News Articles

Of course, those of us on WIRED Nation are. But how about those legions of people out in the rest of the workforce development world? A couple of items have come across my desk in the last two weeks that offer some great examples of how foundations and government agencies are using interactive online tools to get their message out, and for internal management. These are good resources to help our peers understand how these tools can be used.

First up, the Chronicle of Philanthropy did a series of articles about foundations that are posting videos, creating online radio shows and inviting readers to comment and react. They're also offering readers ways to act on what they've learned. You can read the main article here; the article about how one small foundation is making itself heard is here. What I love is that these foundations admit they're taking risks and experimenting to find out what works and what doesn't.

Next up, Governing magazine. Their May 2008 article, Working in Wiki, gives some great examples of how government agencies are using wikis to improve internal management and engage staff in program improvements and problem solving.

When I do workshops on web 2.0 for workforce development professionals, I often get a question along the lines of, "Blogging and podcasting is what my kids do for fun. What's it got to do with my job?"

As these articles show, quite a lot, and more every day.

That is the title of a column in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about how government is now trying to take advantage of web 2.0 technologies.  Here are a couple key excerpts...

You don't need to have a Facebook account, or to have edited a Wikipedia entry, to understand that the Web is in another highly disruptive period. Online tools under the rubric Web 2.0 are changing how information flows, with social networks letting people communicate directly with one another. This is reversing the top-down, one-way approach to communications that began with Gutenberg, challenging everything from how bosses try to manage to how consumers make or break products with instant mass feedback.

The institution that has most resisted new ways of doing things is the biggest one of all: government. This is about to change, with public-sector bureaucracies the new target for Web innovators...

Daniel Mintz, chief information officer for the Transportation Department, has noted how radical it is for government agencies to engage in wikis. They challenge the traditional notion that "all published information produced by a government agency be 'accurate,'" and that "any material a federal employee publishes can be taken as establishing or implying the establishment of formal policy."

At the Boston Academy, Ed Morrison gave a helpful overview of WIRED Nation, what you as a WIRED Nation user should try to get out of it, and what you can do to contribute and interact in the community itself:

If you don't have an effective way to structure information, you end up with a 'garbage bag' of stuff - this is why on WIRED Nation we are making effective use of categories and tagging. It helps the community identify common themes as it to relates to a piece of content, such as 'advanced manufacturing', 'biosciences', etc. Moreover, categories and tags allow you to search using the 'Advanced Search' to

A few key components of WIRED Nation include:

• Forums: essentially a running list of comments - a discussion unfolding as a series of comments on comments
  

• Weblogs aka 'Blogs': generally represent a way for an individual to share information with a group
• Wikis: a fantastic way for more than one person to create content ; a quick and easy way for business professionals to be able to author content to the web quickly and effective - in a matter of minutes.
• RSS: allows you to grab content from the web and be automatically updated anytime any content is changed on that webpage.

In WIRED Nation, we have the following tabs:

• 'Forums' is an area for you to have ongoing discussions around particular topics
• 'Regions' is a wiki page which has been created to share the industry segments, key contacts, implementation plan, etc. in each region.
  
• 'Home' is yet another great example of a wiki page in action - this is a easily editable webpage including graphics, a slideshow, etc., which is updated by members of WIRED Nation, not an IT professional.
  
• 'Stories' is where we are sharing complex stories of what is working in various WIRED regions.
• 'Library' is where we are putting files - files can include a detailed description of what a particular file is
• 'Events' is a great place for us to share schedules for key sessions and events with other regions.
  

WIRED Nation is an open community which allows us to have the most qualified and well represented discussion - there is no 'webmaster', but rather the community as a whole driving the discussion.

A few points Ed emphasized include:

Categorization and tagging.

According to Ed, "categories are like the chapters of a book." For example, in WIRED Nation they include broad ideas and concept areas such as 'Innovation', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Talent', etc. Tags, however "are like the index in the back of the book." Use categories and tags together to make if far easier to find content later as well as to help people more quickly deduce what the relevance of a particular post is.

Weekly Webinars

Fridays at 1PM EST, we have a webinar in which we discuss what is new in WIRED Nation, and go over regional initiatives and how to increase visibility and support for these initiatives in the community using WIRED Nation.

Blogging:

The blog is a great way to quickly share points of interest with the rest of WIRED Nation - maybe a paragraph our two or a link to an interesting research finding or editorial related to economic development.

Jump in - contributing takes only a few minutes. The Law of Networks states that value accrued from a network increases exponentially as each new connection is added.

Hybrid Lab Courses Resonate with 'YouTube' Generation

Newswise — "Can we take biology again?" is the unusual request being made by veteran science faculty members at New York City College of Technology/CUNY, when they look at the teaching materials developed for the hybrid courses being offered by two of their colleagues.

