looking both ways

School is back in session for many of our customers, so the support and development teams have been all hands on deck taking phone calls and answering emails about setting up the server, importing classes, and all the other tasks necessary for starting the year.  Early on I was dealing with a customer who was needing quite a bit of help importing users through our Data Integration Tool (DITO).  After we'd worked our way through the setup over the phone, one of my teammates pulled me aside and said "Hey Joel, you did a fine job on that call, but you really should have taken them to the implementation setup page."  

I hesitated, thinking to myself, "Implementation setup page?  We have one of those?"  I normally pride myself on staying apprised of what the other departments are doing, but this one had really slipped past me.  So I checked out the page at http://www.dyknow.com/implementation/ and the specific setup page and was completely floored.  These are great resources, and if you haven't checked them out, I strongly suggest you do.  Firstly, the setup docs have all the links to the DITO specification, knowledgebase articles for the alternative Bulk Import Tool, and explanations for manual setups.  Secondly, it's got links to all the important links such as request an MSI, ask a trainer, and the DyKnow Community Site.  Finally, and this is perhaps the best part, the implementation page has links to all the self-paced training guides for Vision, Monitor, PowerPoint, and the Administration Console.

Wow, there are a lot of really great resources available that I have been lax on promoting, so check these out if you're wanting to dig deeper.  And a huge congratulations and thank you to our customer services team for an amazing job well done.

Finally, good luck to everyone in the new year! 

A DyKnow panel takes on many roles depending on the specific needs of a class.  The panel has always been a writing surface/whiteboard.  This role is the most obvious as, by default, creating a new notebook gives you a blank panel and selects the pen tool.  Additionally, our files are called notebooks, an obvious allusion reinforcing this metaphor.  When I think of a DyKnow panel, I typically think of this role, but there is another fundamental role the panel plays: a content portal. 

The shared whiteboard metaphor maps easily to the moderator writing notes and those notes being sent to all the students, but sharing now includes prepared content, PowerPoint slides, polls, and web pages.  The panel in many cases is very different from a writing surface, and it's in this vein that embedded content was added to 5.3.

Lets say you find a website with a really interesting piece of content.  The most obvious example of this is YouTube where you have a video you'd like to share with your students.  Previously, you could embed webpage for the video, but now you can right click the video select "Copy embed html" and in DyKnow's insert Web Page dialog paste in that code to share only the video.  No ads or comments, just the content you wanted to discuss.  YouTube has streamlined this process with the context menu option, but Scribd, VoiceThread, Google Fusion Tables, and many other online tools only require you to find the Embed or Share buttons and copy/paste.  

Features are nice, but what's the point?  To me the point is that we can do better than text and images.  If you're moving your materials to a digital form, that form should act like one.  Digital media link, animate, and interact with you, and increasingly these media are more important in the classroom.  So whether you're wanting to embed a social media tool to spark discussion or you're wanting to use a specific tool for a class activity without giving full access to the browser, 5.3 has what you need.  Check it out and let us know what you think.

If you keep careful watch on the product's version history page, you may have seen 5.3.32.0 had an enhancement to the save to csv functionality we have in polling.  The functionality since DyKnow 5.1 has been that you give a poll, wait for the results, and then click the save button to save the results of the poll as a csv.  The file you save would have your questions, answers, and the individual responses from your students.  At the time, polls were created exclusively on the fly during class, meaning storing the custom question/answers was largely critical to making sense of the results that were stored.  When we added the ability to create polls when preparing for class, the role and capabilities of polls changed.  Suddenly, it wasn't quite so cumbersome to have several quick quiz questions (what a mouthful) in the same class as sending the poll was an easy click away.  Additionally, the answers were clearly defined before class and saved with the notebook making the perfectly preserved question/answer in the saved file unnecessary.

And thus we arrive at the enhancement.  Now polls in the same Session are added to the same csv file.  The results still have the individual responses, but the formatting has been tweaked to more easily import into excel or whatever program you use to view csv files.  Additionally, we've removed a bit of the ceremony involved in saving the poll.  Per convention, clicking save would open a file dialog box that asked you for a name and a location to save.  This type of bookkeeping is disruptive to what matters most to you: teaching your students.  Therefore, we now automatically save the poll results into a special folder in your Documents folder using a standard default name for the csv file (click the link after you save the poll or just go to Documents/DyKnow Documents/Saved Polls).

So go check out the new polls and let us know what you think.

