EdTech
JUNE 2014
Connection MILD MANNERED
Ohhh, for the fun days of summer! ETC peeks into EdTech’s robotics camp for kids
BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
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Congratulations to . . . I’m pleased to congratulate Stacie Barker and Kellie Taylor for recently winning $500 Constance Wyzard memorial scholarships, and Richard Jones for winning the $600 Ellenburger scholarship. Taylor does a great job with robotics and other tech applications at the STEM academy where she works. Jones has transformed his alternative high school classes to student-centered hubs, where students choose how they will learn content competencies. And Barker, wow, what a job she did at a reservation school, where children literally had no concept of life beyond the reservation, so they had trouble understanding things most of us take for granted—until she took them on virtual field trips in which they got to see and interact with the unknown world around them.
Jerry. EdTech Connection Published three times a year by the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State University
Jerry Foster Editor and academic adviser 208-426-4008 jfoster@boisestate.edu
LETTERS WELCOME
Boise State EdTech Connection
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Round trip EdTech grad returns to teach ROTC at Boise State By JERRY FOSTER
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ate Patrick has covered a lot of ground since joining the Idaho Army National Guard, then ROTC at Boise State, and, later, graduating from the EdTech program in 2007.
He saw ROTC and the EdTech master’s program as steps up the career ladder, so he joined both programs—and then he called one day and said he had a chance to go to Army flight school. Could he resume his master’s program when he got back, he asked. Sure, I said. He called me a year or so later and we talked about flight school, his family, and restarting his graduate studies. He finished in 2007 and is now an Army major and an instructor in the same ROTC program that he’d joined years ago. He’s used his ed-tech skills to improve established Idaho National Guard and Army programs.
For example, while deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom, he was assigned to receive, schedule, and track missions and VIPs within the aviation task force’s area of operation, which covered southern Iraq and all of Kuwait. He had to figure out how to accommodate the various schedules of VIPs with the availability of aircraft
Idaho National Guard BlackHawk helicopters on a training exercise south of Boise.
Nate Patrick Photo
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and flight personnel, and provide real-time data got better at it, more was asked of him. regardless of their location. Back in Boise, he reminisced about Kuwait’s So, he customized an Excel spreadsheet to track desert extremes—the 60-degree winter nights, for all aircraft, personnel, including VIPs, and schedexample, that felt frigid because his body was acules to ensure that no missions were dropped. In climated to 110-degree daytime temps. more than 3000 flight And when those He received a commendation for that hours, not one mission overnight lows collided with was cancelled in his warm, moist air from the ed-tech-inspired efficiency. battalion due to schednearby Persian Gulf, Patrick uling error. He received and other Idaho National Guardsmen at Camp a commendation for that ed-tech-inspired effiBuehring, Kuwait, experienced the most terrifying ciency, one of several earned during deployment. and exhilarating electrical storms imaginable. But the word technology in his graduate degree Now, as an ROTC instructor at Boise State, landed additional duties that required him to act he’s integrating his educational technology skills more as an I.T. guy because it was assumed that he into his classroom curricula to enhance his stuknew how to fix computers and software issues. dents’ learning with the vast digital resources Army officers do not say they can’t, so he taught available. himself how to fix computer problems and, as he
Student health insurance now an option The Boise State University Student Health Services Office is now allowing degree seeking online students in self-support programs to enroll in the Student Health Insurance Program (SHIP) during the 2014-2015 year, according to Kelley Brandt, associate director of eCampus Center, a Boise State department that advocates for online programs. Online degree seeking graduate students in self-support programs, such as Educational Technology, enrolled in nine or more graduate credits will pay $1,254 per semester or $2,508 for 12 months, which works out to $209 monthly. Students taking six credits are also eligible for SHIP, but the rate is slightly higher. Out-of-state students pay the same as instate students, but they have to access First Health
Network (myfirstheath.com) to find service providers who work with this insurance program. Ninety-nine percent of EdTech students work fulltime, so most do not need insurance. Those who do need insurance will have to pay a slightly higher rate than that published on the university’s health insurance website. Students must contact the Health Insurance and Billing Office at healthinsurance@boisestate.edu or (208) 426-2158 no later than the 10th day of classes each semester to have the fees added to their student account. The same contact information should be used when students have questions about SHIP. Additional information about SHIP is located at http://healthservices.boisestate.edu/services/ insurance/ship/benefits/ .
