Video Conferencing for Global Education

Posted on August 4, 2009 by MikeT

National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education

The next instance in NITLE’s professional development series, Teaching Tools for the Global Age is next Thursday. I am responsible for this series and I have really enjoyed it. The potential of technology to help our students better understand the wider world and their place in it is enormous and we, as educators, are just beginning to take of advantage of it.

Video Conferencing for Global Education: Tools for Teaching and Administration

Date: August 13, 2009, 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM. EDT.

Location: Delivered online in NITLE MIV Auditorium

For faculty and staff from participating institutions responsible for the teaching and supporting instruction in foreign languages, the social sciences, and/or cultural studies and those charged with the administration of study abroad, international studies, student exchange and visiting scholars programs.

This session considers the uses of real-time audio and video communication tools in higher education, for both pedagogical and administrative purposes, with a particular focus on the widely used, free internet videoconferencing application, Skype. Todd Bryant, language technology specialist at Dickinson College, will discuss uses of the tool for the instruction of language, and present the Mixxer, an online application he developed for finding conversation partners for language learning. David Clapp, director of the Office of International Students and Off-Campus Studies at Wabash College, will discuss the use of Skype by his office to connect with students in advance of, during, and after programs, and the impact its use has had on recruitment for programs, student satisfaction, administrative effectiveness, and the costs of running programs.

Participants will

explore the features of Skype
discuss its current and potential use in higher education
begin developing best practices for its use in programs and courses
investigate its features and limitations in comparison with other programs

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For more information and registration instructions see NITLE – Video Conferencing for Global Education.

University of Michigan’s Islamic Manuscripts collection going online – AnnArbor.com

Posted on August 2, 2009 by MikeT

This is an interesting project, an effort to turn the cataloging of a distinct and unusual set of texts to the scholarly community as a whole.

The University of Michigan Special Collections Library needs help cataloguing its vast Islamic Manuscripts Collection.

But the library doesn’t plan to hire an expert. Instead, almost all of its 1,250 pieces are being scanned in-house to put the work on the Internet.

And the library hopes interested scholars will get involved…
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“It will be presented to the public in Wiki or blog-type interface, so people can comment on what they see. In that way, we hope we can get help from scholars all over the world in identifying the manuscripts and cataloguing them properly,” said Peggy Daub, director of Special Collections.

Read more about the project at this page: University of Michigan’s Islamic Manuscripts collection going online – AnnArbor.com.

(Thanks to Nancy Millichap)

Maths and science to be taught in English – The National Newspaper

Posted on August 2, 2009 by MikeT

ABU DHABI–All pupils in state high schools will be taught maths and science in English by 2012, the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) said yesterday.

At the launch of its 10-year strategic plan, Adec said it aimed to see pupils graduating with equal proficiency in English and Arabic.

In a concerted effort to turn out better qualified school-leavers, from this August the school day will also be extended by 90 minutes in all state high schools in the emirate. Pupils in all Abu Dhabi’s state schools will study for 10 extra days a year.

It follows the publication of results showing that only 13 per cent of applicants to federal universities scored enough in their English exams to bypass remedial courses.

via Maths and science to be taught in English – The National Newspaper.

Language of instruction is always a sensitive issue in the Arab world for a number of reasons: practical, political and religious, among others. Arabic is regarding by Muslims as a sacred language, the language in God revealed the Holy Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, so for many it has a special status above all others.
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It also has a special status as an identity marker. To speak Arabic was to resist colonial rule or cultural imperialism from the West. And it is seen as a factor that unifies folks across the region beyond religious ties. There are Muslim Arabs, there are Christian Arabs and their are even Arabic-speaking Jews.

Arabizing curricula is often a way of asserting a unique, independent identity. That said, though, Arabization is quite controversial in places where there are minority populations that don’t speak Arabic as a native language.

English, on the other hand, is unquestionably the dominant world language at the moment and there is a certain practicality in acquiescing to that.

In terms of practicality, transforming the language of instruction is always difficult and some of the challenges are pointed out in this article. Are teachers trained in one language capable of teaching a subject in another? If you are changing a language of instruction, when do you do so? Will the College student who was taught a subject in one language follow when they are taught in another?

It’s all very interesting. I’ll be following how it goes.

