Who Are the Top Technology Innovators in Higher Education?

The library at the College of Southern Nevada has in a very short time translated everything on-ground students can access into online versions.  In a very short period the CSN Library has become a model of what public higher education can do to meet student demands in the 21st century.

John Boyer of Virginia Tech communicates daily with the 3000 students in his World Regions class. He is one of the most well-loved and highly-recommended professors at the university, and students love to take his class because he engages them in world affairs. Boyer uses technology – such as Facebook updates, online lectures, online office-hours, and YouTube – to connect with his students, and to help his students connect with the world. This semester alone, we video Skyped with Aun San Suu Kyi of Myanmar during one of our lectures, and via a video of the class on YouTube, convinced Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez to give us a special pre-screening of “The Way”. John Boyer is not afraid of technology, nor of his super-sized class, and he uses technology to help connect with his students and the world.

John Boyer (aka – The Plaid Avenger) – Professor at Virginia Tech.  Not only he is the raddest, most engaging teacher of ALL time, he is a top tech innovator at VT (and everywhere).  Through social media campaigns that went viral, he had a super successful semester this past Fall.

I graduated in 2007, but I had the pleasure of having him as my World Regions teacher.  I learned more in that class sophomore year than I did in most of my classes in my major! He took dry textbook material and made it awesome!  Over the past few years, his class has grown from 500 to 3000 in one class.  He is able to have such large classes due to youtube, podcasts (plaidcasts), and online office hours. He also has great facebook and twitter accounts.

He had 3 MAJOR events this year! 1) Gary Vaynerchuk from VaynerMedia came his to Geography of Wine class. They campaigned through various platforms to get his attention, and he fit VT into his schedule. 2) Through a viral social media campaign led by Boyer, Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen took their video “The Way” to VT! and lastly (the most epic) 3) Boyer and his classroom made another YouTube Video that went viral to have Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi Skype his classroom from her home. 

Request to Gary Vaynerchuk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9axVgDLbROE&list=UUzeAxTYSmTQjTmpHORTa4QQ&index=42&feature=plpp_video

Bringing The Way to VT YouTube request: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXjNAcJXrBI&feature=related
The Way to VT Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/#!/thewaytovt

Interview with Aung San Suu Kyi: http://vimeo.com/33219064
YouTube request gone viral: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGSf_xjFX0o&feature=youtu.be

BOYER IS THE MAN!!!! I wish i could go to college round 2, just to experience his classroom all over again.

JOHN BOYER of Virginia Tech, what other professor gets their students to use twitter to get points in class? Not convinced, he bought over Martin Sheen, Emilo Estevez, Crazy Legs, Abramz (from Bouncing Cats), Gary V and had a skype conversation with Aung San Suu Kyi! This guys is crazy amazing, one of the best teachers I have ever had! 

I too must hop on board with the nomination of John Boyer at Virginia Tech for all of the reasons already posted and more.  Enthusiasm for teaching?  Check.  True desire to improve the educational experience?  Check.  Implementation of more technology in the classroom than many other professors even know exist?  Check. 

I also would like to nominate ProctorU, an inventive service that allows students to take their exams online while ensuring the academic integrity for the institution. ProctorU uses a three-step process to replicate the face-to-face proctoring experience online. Through this process, ProctorU can see the student, see what they are doing, and know who they are. This is all done via webcam connections, screen-sharing technologies, and an authentication process that verifies the student’s identity via data-driven challenge questions. ProctorU has been a pioneer in the industry since 2008 and currently partners with over 125 partnership institutions worldwide.   

I nominate Steve Gordon, Ph.D., interim co-executive director of OSC and director of the Ralph Regula School of Computational Science (featured in a 2009 Chronicle article - http://www.osc.edu/press/releases/2009/docs/How_They_Did_IT.pdf).  He has worked with university administrators and legislators in the state of Ohio to develop an online virtual school to teach modeling and simulation to college students.  The undergraduate minor program in computational science was launched in 2005 and is now available at 12 campuses, and an associate of science program begin in Autumn 2009.  He also spearheaded the development of an industry certificate program to teach manufacturers how to use these skills to boost their company’s competitiveness; two subject areas offered are in polymers and metal forming.  Dr. Gordon is regarded as a national leader in computational science education through his work with the National Science Foundation Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment and chairs the education committee for the Great Lakes Petascale Consortium.  In addition, he is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Computational Science Education.