One of the benefits of tablet pcs is the potential (and in many cases realization) of more natural user input.  This has led to many many handwriting recognition projects and solutions over the years including the Tablet Input Panel available from Microsoft.  With Windows 7, Microsoft has added a new "input panel" that is specifically trained to read math: the Math Input Panel.  



You can find the Math Input Panel (MIP) in the Accessories menu or just type "math input" after clicking the start menu on Windows 7.  From here you can simply write the equation you want and the panel will turn it into text.  As you can see from the screen shots, this is a major win for legibility in my case.  

When you want to insert the equations, there's an insert button you can press that will paste it into the active application.  The MIP uses a format called MathML which DyKnow doesn't currently understand.  However, you can easily use our screen shot tool to capture the equation or, if you need the equation to coexist with text in a textbox, paste from the MIP to Word and then once you've got your text and equation formatted in Word, paste it into DyKnow.  

Now, if you're used to inputting equations using LaTeX or a sophisticated equation input system, you will probably be unimpressed (thus far that has been my experience when introducing the MIP to this class of people).  Writing out these equations by hand will surely take much longer now that you've mastered the art of keyboard input, however, I personally have had insufficient practice at these systems so for me this is great.  

I was curious to see what it could handle, so I went over a few complex equations from the MathML specification.  

MIP initial read of Einstein Field Equations:


After spending about 45 seconds with the select and fix tools:


And check out this complex example:

To be sure this one took me about 15 minutes to fix the initial chaos, but this also was my first time trying to input a complex equation into the MIP.  The second time I tried saw significant gains as I started to learn some of the tricks to help out the system.  For instance, you can see I left justified the numerator in my fractions and this greatly increased the system's ability to recognize my chicken scratches.

So whether you use this tip in DyKnow or not, I hope you find it useful.  I know it will make my equation input much simpler.

Earth Day is April 22, next Thursday at the time I'm writing this.  One really cool celebration I've been reading about is over at the TeachPaperless blog.  Shelly has no affiliation with DyKnow, but I'm personally a fan of the blog and am really a fan of this idea.  At this point, over 1100 teachers have promised to use and accept no paper for Earth Day.  To be sure, though, going paperless is really about using technology to better engage your students.  Leaving behind the paper is a bit of a metaphor, after all.  So if you haven't already, go sign the pledge and if you were already planning on teaching paperless, good for you!  Now, you can take this day as an opportunity to get your colleagues excited about the possibilities for their classes.  See why I'm a fan?

Earlier this week, we released DyKnow 5.3 (in case you've missed it, I've collected the posts about 5.3 here), and the past two weeks I have spent way more of my time in the lab testing the product than I have making coding changes at my desk.  This is a good thing as it means we've finished up development on features and known issues for the release.  It's also been good, though, to get reacquainted with some older features that I don't commonly see or hear about.

An interesting theme I see in DyKnow Vision has been one of providing students a way to participate anonymously.  In many ways, this feels like a terrible idea.  We've all seen what anonymity on the Internet has done to people, and introducing a veil in between you and between your students feel counterproductive to engaging.  However, someone must have realized and communicated to us that sometimes embarrassment can stifle engagement even more.  And I'll admit maybe I'm reading too much of this narrative into some of these features, but once I started seeing it, I saw it everywhere.

When testing you tend to identify a particular feature and spend a lot of time ensuring that all aspects of that feature are working, and the place I started this past week was in the Options dialog.  Perhaps the most obvious and most discussed of the "anonymous" features I recognized is the "Allow Anonymous Panel Submission" feature in the "Session" section of the Options dialog.  I mentioned this last week, but by checking this checkbox, students will be able to submit panels anonymously.  I recall back in 5.1 when discussing feature usage and importance (when trying to determine how to group and position features), several users called the feature indispensable when discussing sensitive topics.

Continuing my testing of the Options, I noticed on the "Popular" section options for the Session List.  

For those that don't know, the Session List is a list of all the students in your Vision Session.  The list displays their name as well as other additional information such as their status (how well they understand the topic), their submitted panels, their current work group number, and whether you have shared control (letting students demonstrate how to work out problems for the rest of the class).  When students have submitted panels, you can just click on the panel beside the student and it will open up the panel for you to see.  If you want to virtually bring a student up to the board, you click the students name in the Session List and click the Share Control button and they're in control.  