NITLE Event: Video Conferencing for Global Education

Posted on July 30, 2009 by MikeT

Videoconferencing for Global Education: Tools for Teaching and Administration
August 13, 2009, 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM. EDT.

This session considers the uses of real-time audio and video communication tools in higher education, for both pedagogical and administrative purposes, with a particular focus on the widely used, free internet videoconferencing application, Skype. Todd Bryant, language technology specialist at Dickinson College, will discuss uses of the tool for the instruction of language, and present the Mixxer, an online application he developed for finding conversation partners for language learning. David Clapp, director of the Office of International Students and Off-Campus Studies at Wabash College, will discuss the use of Skype by his office to connect with students in advance of, during, and after programs, and the impact its use has had on recruitment for programs, student satisfaction, administrative effectiveness, and the costs of running programs.

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Registration Deadline, Friday, July 31st.

When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom

Posted on July 21, 2009 by MikeT

There is something of a backlash against the use of technology in the classroom, and this article, “When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom,” from The Chronicle of Higher Education is one example of it.

College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled “smart” classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to “teach naked” — by which he means, sans machines.

More than anything else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather than using it as a creative tool. Class time should be reserved for discussion, he contends, especially now that students can download lectures online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on their college years later in life, they’re going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors. Lively interactions are what teaching is all about, he says, but those give-and-takes are discouraged by preset collections of slides.

Bowen makes good points. It is an interesting article with a fair amount of food for thought. For example, it is interesting, though not surprising, that in a study published in the April Issue of British Educational Research, students gave low marks to computer-assisted classroom learning activities. Nor does it surprise me that,

“The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions,” said the report. In other words, tech-free classrooms were the most engaging.

I am an advocate of teaching with technology, one might even say an evangelist. But it is not used effectively and it is for this reason that students find it boring. A great deal of the technology that is developed for pedagogical purposes is developed for individual learning and is not meant to be brought into the classroom to begin with. That is not to say it is not appropriate for a course, but it should be integrated for the purposes for which it was intended.
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The second thing to remember is that technology for technology’s sake is never the end, so technology should never be used for its own sake. Unless technology is the subject of the course such as it might be in a course on new media or something of that nature, then it is a tool and should attract no more attention than the chalk board. It should serve an end.

The one thing to always keep in mind is to put pedagogy first. Before making use of any technology or tool from a DVD player to a complex video simulation, ask yourself what it will teach students and if the technology is the most effective way to do it.. You use a specific tool for a specific purpose, so that is the rule to love by. One should never teach with blogs just to be teaching with them or with any technology simply for purposes of teaching with that technology, but rather for purposes of teaching, full stop.

Anyway, the expderiment at SMU is an interesting one. Read the full article to check it out.

International Bac chooses Epals

Posted on July 16, 2009 by MikeT

International Baccalaureate has selected ePals, Inc., to implement and manage a customized hosted learning community for it’s students, teachers and other community members including administration and alumni. The International Baccalaureate is a nonprofit educational foundation with programs for students aged 3 to 19 that can be found in 2,704 schools in 138 countries. Programs aim to

help develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world.

Epals is a Virginia based company that focuses on educational software, particularly Learning management systems, for grades K-12. However, these days’ people are living longer, plastic surgery is getting better, divorce rates are soaring, and many men seem to be adding erectile dysfunction treatments to their daily buffet.More and more it seems that this rule does not apply. sildenafil overnight You might be working cheapest cialis pdxcommercial.com late nights. Easy to maintain- Sitting in buy generic viagra home you can maintain erection quality for long duration and satisfy her in bed. Additionally, with a bolus of Provestra, no-one can say that these medicines are cheap and levitra prices official drugshop so, the effect of the medicine and can show some side-effects. A glance at their website reveals that he company has been seeking an international presence, and that this move is in inline with that strategy.

Muslim Students at a Baptist College

Posted on July 15, 2009 by MikeT

I have a Google alert set up to bring me news with the keywords “Islam, education and technology.” It has, occasionally, brought me some interesting articles on the use of technology to teach American students about Islam and the Islamic world. Today the automatically generated message brought me a piece from Christianity Today: A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction bearing the title “Where Jerusalem and Mecca Meet.”

