world. However, they should also be concerned if core faculty are not readily embracing it and in fact fighting the rapid exchange of information.

When designing online courses for the education environment, we are always asking ourselves how we can best communicate a message online and capture the emotion and humanness within the digital medium. The human element is crucial to a good learning environment. I found this example from the NY Times Online to be an excellent model for conveying a message using multiple forms of media to enrich our understanding. In this example, they use text, audio, video, and images within the digital medium to convey a human element through stories that impact our understanding of the situation in Iraq. As someone who reads the NY Times daily I find that more stories than not, focus on the negative aspects of the war and how much has gone wrong, so it is encouraging to see the other side presented in such a rich way and that progress is being made. If this example were incorporated into an online course, it might be followed up with discussion in the forums or an individual or class blog contribution. Those that are interested in designing online courses at universities should consider these examples and share them with your multimedia and instructional design team on your campus. View example

Predicting the future is tough business because often times unpredictable things happen, which change the course of life. [i.e. Movable Type, The Internet, Google (the search), etc.].

So the question is: What is the future of online learning?

The following are ideas that surfaced at the Sloan-C Conference from a presentation on this topic. I don’t endorse all these ideas, however many of them make sense and are worthy of discussion. What are your thoughts?

• More mobile
• More modular
• Student expectations will rise
• More inter-insitutional collaboration
• Expansion of informal learning context
• Faculty development will be on demand
• People will aggregate there own learning spaces
• People will learn through YouTube (and other video web-sites)
• Re-evaluation about what it means to be an expert
• The rise of open source learning
• More visualization
• Everyone will be teaching with tech
• Learning will be more ad-hoc
• More fantasy-based learning
• Things will be more un-bundled just like in banking, publishing, music, dvd’s.

More terms associated with the future of online learning (some were repeated)

• modular
• synchronous
• asynchronous
• collaborative
• consumer driven
• media rich
• competency based
• visual
• networked
• accountable
• flexible
• audio enabled
• learning on the go
• gaming
• social networking
• student-created content
• blogs
• podcasting
• cross platform learning
• bricolage
• diverse organization and delivery
• just in time learning
• external certification
• more faculty issues
• second life