Back to the options, I noticed that there were all these checked options that said "Show Name/UserID on Session List," "Show Participant status on Session List," "Show submitted panels on Session List," etc.  Of course by default these were checked because it doesn't seem like it'd be much of a list if it didn't show anything.  But when I thought about it, if you're running DyKnow on a projector in front of the class (and not using projector mode), all your students would be able to see that Johnny's just not getting it.  Sometimes, this is what you want as it may encourage your students to help Johnny.  Other times, this will embarrass Johnny to where he shuts off or just stops updating his status.  So then there's an option to hide the different fields.  You can hide the user's name so you'll see that the students who haven't submitted panels don't get it.  If students are in work groups you can see Group 4 is having trouble.  If you want the names, you can hide the status (you still have the pie chart at the bottom to let you know if students are having problems.  

Continuing on, right above Session List options, you've got an option to Identify Users on Panels.  This is useful when students have submitted panels, but if you don't want it to show, there you go.  Later on in the day, I was running a session and sent a quick poll.  In 5.1 you were suddenly able to know how each individual student responded to the poll, but if you felt that would censor the responses, you can make the answers "anonymous."

So there's been this big theme throughout the product that I never noticed till now.  Only took me 7 years to see it.  So given my track record, is there something I missed for promoting anonymous conversation?

In case you missed it, a class at Denver University created a great parody of the Office.  In the video, Michael (the teacher) struggles to teach students about technology in the classroom.  


Students complain they're not using the expensive technology they were required to buy.  They complain that other students are distracting them by looking at Facebook the whole time.  They call Michael out as he uses technology for technology's sake (the Skype scene is hilarious).  Simply put, this class nailed it.

It's an often overlooked reality that technology in the classroom doesn't make teaching better.  Recently I saw in the DyKnow twitter stream this article about one-to-one laptop initiatives being only as effective as their teachers.  This is a pretty common-sense point but an important one nonetheless.  Teachers effectively using technology in the classroom is what makes teaching better.  In the end of "The Class", the students lay it out simply for Michael asking for collaboration, better use of Blackboard, less reading from PowerPoint slides, and more active roles in the class.  In some ways (such as "don't read directly from the PowerPoint slides"), students are merely asking that you don't let technology get in the way.

So to beat a dead horse, technology is a tool and you should always choose your tools to fit the job to be done.  I work at DyKnow because I know firsthand of the benefits that can come from effective use of DyKnow in the classroom, but that doesn't mean there aren't many ineffective uses.  So how do you get from "The Class" to "the class of your dreams?"  I think Michael actually gets it right when talking to his students.  January's Educator of the Month Mandie Mathany from Auburn Jr. High School stressed that each class is different.  This takes a lot of tenacity and a lot of getting to know your class.  If students are initially intimidated by this conversation, you can have students submit their concerns anonymously (go to the Options dialog and check Allow Anonymous Panel Submission in the Session section).  Once you and your students are on the same page, you can work together to create the active classroom environment that best suits their needs using the tools to that end.

I realize that many of my posts about the coming DyKnow 5.3 release have been spread out over time.  I decided to collect all the posts written thus far (and will try to update this list as we write more).

5.3 hits Pre-Alpha (Screen broadcaster)
Breaking the fourth wall (Monitor chat)
Sending it back (File request)
Taking notes on your homework (Replay annotation)
Embedding Google Fusion Tables (Embed Videos)
The new feature I hope you never use (Auto-Recover)
The continual push  (Performance)

Let me know if there's something you're interested in a specific feature or if you'd like to hear more about something already covered.

So have you heard about the iPad?  It's the Apple tablet that has been discussed for years and many thought was fully realized by the iPhone and iPod Touch.  The iPad is an additional device to accompany your phone and laptop computers (in the future, everyone owns a messenger bag).  It is supposed to define reading on the web, and by making multi-touch the primary input, it will push application development towards more natural interfaces.  But does it have a place in education?  There have been two very interesting arguments that I hear about the iPad.  

The first argument adamantly warns that the iPad is designed as a consumer device unfit for active-learning classrooms.  There's no camera, keyboard, or Flash support (things current netbooks and tablets do have).  You can have an amazing classroom without these things, yes, but you should choose your technology to support your pedagogy not the other way around.  This is an interesting argument, and one that I didn't anticipate being so frequently posted on Twitter and in the blogs I read.  It's hard to type on an on-screen keyboard.  Even when the keyboard is full screen, creating papers, blogs, and wikis (and all the other text-based projects) will be difficult.  Additionally, selecting text (a staple of formatting and editing) on the iPhone/iPod Touch is a slow error-prone process.  It is presumed that this will additionally be the case for the iPad.  So with all the beautiful video and great online reading experience, from a pure learning standpoint, aren't you back to some form of sage on a stage?  