It is an article about Muslim students at Houston Baptist University, so Jerusalem in the title represents Christianity and Mecca, Islam. Never mind that Jerusalem is a deeply sacred city in the eyes of Muslims as well, not to mention Jews, or that Jerusalem has a Muslim population. In this kind of periodical, the titles are more often than not provided by editors, not the writers, so I won’t rush to blame the Gregg Chenoweth and Caleb Benoit.

It’s an odd article, though. And it is about an odd situation. But it makes an interesting read.

President Robert Sloan, the man whose ambitious plan to turn Baylor University into a premiere Christian research institution polarized the Waco campus in 2005, has brought a similar faith-and-learning vision to HBU—one that has room for Muslim students. “It keeps us from being too insular,” says Sloan, president since August 2006. “It also gives us an opportunity to learn how to witness right here, from experience.”
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Shepherding this spiritual nexus is Colette Cross, HBU’s chaplain and director of spiritual life, who oversees the Community Life and Worship program (CLW) program, an 80-credit graduation requirement that includes Bible study, weekly chapel, and community service, among other options. Cross works with director of campus recreation Saleim Kahleh, a Muslim-background Christian who prays with students before intramural sports events. He says that recently a freshman Muslim woman made connections through Bible studies and basketball games, and is now “walking with the Lord.”

Kahleh also runs an on-campus Alpha course, the popular co-curricular introduction to Christian basics. His last session featured three Muslims in a group of ten. Further, Cross hosts interfaith discussions with representatives from Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. While comparative religion studies are typical at evangelical schools, a multi-religious populace is not.

State of American Higher Education in a Global Context

Posted on June 14, 2009 by MikeT

I am reading a somewhat worrisome article in The Chronicle of Higher Education with the headline “U.S. Faculty Members Feel a Lack of Clout, International Survey Finds” (account required for access). It concerns a soon to be published study surveying faculty members in 20 different nations, as well as Hong Kong, that was conducted in 2007 and 2008. One of the study’s author’s from the Center for International Higher Education said

the study’s results…show that American faculty members remain relatively isolated from their peers elsewhere. In examining the latest data from the United States, he says, he was struck by “how behind the curve Americans are when it comes to their views of internationalization, their knowledge about what is going on academically around the rest of the world, their use of data from scholars from other countries.”

Anyone who knows me or my work is aware of my concern with the cultural isolationism of the United States and its consequences. The consequences are real and have real world implications, financial, political and social. But this article shows that there is far more to be concerned about. Good scholarship is built on that which comes before it, and without full awareness of it all, one ends up repeating that which has been done before, or simply missing out on helpful information that would advance ones own research.

The study also found that

the United States is seen as losing its advantage over many nations in terms of the perceived quality of its higher-education facilities, and that many faculty members in highly developed nations are less engaged in the affairs of their universities and see their institutions’ management as more heavy-handed than was the case in the early 1990s.

and that the number of publications refereed journals, appears to has declined slightly in the United States while rising quickly in countries like Brazil and some of the new “Asian tigers.” Moreover, American faculty are more likely to disproportionately likely to engage in research that is “socially oriented,” whereas in other places it is basic or applied research that is more common.

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The Pentagon fears a severe shortage of scientists and engineers at government laboratories could erode the military’s technological edge in developing weapons and other projects in coming years, spawning a hiring boom at military research laboratories and an expansion of scholarships, advertising campaigns, and other ways to recruit a new generation of researchers.

Quite simply there is a growing gap between the number of degrees awarded in fields like engineering, computer science, physical science, math, etc., and the number of positions available in these fields.

So now the question is whether or not the current economic crisis will exacerbate the crisis. There are two ways in which it might do so, either by making higher education even less affordable as larger numbers become unemployed or see their savings and investments devoured, or because budget cuts caused by the massive hit the endowments of far too many colleges have sustained in recent months begin to hurt the quality of education.

Technology-assisted collaboration can offer higher education a way to achieve greater efficiency and do things in a more cost-effective manner without compromising standards of education. But it takes creative thinking, planning and a serious investment of time and energy. Certainly resources must be allotted, as well, but sometimes it takes only a reallocation of existing resources. This, however, is the subject of a longer entry, perhaps at some point to come.

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Tag Archives: Higher Education

Video Conferencing for Global Education

Muslim Students at a Baptist College

State of American Higher Education in a Global Context