Ed Tech Partners Meeting - Monday, Mar. 28, 11:30

Abstract
Creative Commons is dedicated to minimizing legal barriers to sharing creative works like writings, music, and video. Many of these barriers arise because copyright law, as it has come to be practiced, is poorly matched to the realities of the Internet. As a result, sharing on the Internet which could be an great enabler of collaborative creation for humanity, has become mired in legal uncertainties and studded with obstacles that prevent creators from excercising choice in the dispositions of their creations. Creative Commons builds technology and standards to help restore that choice.

Prof. Abelson will also talk about the new Science Commons project that is being incubated at MIT. Science Commons is dedicated to easing unnecessary barriers to the flow of scientific knowledge and technical information. The goal is to encourage stakeholders to create areas of free access, inquiry and innovation using standardized licenses and other means.

About the Presenter
Harold (Hal) Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a Fellow of the IEEE. He holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. degree in mathematics from MIT. In 1992, Abelson was designated as one of MIT's six inaugural MacVicar Faculty Fellows, in recognition of his significant and sustained contributions to teaching and undergraduate education. Abelson was recipient in 1992 of the Bose Award (MIT's School of Engineering teaching award). Abelson is also the winner of the 1995 Taylor L. Booth Education Award given by IEEE Computer Society, cited for his continued contributions to the pedagogy and teaching of introductory computer science. He is co-director of the MIT-Microsoft iCampus Research Alliance in Eductional Technology, co-chair of the MIT Council on Educational Technology, and serves on the steering committee of the HP-MIT Alliance. In these capacities, he played key roles in fostering MIT institutional educational technology initiatives such MIT OpenCourseWare and DSpace. He also consults to HP Laboratories in the area of digital information systems.

Ed Tech Partners is a group with representatives from many organizations on campus that meets regularly to discuss topics relating to the development and support of educational technologies at MIT. For more information, please send email to edtech-requests@mit.edu.

Crosstalk Seminar - Jackalopes, Ocotillos, Learning eXchanges, RSS, and Other Arizona Learning Technology Curiosities

Alan Levine from the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI) will discuss how the Center uses cutting edge technologies to support teaching and learning.

(If you missed this Crosstalk event you can view it online.)

Abstract
The Arizona desert is a land of extremes and curious creatures that have adapted to these conditions. No, this is not an ecology lecture, but an overview of some of the research and development in learning technologies from the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI). The MCLI supports the 10 colleges of the Mariposa Community Colleges, which provides education for more than 240,000 people per year in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Some of the curiosities covered include:

• Ocotillo - The desert plant metaphor has been part of the landscape at Maricopa since 1987. A precursor of the Teaching, Learning, Technology Roundtable concept, Ocotillo acts as a faculty lead initiative to investigate and promote new instructional technologies. This year, we have 4 working groups covering the areas of Learning Objects, Hybrid Courses, Electronic Portfolios, and Emerging Technologies. Our work is supported by a collection of "Small technologies Loosely Joined", the online components of our work facilitated by a connected set of weblogs, wikis, and discussion boards, tied together with RSS.
• Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX)- Our online "warehouse" of anything created at Maricopa that supports learning (broader than just "learning objects") with a designed metaphor of "packages" and "packing slips" that represent underlying technical concepts of metadata. The MLX was one of the first sites of its kind to apply RSS syndication of its content that allows it to be re-deployed in multiple settings as well as weblog "trackbacks" that theoretically can "track" external uses of MLX items "back" to the source.
• Feed2JS - An experimental service that has exploded. It allows mere mortal faculty to insert a dynamic feed provided by XML to any web page by insertion of s single line of cut and paste JavaScript. It enables the concept we call "Rip. Mix. Feed." that drastically changes the way we look at web-based information-- not as a cohesive whole, but bits we can pick and choose, and then create new content in unexpected ways.

As far as the "jackalope" you will have to show up to see that creature.

About the Presenter

Since 1992, Alan Levine has been an Instructional Technologist in the Maricopa Center for Learning & Instruction, located at the district office for the Maricopa Community Colleges in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. With degrees in Geology (none in computers!), he is completely a self-taught techie and has managed to teach computer animation classes as well.

He coordinates system wide technology task forces, such as "Ocotillo", consults with faculty on integrating technology, and develops special projects in multimedia and web technologies. His projects include on-line tutorials such as "Writing HTML", "How to be a Webhound", "What a Site!"; Learning English Electronically CD-ROM; online application/review systems for internal faculty grants and faculty professional growth programs, web resources such as "Community College Web", "Multimedia Authoring Web", and "Director Web"; and innovative projects such as the "Hero's Journey" storytelling web site.

A more recent project is the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX), online virtual warehouse of innovation at Maricopa as well as recent experimentation with weblogs, wikis, RSS, digital storytelling, and "social" technologies.

Although he tends to say "ummm" a lot and never uses a script, Alan has presented at the League of Innovation, EDUCAUSE, and Syllabus conferences, as well as invited presentations for institutions in Oklahoma, Florida, Oregon, Ohio, British Columbia, Iceland, New Zealand, and Australia.

In his spare time, Alan enjoys backpacking, bicycling, photography, and escaping to a cabin in Strawberry, Arizona. In 2000, he spent a 6-month sabbatical working and visiting colleagues in northern Arizona, New Zealand, and Australia and was invited back November 2004 for a visit to colleges in the Auckland area.

Upcoming Crosstalk Events

Free LabVIEW Training

Date: Friday, March 4, 2005
Time: 9:00 - 12:00, OR 1:00 - 4:00
Room: 1-134
Register: Go to the NI Registration site and select either the MIT a.m. or p.m. session.

IS&T Academic Computing is sponsoring two sessions of an introductory LabVIEW workshop taught by representatives of National Instruments, Inc. (NI) This is an opportunity to get free, hands-on experience with a tool used by many across campus for data acquisition, signal processing, controls, and other instrumentation needs. Each attendee will also receive a free copy of the LabVIEW student edition for personal use which includes 14 toolkits and usually costs $70. You have a choice of either a morning or afternoon session.

Faculty, researchers, lab managers, and graduate students in engineering and science disciplines can benefit from attending.

These sessions are free and seating is limited. To ensure a spot, please register at the URL above.

Topics Covered

• Explore the LabVIEW Student Edition and the 14 add-on toolkits including signal and image processing, control design and simulation, PDA programming, and Internet connectivity.
• Learn how to integrate data acquisition, signal processing, and analysis easily within the LabVIEW environment.
• Discover firsthand how LabVIEW makes connecting to lab equipment, sensors, circuits, and instrumentation hardware quick and easy.
• Learn how to create complete LabVIEW applications from scratch in minutes with interactive Express VIs and I/O assistants