The other interesting argument I hear about the iPad is somewhat of an answer to the first argument yet simultaneously the same answer.  The other argument is that the iPad will have a place in education but probably not in the first wave.  While the former crowd focuses on the now, this crowd hopes for a better tomorrow.  Many assume that the features we're wanting now will be in later versions, and that this initial iPad release is the tip of the iceberg for future innovation.  The iPad will force all computer manufacturers to produce beautiful, well-designed products, and the magic of multi-touch will create a new breed of easy to use applications by necessity.  For instance, check out Apple's demo of iWork during the presentation:  
(or here for the full Keynote)

What's interesting to me is the emphasis in the additional gestures and ease of use features highlighted in the keynote.  For example when discussing Numbers, Apple's spreadsheet program in iWork, there was a point where they emphasized how easy it is now to highlight a section of a pie chart by moving it out with your finger.  This action, in the past, has been an incredibly complicated series of actions that would have proven to be so unnatural and indiscoverable on a touch device that they would have essentially not existed.  My guess is that the same code that lets you move out the section with your finger could also let you move out the section with your mouse.  But the point is that the much simpler user experience was added because of the necessity to do it on the form factor.  The point is that yes maybe with current project editing paradigms, the iPad will not be a capable production machine.  On the other hand, it could mean that for that very reason new gesture-based editing paradigms will be created that are far easier and will make us more productive.  

I think both sides agree that we don't necessarily have that right now from the device and applications available.  In many ways, I assume the reason why the apps have not been written is because it seemed impractical to create them for the iPhone, given its small size.   It will be interesting to see what developers do with the new form factor.  Nonetheless, classroom change does not come from what developers do but instead what teachers and students do.  Time will indeed tell if the iPad will find its own place in education, if it will inspire other devices such as the One Laptop Per Child's XO3 (which they hope to price at $75) that will find a place in education, or if the device will not be the tool the classroom needs.

For DyKnow 5.2, as I often mention, we totally rewrote the DyKnow panel to be more stable and more WYSIWYG (specifically the rendering of text).  Because of a few of the technology choices we made along the way, we also saw an increase in performance.  In fact we saw a major increase in performance.  As promised (last year) I ran through some benchmark tests for drawing notebooks to share just how much performance we've gained in 5.2.  In my benchmark ink test, DyKnow 5.1 drew the panel in an average of 4.3 seconds.  DyKnow 5.2 however, drew the panel in an average of 1.7 seconds.  In my benchmark text and images test, DyKnow 5.1 drew the panel in an average of 4.6 seconds with a standard deviation of 3.1 (the range was 2.8 to 11.8 seconds).  DyKnow 5.2, however, averaged 0.3 seconds with a standard deviation of 0.1 seconds (the range was 0.2 to 0.6).



Additionally, 5.1 was much less responsive when performing actions such as zooming and scrolling around panels.  So 5.2 came out and we developers felt very good about the increased performance.  And then something very interesting happened.  Now that the client was running so much faster when dealing with lots of ink, we noticed notebooks that contained lots of ink.  Significantly more ink than what we'd seen in the past.  We're talking zooming the client to 250% zoom and writing as small as you can to cram in as much as possible.  These were not the usage patterns we'd seen before.  

Now we started looking at the time it took to save all this ink when saving your notebooks.  Based on some of your feedback and this new usage data, we found a few ways that really sped up save times and put out a server patch with these improvements.  But we haven't stopped there.  Following our initial stress test for DyKnow 5.3, we implemented changes to improve performance when submitting or retrieving very large panels in a Session.  We're also working on ensuring institution-wide scalability for our new file request feature (speaking of pushing lots of data).  For the past few weeks, it has been all about squeezing out as much performance as possible, especially under these high load situations.  And this is how DyKnow can be used to engage an entire lecture hall with hundreds of students.  It's a continual push but so worth it.

To be clear, this is my blog and I am responsible for my own content.  There are no inherent promises made by anything I say or talk about.  I am careful to talk about a feature I'm working on only after I know it's making it into the product, but this blog isn't a press release.  The point is, I'm going to talk about technology but it doesn't mean that DyKnow will be using that technology.  With that disclaimer in place, away we go.

When I started this blog, I chose the name "looking both ways" because I felt that was my primary role at DyKnow.  As a developer I spend a lot of professional development time keeping up with the latest technology, and as an edtech developer, I spend a lot of time keeping up with and understanding educational technology, classroom pedagogies, and learning.  Along with tutorials and DyKnow features, I have mostly blogged about the latter, so I thought I might share things of interest in the former for a change.