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“Clamp” the robot is ready to perform the task he was built for. Clamp is just one of the robots created by kids from fourth through ninth grades engaged in educational technology professor Young Baek’s robotics summer camp at Boise State. The camp is one of dozens taking place on campus this summer. Besides robotics, camps include activities such as football, soccer, engineering, chamber music, dancing, literacy and many more. In the robotics camp, each student made his or her own robot using Lego NXT kits. The students learned how
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to write programs that made the robots move, make sounds and say some words. The robots have an onboard computer that can quickly be pro-
grammed with limited motions. For more complicated movements, the students had to write a program on a computer and then download it to
EdTech assistant professor Patrick Lowenthal presented three times at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Philadelphia last April. The first presentation focused on measuring social presence in the classroom.
their robots. After students became accustomed to manipulating their robots, they used them in mathematical and entertaining activities. In
The second, co-authored with EdTech’s Ross Perkins, focused on sampling trends in online learning research, and the third, which was coauthored with Joanna Dunlap of the University of Colorado at Denver, focused on the influence of graphic design on instructional design.
a robot version of Pictionary, one student would drive his or her robot to draw letters as the other students guessed the words.
Boise State EdTech Connection
It has been a busy late-spring for EdTech Associate Professor Norm Friesen. He made a presentation on technology in education and training at the annual meeting of the International Standards Organization in Olso, Norway.
These meetings involved the development of technical specifications for common educational technologies worldwide. He’s been developing tech standards for collaborative online learning with Toshio Okamoto of Japan’s University of Electro-Communications.
Edited a book
Co-edited a book
Friessen has edited a forthcoming book called Media TransAtlantic: Media Theory between Canada and German-Speaking Europe. The work of Marshall McLuhan and the Toronto School has recently been reinvigorated in the nascent field of media studies (Medienwissenschaften) in German-speaking Europe. These continental philosophical and cultural studies of media often are associated with the path-breaking texts of Friedrich Kittler (1943- 2011). Written by an international roster of major practitioners in the field, the chapters in this collection take media theorists from either side of the Atlantic as a central point of reference, and show how their influence has recurrently converged and diverged in a cultural geography increasingly global in scope.
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EdTech’s Yu-Hui Ching and Yu-Chang Hsu presented their research on “Collaborative learning with Wikis: A critical research in higher education,” at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) convention in Philadelphia. Hsu also presented a paper on mobile augmented-reality artifact design with Fengfeng Ke of Florida State University. In addition, Hsu was elected treasurer of the Instructional Technology special interest group. His one-year term began in April.
Friesen also teamed up this spring with Stacey Irwin of Millersville University to edit a new special issue of Phenomenology & Practice, a human science journal dedicated to the study of the lived experience of a broad range of human practices. The special issue about “Being Online” is devoted to the phenomenological description and exploration of the experience of being online in educational contexts. Articles address questions such as: How, for example, might one be “called” by the voiceless words of another online? How is appropriate receptivity, passivity or attuned pedagogical action manifest in the asynchronous world of words of the online class discussion? How might a glance of recognition of another be directed via a Webcam?
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Julie Young, a pioneering leader in global online schools, has joined the advisory board of GoGo Labs, the company founded by EdTech assistant professor Chris Haskell and former EdTech professor and chair Lisa Dawley. Dawley said she was honored to have Young’s “strong history of leadership” on the board. Young served for 17 years as president and CEO of Florida
Virtual School, founded in 1997 as the nation’s first statewide high school, eventually becoming one of the world’s largest online K-12 schools. Young recently retired from FLVS, which also created the first-ever fully online videogame-based course. GoGo Labs is the creator of the Rezzly brand of gamified learning technologies, training and digital content.
The company offers an SaaS learning platform, 3D GameLab, which uses game mechanics, content creation and an online learning community to keep learners engaged and successful. GoGo Labs serves educators and students in more than 16 countries with the only questbased learning platform that sells directly to educators. For more information, visit 3dgamelab.com .
EdTech’s Kerry Rice returned to Poland this spring, accompanied by LiteracyProfessor Diane Boothe, who was at the time dean of the College of Education, to sign a cooperation agreement with Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and to discuss future exchange opportunities. Rice wants to get Polish students into Boise State’s online EdTech program because Poland has no equivalent. If students and university officials are impressed with the vigor and value of online programs, she believes they can begin their own. But Rice faces two major challenges. For starters, her university partnership plans remain in legal limbo. Further, university attendance in Poland is free for all students, so finding a way for Polish students to pay Boise State’s tuition is the other hurdle. She asks, “Are we willing to pay for internationalization?” Rice spent fall 2012 in Torun as a Fullbright Scholar to lecture and explore the use of new technology in education at Nicolaus Copernicus.
EdTech assistant professor Patrick Lowenthal has co-edited a book titled Online Learning: Common Misconceptions, Benefits, and Challenges, published by Nova Science Publishers. His two collaborative editors were Cindy York of Northern Illinois University and Jennifer Richardson of Purdue University.