Use Online Collaboration Tools!

For a group focusing on online collaboration of student activities, we have a lot to learn! Lets begin by actually using these technologies ourselves. I created a mind map on www.mindmiester.com to help distribute our collective ideas into an easy to use tree diagram, if you didn't get an invite email, let me know. We also have a group wiki now! check it out (the password is what goes into the blank: COGS ____ )


During your interviews today try to come up with some general questions that everyone can ask so we can get better anwers for the interp/consolidation session. Try to do this for the meeting tuesday.

And dont forget to check out :

mindmiester.com

learningredesign.pbwiki.com

4/30/07

Hi guys! We are still meeting today..

I think some of us who are in 101 are going to go to the section at 3-4.. and then we will meet up for our review session for observations at 4-5. If you guys want to meet up before 4 that's okay and we'll just catch up with you at 4...
i guess we are still meeting in CSB 217 because I haven't heard otherwise. cya there!

Hey all,
Im just checking to make sure that were still meeting from 3-5pm for the 101c review session. Are we still meeting in CSB?

interview to-do list: 4/26

please try to do interviews before next meeting tuesday@11

***everyone please attend 101C Study Session: Monday 3-5
if you are in 101C you will be observed, if you are not then you will be observing
tentatively: CSB 217

Ben:
(1) 1 interview UP
101C Review Session?
observe Earth/MAE

Jill:
(2) interview (101C Study Session: Monday 3-5)
(3) 1 interview and possible study group
observe CSE30: email rord@ucsd.edu MWF 1-1:50 uses UP

Andy:
(4) interview (101C Study Session: Monday 3-5)
(5) 1 interview
observe Roshni’s discussion

Wyatt:
(6) person study group

Matt:
(7) interview (101C Study Session: Monday 3-5)

Natan:
(8) interview UP

any other interviews that I've forgotten?

I think we should focus on the UP/nb system wholistically, and how it should be improved. We are in a position really just to make recommendations to the people working on it. So lets just "apply contextual design" and then we figure everything out as we go. all we got to start doing is gathering data... wide. and we see what we get. then we consolidate it and analyze it. creating a vision of how students go about their business with a new work model we design... then we bring it back to reality, in scale and focus. thats when we figure out what kind of recommendations we should actually make, what is possible for the project.
I know i called for a really specific focus, but i think the readings of this last week have made me see that it might not be necessary. Also i think we should stay away from the interface,,, while focusing on the features...

also i think a good way to collect data would be to do some simplified solutions of thinsg that we want such as video recordings... i was thinking of videotaping one of my sections and posting them (perhaps just to youtube, and then after the midterm interviewing people abotu how they used it... (or during)... b;ab;a

Direction/ideas

1. The first thing I think we should do is a reverse UED since we can do it as a group , and we are, for the most part, designing the next version of a software bundle. A UED is also supposed to provide a good understanding of a system and an easy way to decide what roles or functions should be focused on in limited time.

2. Once we understand the current system as a group, we need a data goal, all the possible ways to reach that goal, and then a discussion of the values of each approach. Once we have the right amount and kind of data, the rest of the project should start falling into place.

-------

3. Recoding ourselves or others studying without UPnb (alone or in a group) could be a useful and accessible way to understand the work we are trying to support with UPnb. Maybe we can get some cheap webcams to use with our laptops via craigslist?

4. UPnb would be most useful in any sort of presentation that is not only English text. If we can get a tablet (or two?) with enough battery life, those of us in the other core classes can start blogging in class, and we can study for midterms as a group, gathering data as we go.

5. Could we get people with webcams to record themselves at home?

6. Is there any literature that would be useful to use now?

Focus

There are several things that I am interested in pursuing for this project. Here are a few of the primary ones:
-interface design (how we can optimize the space so that the tools are easy to use and navigate)
-how students use the UP and NB to learn (study trends of usage such as times used, which functions are most utiilized, etc) so that we know what to concentrate on improving
-possible additions to the UP or NB (such as a search task: perhaps find a way for the NB to be able to categorize and search for key words in the notes so that when a student goes back to study, they do not need to search through each set of notes but can more easily find the related topics)
-long term impact on learning (a quarter is a short amount of time to research this, but perhaps interview/survey people to see their perspectives on if/how the UP and NB might sacrifice traditional methods of teaching)
These are the ideas that I would ideally like to focus on. However, I am very open minded and I'm sure that we can use all of our initial ideas as seeds for bigger ideas. I'm interested to hear about all of your ideas too!
~Jill

Focus

Hey team.

ok here is the what...