Firstly, there's been the eReader craze this past Christmas season.  This wasn't the invention of the eReader or creating digital copies of books, but this did seem to be the year that everyone started talking about it.  The debate goes back and forth between praising the "stuff"-less future and mourning the passing of true ownership as you can't sell someone else your eBook (not to mention the 1984 scandal).  When we first heard of the idea, my friends and I decided eReaders would take off once they entered the textbook market and drove prices down.

Secondly, there's a push toward mobile phone technology.  Culturally, in the US at least, "there's an app for that" is instantly recognized (even with the DVR crowd who skip commercials).  Google's Android phone OS is taking off as well with its many different flavors.  And now one of the big industry pushes is towards 3 screens (tv, computer, mobile).  This means there's going to be even more "apps" for, well, everything.  To me this is one of the most interesting tech subjects as it relates to education.  At first as I watched blog after blog and tweet after tweet discussing the plan of action for implementing smart phones and/or iTouches in the classroom, I couldn't quite place the underlying assumption.  Many people asserted mobile phone integration with the same sense of inevitability as 1-1 computing often uses.  Some people, however, have wisely noticed that an iTouch starts at $200 while netbooks start around double that.

Thirdly, there's a big advancement that, in my book, could never get as much love as it deserves: HTML5.  This techology will give rise to web applications with drag and drop, audio/video, and even 3d animations... only with a browser.  And when I say only with a browser, I mean without Flash, Java, or Silverlight installed in that browser (which you can't install on the iPhone/iTouch).  The standard is still being created (and is officially a couple years out still), but you can already see the more advanced browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera implementing many of the features, and this has led to some cool proof of concepts and full on web applications including Google Wave.  If you're using IE, you'll be in luck when IE9 comes out as at the last Professional Developer's Conference they announced HTML5 support.  So why would you want web applications without plug-ins?  Why is this cool?  Fewer moving parts (browser + plug-ins vs browser) means fewer updates you have to worry about, potentially simpler debugging, fewer bugs.... that is if all the browsers implement it correctly.  *sigh*

Speaking of web applications, Google is working on an operating system of their own that will run entirely on web applications.  In fact Chromium OS is essentially going to be Google Chrome acting as an operating system.  This will be another device you're not allowed to install plug-ins on.  Additionally, there are questions of how useful it will be when not connected to the Internet, often considered a prerequisite to viewing web sites.  I don't know if this one will really go anywhere, but I do find it very interesting and will be an excellent showcase of the power afforded by HTML5.

Third-point-fively, speaking of web applications, Amazon and now Microsoft have offered up cloud services where they worry about the IT and hosting pieces while allowing you to scale up or down your web services needs.  In short, lets say you have seasonal demand *cough* school year *cough*.  You need responsive servers during the busy season, but not really much if anything during the slow season.  It'd be nice if the IT you pay for is the same as your demand, and that's essentially the idea behind cloud computing.  Scale up or down as you will and you just pay for your usage.  

Finally, there's the iSlate rumors.  Apple is a closed book on the subject, but the speculation is fierce about the possibility of an Apple tablet.  The general consensus on purely speculative rumors is that it will be a larger iPhone.  I'm sure that everyone is missing something here as Apple doesn't usually just put out a product without something to talk about (ignoring Snow Leopard that is).  So there's still a lot to hear about this one.  Should I be the most surprised individual, I'd think the iSlate would be less of a tablet and more of a super eReader.  They already have a Kindle iPhone app, and I can't imagine they're not after that market.  I'd imagine there additionally will be some interesting notetaking capabilities built in with the readers.

So there's my current brain dump...  and there's a lot of it because I've gotten really behind in talking about these things.  In the future, I hope to be more timely.  Sorry about that.  Anyway, if you're interested in talking about these things comment away or if you have a different take, I'd be interested in hearing it.  The future looks to be an interesting place indeed.

It's the beginning of January and that means everyone is talking about their goals for starting a new leaf which obviously means that you have to take a big step back and see where you're going wrong.  Me?  I'm a bad blogger.  To be sure, I feel that I write quality posts, and I do write at least once a week.  That's not the problem I'm talking about.  My problem is that I don't comment on other blogs.

So why does this matter and why should I (or you) be better at commenting?  It basically becomes a question of "what is a blog" and "when is it useful."  One interpretation of a blog as expressed on Wikipedia is that a blog is a website that contains regular entries of "commentary, description of events, or other material such as graphics or video."  This leads into the "when is it useful" question.  To answer this question, I'm going to employ a few analogies (stick with me as I promise this has some relevance).