Without a doubt, I nominate John Boyer of Virginia Tech! Through technology such as social networking, YouTube, and text messaging, Professor Boyer not only teaches his class of 3,000 students, but he also encourages his students to become more involved in the learning process, even though the sheer size of the class might suggest that his World Regions class is impersonal. He is able to answer questions from his students through events like online office hours. In addition, he has harnessed YouTube to hold different special events throughout the school year. From movie screenings to Skype calls with world leaders, Boyer both gets students motivated to go to class and to continue learning about the world even after the semester ends.

Southern New Hampshire University’s President Paul LeBlanc is tackling the challenge of education reform and innovation head on. His goal is simple: Change the face of education as we know it by making a quality, affordable online education available to the masses.

At a time when the vast majority of higher education institution are priding themselves on selectivity based on the number students they choose not to educate, SNHU is tackling educational access and affordability through the utilization of emerging technology in new and innovative ways. President LeBlanc understood early on that the idea of selecting a few students out of many wasn’t what was going to help the country solve the very real education problems it’s facing, and that the for-profit online model which answers to stockholders instead of to students is unsustainable. In response, he has cultivated an organizational culture built on educating everyone who wants to raise their hand, and recruited the best minds in the industry to build a model that could scale to accommodate as many students as wanted to enroll. 

Now with over 10,000 online students, SNHU is the largest non-profit provider of online education in the northeast. But more importantly, SNHU’s online students consistently rave about the quality education they are receiving, commenting specifically how superior it is to other online colleges they’ve attended.  

But that wasn’t enough. In the past year, President LeBlanc has made an unprecedented commitment to disrupting the very system on which SNHU’s online success has been built by launching his Innovation Team, a four member group of thought leaders with one goal: reinvent education as we know it by creating the model that will be the next big thing. The open, online, self-paced model they are developing will provide an affordable way for anyone to achieve their own personal goals, or get the education necessary to advance their career. 

Lots of folks talk about doing innovative things in higher education. Paul LeBlanc is putting his money where is mouth is, and changing thousands of lives in the process. Not only does he deserve to be in the top 10 technology innovators in higher education, he should be at the top of the list.

You absolutely must profile Aaron Doering from the University of Minnesota. He is a pioneer in adventure learning. I can’t think of anyone who better embodies “people who are thinking big about how technology can change education.” 

His GoNorth! program - http://www.polarhusky.com/ – does annual polar expeditions during which he broadcasts curriculum to millions of school kids. This 30 second video will whet your thirst: http://youtu.be/ccNDAg-DqmI

His newest undertaking, Earthducation (http://lt.umn.edu/earthducation/), “is a series of 7 expeditions to every continent over the course of 4 years (2011-2014) designed to create a world narrative of the dynamic intersections between education and sustainability.” The online community component is really innovative: http://lt.umn.edu/environetwork/
Here’s Aaron’s bio page. I hope you contact him. http://environment.umn.edu/about/ione_bios/aaron_doering.html

John Boyer’s World Region class for sure!  The man used Skype to chat with Aung san suu kyi with his class of over 3000 people interacting half way around the world.  His student’s tweet as world leaders updating their daily movements as an assignment, as well as online classroom forum environments as well as an interactive updated website where he Podcasts and does live office hours using Ustream.  Pretty cutting edge use of technology to make a class with an enormous size enjoyable and interactive!!  The man is amazing!

The University of Toledo (OH) has gone one step further by extending that capability to disabled students who require assistive technology. According to the UT team, the Access Adaptive Technology Virtualization project marks the first-ever effort to create a statewide virtual lab with assistive software for students with disabilities. Hearing and sight impaired students and individuals with learning disabilities often can’t afford assistive software, so they have to use specific computers in labs on campus to get their work done. “When we became aware of virtual lab technology on the UT campus, we thought, wouldn’t it be great if our students with disabilities had the same opportunity as other students to go sit in Starbucks with their laptop and access the tools they need to do their work?” says Angela Paprocki, executive director for the Learning Collaborative and interim ADA/504 compliance coordinator.