City Tech Biology Professors Isaac Barjis and Walied Samarrai are the creative wizards behind the College's first hybrid lab courses, General Biology I and II and Anatomy & Physiology I and II. Part animation, part video, part interactive software and part Wiki, their courses are generating a buzz with both their students and colleagues as they make the study of biology a fascinating, wondrous and, most of all, fun experience that encourages creative experimentation.

For example, students have access to simulated life processes that may be impossible, too expensive, difficult or time-consuming to accomplish with actual laboratory experiences. "In simulation, a month can take a minute, so students can view embryonic development from a single cell to a whole organism in no time at all," Barjis explains.

"Also, there's no need to wait until medical school to dissect a cadaver," Samarrai adds. "We give them the opportunity to work with a virtual human body and they can even follow the path of cerebral spinal fluids. We're offering the YouTube generation an antidote to a 'dry' textbook and limited labs."

Not only is content presented in a more exciting way, the hybrid courses provide a uniquely personal and flexible learning experience. They are a lively mix of in-person lectures and labs and online simulations, tutorials, discussions and self-testing tools that enable learning at one's own pace and schedule, and at lower cost. They are proving to be a boon for busy City Tech students on tight budgets who often have jobs and/or parenting responsibilities in addition to a full course load.

Both professors have found that creating customized material -- including study skills, tutorials, vocabulary, animations, interactive simulations and games -- helps students succeed with less stress and better outcomes.

"With customized learning, students feel more connected to the material and appreciate that their professors specifically tailored it for them," says Barjis. "For each lecture and lab we prepared slides, flash cards, short movie clips, animated PowerPoint presentations, interactive lab simulations (to enhance or replace 'wet' labs), lecture notes, tutorials, multiple choice practice questions and a link to an e-book."

Maude Campbell, a human services major, welcomed the flexible schedule, as she has a family and a part-time job. “For me, the technology was a little daunting to begin with, but when I got into it, I found I liked it because I had more time to study on my own. I had a better understanding and was more prepared when I got to the class. I already knew what I didn’t understand, so I could ask the professor.”

Barjis and Samarrai find hybrid courses to be superior to traditional classroom and lab situations. Says Samarrai, who has taught such courses since 2002, “Only a minority of students learn best directly from a teacher in a classroom. Others need to have information repeated several times. This is a way to help students with different abilities and different ways of learning to comprehend better, compared to giving them new information for the first time all in one lecture.”

Those of us who remember dissecting a fetal pig in our biology lab course might wonder about drawbacks to performing lab experiments online. Rest assured that students are still coming in to Barjis and Samarrai's class to do dissections and traditional experiments. However, the added lab simulations allow students to participate whenever and wherever they have computer access, eliminate what for some is the troubling issue of actual animal dissection, and provide creative opportunities for collaboration and learning.

For example, says Barjis, “Wiki technology allows students, in different locations, to participate in an online case study as a group and to edit a site as they would edit an MS Word document.” Students can add or delete a picture or diagram, insert a link or correct one another. When they are finished working on the case study, group members can design a Web page containing charts, figures, tables and links.

Salman Hossain, a second-year student who took biology II with Barjis last spring, concurs. “I prefer to study that way. It was convenient. You could log on anytime you needed to. You don’t have to be in class just to take notes and study from that. It’s more effective than reading a book, and I have better comprehension.” Hossain was so impressed by this approach that he took another hybrid science course this past fall.

Hybrid courses also create learning communities; a large class of 40 can be divided into groups, with a leader to moderate interactions. Samarrai notes that hybrid courses teach students to take responsibility for their success. “They can practice a lot, learn by trial and error, and interact with the material and one another. They keep dealing with the information in different ways, so it’s more appealing and they don’t fall asleep!”

Adds Barjis, “I noticed that my students become more analytical using the simulations, because they’re not just following a fixed recipe. They can repeat the experiments on their own, and can explore changing pH, temperature, concentration and other variables in order to answer 'What if?' questions."

Another benefit of hybrid courses is the lower cost to students. A typical biology or anatomy and physiology textbook could cost $140–$200, in addition to fees for a lab coat, dissecting kit and lab manual. City Tech students, however, can buy the e-book for $40 and a lab manual and accompanying CD for $26.

Enthusiasm for their subject areas propelled both scientists to team up to create the hybrid courses, with Barjis contributing his technology expertise to Samarrai's knowledge of biology and pedagogy. “I heard about non-science Web-enhanced courses, and I knew these techniques could be applied to teaching biology," says Samarrai, a Bay Ridge resident with roots in Jordan who earned his PhD degree in molecular biology from The City University of New York. Barjis, who now lives in Jamaica Estates, Queens, is originally from Afghanistan and received his PhD in bioinformatics from WIDU (Brussels, Belgium).