A blog can be used like a diary.  You can write up your personal thoughts and lock it away where no one but you can use it.  A blog can also be like a newspaper.  You can broadcast your thoughts and make them available for anyone to read.  The more people who read it the more valuable it becomes.  In the former case, the utility of your blog is limited to how much you personally can get out of the blog.  

In the latter case, the utility of your blog is limited by the number of people reached by your posts.  This value of the network is described by Metcalfe's Law (if you're interested).  
It's also intuitively understood when you think about how useful your phone is if you had the only phone in the world vs if there were two in the world vs if there were ten in the world etc.  But I must correct myself.  Above I said your blog is limited by the number of people reached by your posts, but I should have said can be.  

Can be?  I say this because we're living in the Web 2.0 world (guh, forgive the cliche).  A blog can be a newspaper but it can also be a gathering place thanks to the ability to comment, rework, and discuss.  As part of a social network, the blog reaches not only individuals but also groups (described by Reed's Law if you're interested).  

Think of a group you're actively involved in and how each person brings a unique set of perspectives to that group.  This person in many ways is acting as a link to other groups.  But imagine how sad it would be if no one in your group ever talked.  Imagine if the group never engaged each other.  This is me.  This is why I'm a bad blogger.

I am a follower of many blogs, but I'm a commenter on almost none of them.  I do this because I feel a bit out of my league or that as a software developer and not a teacher/school administrator my experience and ideas are not welcome.  Sometimes it's to avoid sounding ignorant or amateurish.  All of these are bad reasons to withhold.  By not engaging, I'm not only hurting myself but I'm decreasing the value of the blogs I follow.  Plus, we're all learners regardless and chances are if they're freely sharing their blog posts with the world, they're there to help.  So this year, I want to do a better job engaging and challenge you to do the same.  There's a lot going on in technology, education, and in the DyKnow community and it's important we all do what we can to keep each other up to date and growing.  If you have a question, ask.  If you have a perspective, share.  After all, the least we can do for students is to model the engaged classroom with our own learning.

My old high school, where my dad still works, has jumped straight into Project Based Learning (PBL) by adopting the New Technology High School model. Each time I come home, I make sure to get the latest scoop on how they're adapting to this vastly different teaching model. In PBL content and standards are learned by students as they are necessary to accomplish the project at hand. Teachers must design projects that will challenge and engage students as well as cover the subject matter necessary, but after the planning stages they spend less time as instructors and more time as advisors for student projects.

My educational background has been filled with the traditional lecture and exercise models where classtime is centered around topics, content, and discussion. In this environment, I feel that DyKnow Vision absolutely thrives providing features for collaborative note taking, quick assessments, backchannel discussions, and lecture capture. Work Groups encourages group exercises and provides tools for students to collaboratively work together, but this is still centered around the DyKnow panel which may not be appropriate for every project. So from my silo (and I encourage anyone who knows better to prove me wrong), DyKnow Vision can be somewhat of a clunky fit for PBL. Yes, even in PBL the lecture is not dead, and there are going to be many times where a replayable example or class discussion would benefit the students' project objectives, but it is definitely not the everyday class tool that I used in college.

But I think Monitor is coming into a unique situation.  I've mentioned before that Monitor is not the favored son in my book, but many of the newer interactive features we have been and are currently adding to Monitor (including remote control, screen broadcast, and chat) are uniquely suited to providing this advisory role.  By switching the chat mode to be to moderator only, students can be working in their groups and can quickly chat you a question that only you see.  You can then send a quick reply back.  If there are technology questions, you can view the student's screen and even take control to show them what to do.  All of this can quickly and easily be done from your desk.  This means that the easy problems can be fixed easily, so you'll have more time to focus on more complicated matters (the kinds of problems where you really need to walk over and talk things through).  

I have a serious crush on visualizations.  I love the way they merge math, critical thinking, design, and whatever subject matter is being visualized.  Obviously, to do these well requires a lot of practice, skill, and the right tools.  Oh yeah, you also need the data.  

And here's where things get interesting.  Last year, I first read about mashups using Yahoo Pipes in a mindblowing post from OUseful.Info: Data Scraping Wikipedia with Google Spreadsheets.  The post describes how to pull table data from Wikipedia and then use that data to visualize the population data in Yahoo maps (I see that later Google Maps was added).  My next experience was with the late Popfly.  On Popfly, you were able to mashup data by linking together user created blocks.  Unfortunately, Popfly is no longer available (Pipes is still going strong though).  And now there is a (relatively) new kid on the block.  