Besides the increased convenience for students, another potential benefit to universities involves cost savings from software licensing. Instead of each university purchasing its own copies of assistive software, the virtual lab could license as many as needed by the statewide community. “We’ve had lots of conversations with vendors about licensing,” Paprocki says. “We moved to server-based licensing with a limit of 40 concurrent users.” This would eliminate the need for campuses in a consortium to purchase their own copies of the licensed software, and access the up-to-date versions in UT’s virtual lab instead. (Some campuses are four or five releases behind because they can’t afford to upgrade, Paprocki points out.) Paprocki also notes that the virtual offering could also help smaller schools comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. “Many do work-arounds and provide only the bare minimum of support,” she says. “This would ensure broader availability and access even on small campuses.”

Excerpts courtesy of Campus Technology Magazine.

Nicholas Spooner from the University of Sydney. Long after the Second Life craze has been and gone, Dr Spooner is leveraging this wonderful technology for a real-world purpose – namely, to create authentic scenarios to support problem-based learning for medical students.

We are the creators of an innovative online platform for education. At all levels of education from pre-school to post graduation, student & parents apply to at least 5 to 10 institutes simultaneously to seek admission in one institute of their choice. The students and parents go through various levels such as admission form submission; documents attestation/photocopy, and subsequent communication with the educational institute which becomes a highly tedious process with many levels repetitive in nature. 

ePravesh.com is online platform where students,parents can visit and can submit online admission forms of multiple schools,colleges, training programs and can make online form fee payments which results in entire process becoming paperless and efficient for educational institutes

The guys who are at the bleeding edge of developing and running Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).  This includes names like George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Alec Couros and others.

Dr. Tristan Denley of Austin Peay State University developed software that recommends courses based on a student’s major, academic record, and how similar students fared in that class. He’s expanded it to offer tips on choosing a major. The Gates Foundation quickly contributed $1 million to refine the software so other colleges can adopt it. Dr. Denley is at the forefront of universities’ mining student data to improve student success.

I would like to nominate Tom Bruce, co-founder of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School at Cornell University. Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the LII, which was the first legal site on the Internet in 1992, and is still the world’s leading legal information website and birthplace of the “open access” and free law movements. 

Because of Tom’s ongoing vision, there are now nearly 30 LII namesake sites around the world. Here in the US, the LII serves over 14 million unique visitors each year, many of them students and faculty, but also government officials, business leaders, practicing lawyers, and other citizens who need to find answers to legal questions. Part tech geek, part librarian, part information scientist, Tom has been named a “Legal Rebel” by the American Bar Association (http://www.abajournal.com/legalrebels/article/thomas_bruce_first_adapter/) and a member of the FastCase 50 (http://www.fastcase.com/fastcase50-winners/) for his contributions to the fields of legal information and research. 

Currently, the LII is working on ways to use semantic search to further understanding of the ways our laws govern us and how they are interrelated and regulated between different areas of government. Internationally, Tom is also working with the Open Society Institute to build an umbrella organization that has started LIIs in six African countries, hopefully adding another dozen over the next three years. 

You can read more about the LII here: 
http://www.law.cornell.edu/lii/about/who_we_areHere is a link to Tom’s bio: http://www.law.cornell.edu/lii/about/lii_staffAnd here is a short video explaining the work of the LII:http://www.law.cornell.edu/video.html

I second the nomination of Slaven Zivkovic at
Springshare. To quote the original nominator: “With over 1,000 libraries subscribing to their LibGuides
and related products, I don’t know of any other company that offers
products that makes it so easy to harness Web 2.0 technology for
connecting students with library content. The LibGuides are easy to
create, easy to share and librarians can invite non-librarian colleagues
to create them. Over the past 5 years Springshare has made LibGuides a
household name in academic libraries. Almost any academic library
conference will have at least one paper, maybe more, discussing some
aspect of the use of LibGuides.”

Their products have changed the way Librarians work, making it possible to reach many more students with updated information resources throughout the semester.

I’d like to nominate the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University — creators and disseminators of Zotero, Omeka, Omeka.net, and other elegant, innovative, open source tools for the academic community. They’ve had an impact across academic disciplines, and create tools that work for individual scholars as well as classroom educators and organizations and institutions. Truly deserving of the highest recognition for creativity and service to the academic community. No, I’m not connected to them in any way, just a really happy user of Omeka, a constant recommender of Zotero to library patrons, really interested in further developments on Anthologize, and eager to see what else they create for the benefit of all of us!