I think that we need to get some real focus in what exactly we are doing this quarter.

I think that a good way to figure this out is to have everyone decide independently what they would ideally want to do.
Then we can compare and think, and make some decisions for tuesday.

here is what i want everyone to do.

plan out explicitly what you would do if you had to do this project alone.
the class asks us to apply the method of contextual design.

ask yourself what are we applying it to?
how specific is our focus?

plan out who we would be interviewing (10- 15 interviews)
why those people?

keep in mind we are going to need to make all those models.... what will we model precisely?


i think by doing this we will each be forced to really get an idea of the type of planning necessary... because we cant just kind of brainstorm abstactly, we arr going to need to have a focus and tuesday present it and immediately begin to work. really we need to finish our interviews by the end of 5th week or so, we we have time to do all the actuall work with the data.

ok so eveyone put in some time thinking abotu this, and write it up... send it out to everyone by monday night. and be ready on tuesday to present your explicit plan to the group. then all of us can talk it out and form a group focus.
only read other people's plans after you have written yours. and make sure you have read eveyone's before the meeting on tuesday.

i will post this to the blog as well, more as documentation.

if anyone does not want to do this or doesnt think its impornat. or has a better idea... let me know. We dont need to do this, i just think it would be the most productive thing to do...
so make sure you talk to me if you dont want to do this.

by the way i think for the group the best way this is going to work is if everyone is open and honest. no feelings will be hurt and everything will work out well, because we all have the groups best interest in mind. dont hold things in, make demands... do whatever... just be ready for dissent if your demands are unreasonable...

ok see you alll tuesday, let us know if you have any questions.

-Augmented learning.

From Note Taking to Message Boarding

So I see 3 applications:

1. Ubiquitous Presenter
2. NoteBlogger - Professor Edition (C# based)
3. NoteBlogger - Student Edition (Web based)

From my experience, I believe #3 has the most potential. Potential for what you ask?

The best way for students to augment their learning is by receiving information from many channels, their peers rather than only the professor. This can be utilized inside or outside the classroom. Imagine if every class had a "blog" (for lack of better term right now) automatically generated that all enrolled students were allowed to participate in. During class they could ask questions, make suggestions or new friends (they don't even need to be sitting next to them!) by signing on to the class chat/message board/ blog/ whatever you want to call it. This allows for additional channels of information during lectures via other students and TAs. This feature seems to be functional (in the form of personal chats) though not set-up for many-to-many collaboration.

The other side of this would be to use it for study groups. I used the cogsci wiki in the past as ad-hoc online study groups. The problem was announcing it to the class and even then who the hell am I? why should they study with me? If the application was fronted by the school it would add the necessary prestige to appeal to more students. So this version of noteblogger would help to coordinate online collaborative study sessions. They could even be saved for later use (if for later classes to access?).

I believe if we are smart about framing our initial questions (please take the above as a a very rough draft idea) we could design a single implementation that could seamlessly tackle both issues. So, whadya think?

Roshni's Interview

I just forwarded three emails to everyone from Roshni..
1. WIPTE NB Paper
2. NB Poster
3. UP Generic Survey

Let me know if you did not get these and I will try to send them to you again.
Also, I recorded Roshni's inteview session.. it's over an hour.. so I will send it to you guys.. when... i figure out how. (Especially for team members who were unable to come today, it would be useful to listen to some of Roshni's explainations so we're all on the same page).

*Everyone be sure to post on this blog which areas of Augmented Learning you would like our project to focus on so that we can collaborate everyones ideas. Then we can start our powerpoint slides for our Tuesday presentation.

Keep up the good work, team!

~Jill

Augmented Learning now has a blog!

Augmented Learning, the COGS 102C group focusing on Ubiquitous Presenter (UP) redesign, now has a blog (and you're reading it). This blog will offer team member details, project timeline, weekly progress reports and more! Until then, may you open to what the universe offers.