Earlier this week, I read about Google's mashup tool: Fusion Tables.  Fusion Tables lets you share and import data in order to merge and visualize the data.  Additionally, you're able to collaboratively comment on data.  Finally, once you've created your visualization, you can get some code to directly embed that visualization into your class blog, website, or (new to DyKnow 5.3) your DyKnow notebook.  

You've always been able to embed webpages into DyKnow which really aids sharing of resources, but the web is increasingly becoming more than just a series of webpages.  If you have a YouTube video you're wanting to share with your class, you're probably wanting to send them just the video and not the video + comments + related videos + ads.  Now all you have to do is find the embed tag for the video and paste it in where you normally would paste in the webpage address.  With visualizations in Fusion Tables, it's the same thing.  Find the embed code, paste it in, and students will be able to explore the visualization well beyond the capabilities of a screenshot.  For example, intensity maps let you mouse over and see the actual statistics.  Embed it in only half the panel, and you can use the other half of the panel to discuss the visualization in small groups.  Start the discussion off with an embedded poll, and end with groups submitting their arguments to be shared with the rest of the class.  

As happens sometimes with bleeding edge Google Labs projects, when you first see the visualization, it will warn you there's a javascript error, but rest assured that you can click ignore and everything else works fine.  So happy embedding!

We live in the information age, and it takes a lot of work to keep up.  Do you go to several websites over and over to catch up with the news?  If no, hit J and skip this post.  If so then I have very good news: RSS.  After recently failing to explain this concept solely in words, I have decided to employ some stick figure art.

Once upon a time, we had to go to 30 websites every day to keep up with everyone in our learning network.  This took a lot of time and was a chore trying to remember what we've read and what we haven't.


But wait, I thought the Internet was supposed to make information more available?  I get my paper delivered to me every day, so shouldn't my online news be just as easy?

 
That's where RSS comes in.  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and describes how content creators can automatically syndicate content.   This means that if you have a site that you go to everyday, you can use RSS to have the site delivered to you (nice).  But how do you use RSS?  It's really simple (sorry).  You'll notice in the location bar of your browser (or somewhere on the page) there's an orange icon.  This is a link to a list of all the posts from this website.  You can see it at the top of DyKnow's blog too.


  
Once you've clicked the link you'll be taken to the new page.  This new page is the address of the feed and has all the information necessary to have the page delivered to you.  All you have to do is copy the text from the location bar and put it in a reader!



Yes, there's one other piece that's necessary: an RSS reader.  Having RSS without a reader is like having a paper boy without a post box, driveway, or house (technical alert: I'm being a bit misleading about the technical details for the sake of simplicity).  So anyway, where can you find an RSS reader?  If you have a Google account, you can use Google Reader.  Google Reader is one of the most popular and easiest to use feed readers available (it's the one I personally use).  If you don't mind doing a little extra work, and you already use it, you can also use Microsoft Outlook to bring in your blogs.  



As I said, Google Reader makes it super easy to add a new feed to your reader.  Remember that address you copied before?  In Google Reader, click the "Add a Subscription" button and paste the address into the box.  Click "Add" and you're done (I told you it was easy).  

Outlook is quite a bit more complicated but still pretty easy.  From Outlook's Help page, click on the Tools menu and select Account Settings.  On the "RSS Feeds" tab, click New and paste in the address from before.


After that, you will see new posts in Outlook's Mail Folders under the "RSS Feeds" folder.  You can move these posts around and apply rules just like email.

So go to it!  My suggestion is to start small because if you, like me, try and subscribe to everything, you'll quickly be staring down 500 unread items (which then makes you feel like quitting altogether).  But if you're smart about the way you subscribe (or you learn how to quickly filter which posts you want to read and which you don't), RSS will make your life easier.

(The answer is yes)

It's inevitable that things will go wrong.  As a starry-eyed idealist, it's hard for me to accept that, but the sting of life's hard lessons have beat a little pragmatism into me.  For example, I was all primed and excited to show someone Google Wave Tuesday afternoon and sure enough that's the time when Wave was down.  Wave's not even in Beta yet, and when it came back up they had done some pretty nice interface improvements so there's no hard feelings here.  

Last year I talked about some of our features we use to proactively resolve issues when we detect them in DyKnow.  I titled the post "the feature I hope you never use," but for those of you who have used it, it has really helped us cut down the amount of time between you experiencing the issue and resolution.  But giving us detailed error information won't solve everything.  Several times last year at our office in Indy, there would be a momentary power blip that shut out the lights and, for my coworkers who weren't using tablets, shut off computers.  Things like this happen from time to time, and no fancy error reporting mechanism can get back all the work that was lost.