Kenny Morrell of Rhodes College has been a technology leader for many years now, from the (to some) “unlikely” perch of a Classics program. He is one of the driving forces behind the Sunoikisis Classics Consortium, which brings small departments together to offer collaborative courses in upper-level Greek and Latin, but this really is just the tip if the iceberg.

I’d like to nominate Dr. Paige Krabill, Capella University.  Dr. Krabill has consistently pushed the boundaries of what is possible in online education, building community through a discipline-wide discussion board, creating real and technology-simulated media to support a multi-disciplinary approach to Human Services here at Capella.

Matt Waite at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is one of the most innovative journalists/educators anywhere. He was part of the St. Petersburg Times team that won a Pulitzer for Politifact.com in 2009; Matt actually built the fact-checking site and its Truth-o-Meter. Now Matt is part of the UNL journalism faculty, helping students create the next best technological thing to help journalists do their jobs better.

He teaches classes in new product development in which students take on a mass communications problem and figure out a technological solution. He’s planning a program to mount cameras on small drones to photograph wetlands or other topography that is part of a news story. His ideas for marrying technology to journalism and education are endless. Needless to say, the students love this stuff. Not only is Matt himself an innovator, but he’s nurturing the next generation of innovators to go out and do even bigger and better things.

I would also like to nominate President LeBlanc and the students, faculty and staff of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU).  President LeBlanc is focused not just on incorporating technology into courses but utilizing that technology in new and innovative ways that ultimately provide students with the tools they need to transform their lives.

It is not just one person or one great teacher I am learning from nowadays. It is many. Through the Internet I have created my own personal learning network, I am creating, curating and collaborating with many though out the world. These skills should be taught to all students from middle school on. It should be a requirement in the first month of any university.

Learning to search properly is one of the most important things I have learned. Curation though following using RSS and even Yahoo Pies others blogs and having their titles dumped into Netvibes so I can quickly find articles that interest me. I find so many interesting people and links to articles (some in scientific journals) though Twitter. But went use an article in my own blog, I also know who to cite it properly and give that person create for their works. It takes time to learn who to follow and who to believe. Howard Rheingold calls this “crap detection”.

I have been to conferences and watched them streamed live. Last week it was a SWSX like technology conference in France and conference on Virtual Worlds. I have also watch live streaming of Occupy Wall Street. I have taking several MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses with thousands from all over the world lead by George Seimens and Stephen Downes. I just tried to take Artificial Intelligences course from Stanford with 120,00 others. I did not study as much math on Khan Academy YouTube videos that I need to and got lost. But I can take this again in the future.

In Second Life, I have heard Clay Shirkey and Sir Ken Robinson talk. I have meet with libraries and other educators connected to real world organizations such as American Library Association and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). I have see how IBM and Cisco uses Virtual Worlds and to train their employees and get them to collaborate with each other. Tony O’Driscoll (from Duke) has a great book on this Learning in 3D.

I belong to an Alumi group of past Howard Rheingold’s students that is growing with people all over the world. We are co-learners — teaching each other. We reading books such Cathy Davidson’s “Now You See It” (from Duke) and Douglas Rushkoff’s “Program or Be Programmed” — together and comment in a forum our thoughts and opinions. My co-learner and I meet twice weekly in either Adobe Connect or Google+ — not only learning from each other but also talking with a high school class, their teacher along with Roy Christopher about how they feel about classrooms and learning today. We even got Douglas Rushkoff to speak to our little group and Cathy Davidson is on our list.

And every Saturday afternoon I spend with TED, not a person, but short talks from some of the most inspirational and interesting people around the world. I am learning more than I have ever learned in my life. Learning is not just restricted to the classroom anymore. Anyone can create, curate and collaborate.

I’d like to nominate Kognito Internactive, who develops online simulations for students and faculty to help students suffering from psychological distress. Their technology allows you to practice speaking with different student avatars experiencing depression, anxiety, thoughts of suicide, etc. This interactive technology is making a huge difference on campuses across the country. And not to mention it makes learning these best practices much more fun by using engaging, game-based technology. http://www.kognito.com

SNHU is buzzing with collaboration and dedication to instructional design, course development, and technologies ensuring affordable higher education, enhancing student learning and learning experiences, streamlining administrative processes with a focus on making a degree achievable and affordable. I nominate SNHU President Paul LeBlanc for inspiring students, faculty and staff to see what is possible, for paving the way, and enabling those possibilities.  This dynamism is a way of life at SNHU, and has been since President LeBlanc arrived here.