The two customized the course material by using available software such as Camtasia, Macromedia (e.g. Dreamweaver, Flash), Front Page and drawing from numerous CDs and other sources as permitted by the publishers. Constructing the course was so time-consuming that Samarrai’s wife suggested old-fashioned teaching might be easier. “But,” offers Barjis, “once you build the foundation, have all the materials, and teach the courses for years, it becomes easier.”

In fact, Barjis’ hybrid course for Anatomy & Physiology was selected as a model course by the CUNY Online Distributed Learning Network project (CUNYOnline), in which a grant from the Sloan Foundation enabled faculty in various disciplines from every CUNY college to develop interactive, user-friendly online Blackboard courses.

"Now that City Tech's first hybrid lab courses have proved successful," says Samarrai, “the next step is to do this with every course in the biology department.” He and Barjis are also teaming up with other faculty members to build a 3D model of a virtual biological cell that will be part of City Tech's island in the virtual world of Second Life (www.secondlife.com). When completed, the virtual cell will allow students, via their individual avatars, to fly into it to examine each component -- nucleus, ectoplasm, membrane and others -- and their inter-relationship to one another.

Samarrai and Barjis are committed to staying ahead of the curve on using instructional technology to enhance their students' learning experiences. It’s no wonder their colleagues want to sign up for their courses -- the duo's enthusiasm is infectious!

New York City College of Technology (City Tech) of The City University of New York is the largest public college of technology in New York State. The College enrolls more than 13,500 students in 57 baccalaureate, associate and specialized certificate programs. Another 15,000 students enroll annually in adult education and workforce development programs, many of which lead to licensure and certification. Located at 300 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn, City Tech is at the MetroTech Center academic and commercial complex, convenient to public transportation.

1. Links- Insert links to files and web pages
2. Images- Insert images
3. Categories and Tags- Categories are chapters of the book, Tags are the index of the book

Link to the recorded webinar - Coming Soon

My guess is that the California Innovation Corridor has done the best job of organizing and collecting the stories that are emerging from its WIRED region. 

Organizing Our Knowledge

Many WIRED regions are still struggling with their web presence. An early challenge -- one among many -- is defining the structure of the site, so than it is expandable. In the course of Wired, we are collecting a lot of information and knowledge (which can often be most easily communicated in the form of stories.) 

Building a WIRED web site that provides a flexible and adaptive container for this knowledge is not easy task. We confronted the same challenges in thinking through the structure of Wired Nation. 

So, it's impressive to see how the California Innovation corridor has organized its web site to capture these stories. You can look through the site here. 

Thanks to Richard Mains of Mains Associates. Richard was involved in designing the site, and he was the first person to draw our attention to it. 

Leveraging Web 2.0 Tools

At the same time, we have the opportunity in WIRED regions to leverage new Web 2.0 tools. These tools enable people with little or no web development experience to post directly to the web. We can now build web sites to share everything from contact information and meeting notes to MP3 files and videos. 

Traditional approaches to web development -- in which you rely on a IT department to build, maintain and update a site -- are relatively slow and difficult to manage. New approaches, such as Wired Nation, allow many users to contribute. 

Bioscience Regions

During our Bioscience Regions Institute in Winston Salem, we set up our own Internet audio channel. We also capture presentations on line. People from around the country could easily tap in and keep up with what was going on. If you have not done so already, visit our Bioscience Regions web site. 

Many of these Web 2.0 tools are inexpensive or free. That means that virtually any group can now set up a web site and begin sharing information and promoting collaboration. The key is capturing information quickly and cheaply.

Weekly webinars

To help you get up to speed on new developments on the web and how you can use them, we will be launching a series of weekly seminars next week. We will use the Wired-Nation site as our demonstration site to show you how to use these new Web 2.0 tools. We'll announce the schedule with an e-mail blast, and you will also be able to keep up with the schedule by checking the Wired Nation blog and Events calendar (under the Events tab above). 

West MNichigan has launched a new web portal to support the commercialization of patents in the region. We'll get some additional detail from the folks in West Michigan. You can read about the initiative here. 

You can visit the web site here. 

Our team at Near Time has established a channel for live audio feeds from our Bioscience Institute this week in Winston Salem. These feeds will appear in our new Bioscience Community of Innovation site. 

You can tap in now here.   

A new interactive guide links entrepreneurs with start-up resources in Alabama and Mississippi. The new guide relies on the interactivity of the Web to integrate a number of tools for entrepreneurs. You can read more about the initiative here.

At the same time, this initiative recognizes that the most effective entrepreneurial support comes from linking and leveraging our existing assets. You can visit the new web site here.