That's why DyKnow 5.3 now has an auto recovery feature.  Now, should the power go out, not all is lost.  When you next open DyKnow, it will ask you if you want to recover your lost notebooks.  Victory!  Hopefully, this should offer you some piece of mind knowing that we've got your back.

I queued up a post to come out today as I assure you I am at home with my wonderful family, but I did want to take the time to mention how thankful I am for all those involved with DyKnow.  I'm thankful for the dedicated employees that I work with from the sales, marketing, support, dev, and CRM teams who are tirelessly working to make DyKnow as good as it possibly can be and to help as many educators as possible take full advantage of technology in their classrooms.

I'm thankful for all you educators out there who use our product and are always pushing yourselves to make your classrooms better.  I'm thankful for those that tweet, blog, or email encouraging words about the product and the ways you're using it.  I'm thankful for you who are kind and motivated enough to present at conferences, webinars, or share on the community site to help spread the knowledge and experiences you've gained as well as consistently shatter my expectations for the way you would use DyKnow.  

I'm thankful for all the IT staff that we work with when setting up the environment as well as when needing to troubleshoot technical issues.  I'm thankful for all the network admins who may not feel qualified to run projects but know that if they don't do it no one will.  I'm also thankful for the overworked staff (both IT and teachers) all fighting to make these classrooms successful.

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you to all of you.  You've made this a very good year, and I hope the coming ones are just as wonderful.

So one of the themes I've seen in my reader the past few months has been the mentioning of cognitive load theory.  It might be mentioned in someone's paper or passively mentioned en route to some other point, but it was enough for me to sit up and wonder "what's that?"

Cognitive load theory(CLT) is the branch of psychology that gave us the 7-digit phone number.  It explores the capacity of the mind to retain information, something that is quite important to educators as well.  The intro to the intro version of CLT states that the mind can only take so much load and there are three types of cognitive load: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane.  

Intrinsic cognitive load describes the inherent difficulty in the subject matter.  There is a greater load when reading Ulysses than there is reading Green Eggs and Ham.  Simple addition is easier than calculus.  It is noted that while there are strategies to manage this, intrinsic cognitive load is largely out of your control.  

Extraneous cognitive load describes the unnecessary cognitive load present during instruction.  An extreme example of this might be trying to learn a subject in foreign language.  While the translation exercise may be very good for practicing the foreign language, it stands as a barrier to learning the subject being taught.

The final type, germane, is described as the load present when constructing schema (the unit of learning in CLT).  These are (among many things) the connections and metaphors you might construct to explain and relate new information to past information.  The mind is working when learning which does increase load; it's only that this load is the kind we want to increase.

So in comes the Fire Story, Dave Berque's story about his earliest days of teaching and coming to the epiphany that technology could aid him in engaging his students.  As the story goes, Dr. Berque was forced to hit the ground running as an educator, teaching a theoretical computer science course.  He explained the material, copying his notes on the board, while students copied the board into their notes.  All the while, the class was disappointingly silent.  Then one day, Dr. Berque noticed seven hands raised in his class of 150 people and excitedly called on one of the students.  He was soon disappointed to learn that these seven students were only trying to inform him that the ceiling had caught fire after a light had exploded.

The extraneous cognitive load from furiously copying notes had become so overwhelming to the students that only 7/150 had noticed the ceiling was on fire.  It seems fair to say that if students' minds were too overloaded for their survival instincts to detect danger, there was likely little room for new schema acquisition.  

From this experience, Dr. Berque was inspired to create DEBBIE which later became DyKnow.  Now his notes on the board are automatically transfered to students and he is free to focus on active learning activities designed to increase germane load and creating a more engaged (and less overworked) classroom.  

It's important to note, in my opinion, that not everything Dr. Berque writes is automatically transferred to students.  I think one of the problems with many PowerPoint presentations is that they after oversimplifying concepts down to a few bullet points they spoon feed you those points one at a time, reducing your need to pay attention.  Additionally, I believe there is quite a bit of mnemonic potential in physically writing (in moderation).  Dr. Berque takes advantage of this potential by using what is called "private ink."  When he writes on the interactive whiteboard at the front of the class with private ink, students see what he's writing, but are forced to copy it into their notes.  This helps provide emphasis on key concepts, which in turn will hopefully lead to better schema construction.