I would like to echo the nominations for Paul LeBlanc at SNHU — his vision of using technology to not just deliver, but disrupt the educational paradigm to increase access is inspiring.

Sal Khan, Peter Norvig, Sabastian Thrun

I would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership regarding the KnowU online learning platform, advanced Allied Health curriculum design, and evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital textbooks.

I would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership regarding the KnowU online learning platform, advanced Allied Health curriculum design, and evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital textbooks.
I also encourage him Dr. Trinkle and others to begin to use CollegeComplete.com.

I nominate Dr. Paul LeBlance from SNHU. Dr LeBlanc’s commitment to student success and the use of technology as a foundation for this success cannot be overstated!

Melissa Jacoby is the Graham Kenan Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she won the inaugural Robert G. Byrd award for Excellence and Creativity in Teaching. Melissa became a trailblazer this semester for her innovative classroom use of the iPad, which she used to help teach difficult material for her secured transactions and bankruptcy classes. Legal education is not known for being on the cutting edge of innovation, and many law professors seem reluctant to stray from the tried and tested Socratic method that has served the profession well enough for decades. But working enthusiastically in collaboration with the UNC School of Law IT department, Professor Jacoby challenged herself to leverage her new iPad in pedagogically compelling ways, using the device to annotate dense texts, illustrate logical problems and complex transactional processes, and combine sources in a unique way. The iPad allowed her to engage students with different learning modalities (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile) in otherwise dry subject matter. As if this were not enough of a departure from a more traditional approach, Melissa also peppered her instruction with judicious use of classroom response software, which enabled her to create an immediate feedback loop on how well her students understood core concepts. Students didn’t need to carry with them the much-debated “clickers” since Carolina Law employs a software-based platform that allows students to respond to in-class flash polls using their laptops or mobile devices. Even with the few technical issues she encountered at first, Professor Jacoby’s innovative use of technology garnered overwhelmingly positive feedback from her students. She is a wonderful teacher to begin with, but for the reasons stated above I feel she is deserving of this special recognition.

I would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership regarding the KnowU online learning platform, advanced Allied Health curriculum design, and evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital textbooks.

I would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership regarding the KnowU online learning platform, advanced Allied Health curriculum design, and evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital textbooks.

I would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership regarding the KnowU online learning platform, advanced Allied Health curriculum design, and evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital textbooks.

I would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership regarding the KnowU online learning platform, advanced Allied Health curriculum design, and evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital textbooks.

I nominate Openstudy.com.  The site champions open access to quality education through innovative learning groups. The site has been funded by the NSF and Gates Foundation among others for innovative practices driving a community of higher-ed learners.  Check out this blog post for a fuller understanding: http://blog.openstudy.com/2011/05/18/geek-to-chic-how-social-learning-can-make-all-students-rock-stars-2/

I would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership regarding the KnowU online learning platform, advanced Allied Health curriculum design, and evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital textbooks.

I nominate OpenStudy.com, a site dedicated to breaking the socioeconomic barriers to quality education through worldwide student collaboration.  This Georgia Institute of Technology related site combines a dynamic matrix of ethnicities, cultures, and countries into real-time 24/7 online community of students helping students through subject-specific study groups.  A world, full of student-collaborators, offers a range of perspectives not available in the static brick-and-mortar classroom.   Openstudy is transforming the concept of top down one-on-one tutoring to a grassroots groundswell of many-helping-many—the company appears well on the way to reaching its goal to “make the world your study group.”  It recently received the Gates Next Generation Learning Challenge grant and featured at EDUCAUSE’s Start Up Alley and on the roundtable discussion with Aneesh Chopra, the U.S. chief technology officer with the White House.

I nominate PESC – the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council.  PESC’s big picture vision includes establishment of an enterprise-wide federated network for the entire Education domain.  The network connects every college and university in the country with the ability for all education stakeholders to plug-in, including Federal agencies, service providers, vendors, etc.  In taking it one step further PESC envisions supporting networks and processes that cross from one federation to another or to multiple federations.  PESC broke down this vision into three initiatives:  establishment of a centralized web services directory (currently in beta) that supports web services and service oriented architecture; establishment of an open agnostic data exchange protocol (being worked on by PESC Common Data Services Task Force); and a phased-in approach on eAuthentication and eAuthorization whereby a federated trust environment is to be established for students entering the higher education domain.  The PK12 sector may develop its own federation, which results in 2 major nodes within the larger Education network.  Standardized communication is then enabled between the Education Domain and other domains that may emerge, like within HHS, NSF, NIH, etc.  For more information visit PESC.org.

I would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership regarding the KnowU online learning platform, advanced Allied Health curriculum design, and evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital textbooks.

I would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership regarding the KnowU online learning platform, advanced Allied Health curriculum design, and evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital textbooks.

I, too, would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership regarding the KnowU online learning platform. He has also been critical in developing advanced Allied Health curriculum design, along with evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital textbooks.

I would like to nominate Dr. Dennis Trinkle from Harrison College for
Top Technology Innovator in Higher Education due to his leadership
regarding the KnowU online learning platform, advanced Allied Health
curriculum design, and evangelism in regards to 100% adoption of digital
textbooks.

Seriously Harrison College…we get it. Dr. Dennis Trinkle rules. It sounds like he’s done some great stuff but it’s getting lost in the spamming of the comments with the same cut and paste text over and over again. 

I would like to nominate Larry Johnson, CEO of NMC. NMC has become the gathering point for innovation in learning and technology, and the NMC Horizon Report is the most watched and influential annual summary on technology innovation in education. This has been the direct result of Larry’s vision and leadership.

I would like to nominate Academic Room (http://www.academicroom.com), which represents a model of technical innovation for sharing academic resources and facilitating professional networking based on one’s scholarly subfield.

Scott McLeod (http://scottmcleod.net/bio/) at the University of Kentucky can be called the father of School Technology Leadership. His blog http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/ has been a huge resources for school leaders for years. His video series has been seen / used countless number of times. Scott is a director of the nation’s only center dedicated to the technology needs of school leaders, the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). To top that off, Scott is an amazing speaker on the topic.

I nominate Dr. Andy “Superfly” Rundquist of Hamline University. Not only does he grade in an innovative manner, requiring students to show thier knowledge using screencasts, he also runs online professional development for teachers and professors in his online “global physics department” meetings. While he does not teach online, I do not think this is a requirement for innovative and effective use of technology. Andy Rundquist is active on Twitter, has brought together teachers from around the country, turned his students into thoughtful explainers, and uses technology as an aid instead of as a medium.

I nominate the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), a
small learned society that promotes the study and preservation of architecture
worldwide.  In the span of four years SAH
has created three online publishing platforms that have transformed publishing in
the humanities.  Beginning in 2008 SAH collaborated
with ARTstor Digital Library to develop SAHARA,
a peer-reviewed, shared online image archive for teaching and research.  SAHARA functioned as the beta version of a
large, enterprise-level image-sharing platform subsequently developed by
ARTstor to enable universities to share images across departments.  The lessons learned by developing SAHARA are
now benefiting tens of thousands of scholars nationwide.  Beginning in 2009 SAH collaborated with the University
of California Press to develop a multimedia online journal platform that could
illustrate scholarly articles with film, video, sound, panoramic images, and 3D
models superimposed over Google Earth maps. The platform was so ground-breaking that it
was acquired by JSTOR for their Current Scholarship Program.  The lessons learned by developing a small
multimedia online journal enabled JSTOR to scale up the SAH-UCP platform and to deliver
multimedia content in scholarly journals around the world.  Click here to see
a sample JSAH article.  Finally, beginning in 2010
SAH collaborated with University of Virginia Press to develop SAH
Archipedia, an online encyclopedia of American architecture.  The media rich online resource will be
released in 2012 in two formats:  SAH Archipedia, a scholarly resource
with thousands of interpretive building histories, photographs, maps, essays,
and glossaries which will be available through library subscription and SAH Archipedia Classic Buildings, a free
open-access website which will include 100 of the most significant buildings
from each state in the US.  Eventually
SAH Archipedia will become a global resource. 
With start-up funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, SAH has succeeded in transforming humanities scholarship in the
digital age.  The scholars,
administrator, technical specialists, and visionaries who shaped these rapid developments
have new insights and battle scars to prove it. 

Profiled in the Chronicle (Sept 2009) as an Innovator in
Internationalization, the UCosmic Consortium is a unique effort to develop a
set of robust, open-source tools to help complex research universities
comprehensively map their global activiites, with the intention to allow them
to be more entrepreneurial in their approach to program development. Modular
components will be available to institutions free-of-charge, with extremely low
cost of adoption. Many modules will be cloud based, to further reduce the cost
of local integration. The UCosmic Consortium now includes about a dozen
universities from around the world, along with the Institute of International
Education and the College Board. UCosmic originated at the University of
Cininnati, but the UCosmic Consortium is now managed out of the State
University of New York’s Office of Global Affairs. Information about this
effort can be found at http://www.ucosmic.org. 

best. comment. ever.

I’d like to nominate Paul Courant, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries
at the University of Michigan. He is also Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate
Professor of Public Policy, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Economics,
Professor of Information, and Faculty Associate in the Institute for
Social Research at the University of Michigan. Under his direction the University of Michigan library system has been leading and innovating with bold experiments to define the future of digital collections, services, and the copyright that determines what can be learned and shared online, supporting not only higher education, but extending beyond those borders to answer the questions involved nearly every time ideas are exchanged in the digital realm.  Certainly creating high profile partnerships such as with Google Books and the Hathi Trust is implementing a leading vision for digital collections and the future of copyright and access.  Though a testament to the vision of the university as a whole and the good work done by passionate people throughout the library system, Paul Courant’s vision is why our digital future will be built upon the questions asked, tested, and answered in the U of M library system.

The University of New Mexico Valencia is a small very rural two year branch campus. Yet we strive to keep our technology as up to date as possible. From classroom capture in over 60% of our classes and over 3000 presentations in just a few years, to SMART Boards and Sympodiums in over 50% of our classes heck we even have an Organic Motion system to help with 3D design classes.

We go out of our way to get our faculty and students the technology they need to be successful. At UNM Valencia, technology is not just a toy or some new shiny object it is a tool that we are working on becoming master craftsmen with.

The Robert E. Kennedy Library at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, has embraced change inspired by the shape-shifting nature of media, technology and higher education. Intrigued by the possibilities as well as by the innovative spirit of our students, we have begun a collaborative experiment with meaningful (and ongoing) outcomes.
 
Through various means, ranging from an involved student library advisory council, truly conversational social media, and feedback invitations both online and in the building, we ask students what innovations would best serve them. Equally empowered, users make suggestions and administrators take action.
 
Changes include the collaborative (large flat panel screens for showing data), the unglamorous (more power outlets in a structure built before the proliferation of laptops), the glamorous (a wildly popular iPad lending program), the organized (a digital queue for lab computers), and the mobile (making the library website device-friendly for students always on their phones).
 
In addition to supporting student learning, we create meaning by having a sincere dialogue with our users about technology and place.
 
Director of Library Information Technology, Dale Kohler, recaps the last year in a 60-second video (that ends with a request for more feedback): http://youtu.be/LBb3Y0eCliQ

Coursekit!!!

The topic is intriguing, the methodology is disappointing.

I was looking forward to a slate of folks who have significantly contributed to the field.  However, the re are no criteria:  we all have stories to tell, but the ones that are most compelling and valuable, I would suggest are those that have accomplishments. 

Now, we have to begin to identify which accomplishment is worthy of consideration?  What makes an innovation “tops”?

Marc Perry’s competition is flacid imho because there are no real or significant standards.  Just a title. Based on the responses, it is even less than a popularity poll. Not to say that these are not reasonable candidates, but what is the MEASURE OF SUCCESS??

I would like to nominate Dr. Ali Jafari of Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, who has been a major force in the development of learning management systems and changing the pedagogical framework for teaching and learning through his innovations,which include ANGEL Learning, Epsilen, and a new project called CourseNetworking (www.coursenetworking.com).  I heartily nominate him for this title not just because of his vision and the byproducts of it, but because of the entrepreneurial spirit he encourages in his colleagues and in his students.  Without the perspectives, the vision, and follow through of innovators like Dr. Jafari, progress in this field wouldn’t have been possible. SZ

And charging $25 (seriously) for PDFs. They’re fine if you don’t mind reading potentially edited through MIYO (and at that point not peer reviewed) content in a lousy web reader for free (lousy on purpose to push you into buying their other overpriced wares)…

Frank Lyman is the SVP of MyEdu,  the nation’s leading student academic platform for completing college, which has already helped more than 3 million students across 800 campuses by providing degree planning, credit management, workload tracking and social applications specifically designed around students’ needs. The sole focus of MyEdu is to improve graduation rates and lower college costs, ensuring students achieve a significantly better return on their educational investment.

I would like to nominate, Keith Koch, Capella University’s VP of Online Product and User Experience, for his work helping to create an award-winning learning community for adult learners. Keith’s background is in web design and e-commerce and he brings that perspective to Education Technology.

His strong impact has been to build a strong team which organizes priorities and works to deliver high-quality web experiences for Capella’s learners.  To build courses, they work closely with faculty subject matter experts who are true experts in their fields.  They use a refined process that combines this subject matter expertise with the team’s instructional design and multimedia knowledge to create world-class learning on the web. This learning is then reinforced with rich support and online community resources to deliver to our learners – who are working adults, with busy personal and professional lives — an experience that’s optimally suited to their unique needs.

With multimedia, mobile technology, asynchronous discussions, etc., education technology has been able to provide learners with new opportunities to engage in higher education. Technology has also enabled us to utilize data to track the learning and demonstrate student outcomes.  When content is served through technology, one can demonstrate the outcomes students are achieving and faculty are delivering, and adjust curriculum based on this data. 

Technology is vitally important to the future of education, and education is vitally important to the future of society. Keith and his team are working on and have been a part of innovative disruption in how higher education uses technology.

Keith discussing Capella’s case study on boosting learning outcomes with NBC Learn: http://www.nbclearn.com/capella/

A sample of one of hundreds of media pieces used in Capella’s courses. The multimedia is created from scratch within Keith’s department to enhance the courseroom experience. Students go through this interactive scenario observing the decisions being made by characters in the simulation. They report their findings and what they learned within the discussions while also debating the conclusions made by their peers.
http://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/RiverbendCity/Missions/BSN4010/PrinciplesOfCulturalCompetence/principlesWrapper.asp

I nominate the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University. Their pedagogically strategic and purposeful integration of technology in the classroom has revolutionized learning at the University. With work that reaches every school on campus, the Center has developed a diverse portfolio of achievements: online platforms to train non-physician clinicians to prevent maternal mortality in Africa; simulations to teach basics of sustainable global development with Jeffrey Sachs’s Earth Institute; content management systems to guide exploration of the role of advertising in presidential elections; video self-reflection tools to support teachers-in-training as they apply instructional principles in the field; and more. They are a model for path-breaking uses of educational technology and deserve to be recognized as such.

I nominate the good people in the department of New Media and Extended Learning (NMEL) at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. For more than a decade this group has intelligently and thoughtfully led the university in responsibly growing a fully online educational program that now serves more than 5,000 students each semester (with a learning management system that serves several times that number). This leadership includes instructing faculty in best-practice pedagogy (on a shoestring budget), maintaining the design and administration of hundreds of fully online classes, and the technical expertise to keep a complex web of systems fully functional. In a time of turf-wars brought about largely by budget cuts, NMEL enjoys a stellar reputation on campus, which in itself should garner them an award. I hope you’ll take the time to look into this organization. 

http://newmedia.unm.edu/ 

According to President Obama, one of the most innovative uses of technology in America right now is happening at Northern Michigan University. When President Obama was ready to announce his national wireless initiative last February, he chose to come to NMU in Marquette, Mich., to highlight Northern being the first university in the nation to build and operate its own WiMAX network.  In his speech, President Obama called NMU “a role model for all of rural America.” He also touted the six men who built the original network in less than a week (actually it was five men and a woman), joking that he wished anything in Washington could be accomplished by so few in such a short amount of time. View a video about how the WiMAX network came to be at NMU and President Obama’s speech at NMU. 
Northern has grown the network to be about 40 square miles and shares access with the K-12 schools, municipalities (fire and police) and government offices in the small cities and towns within the network area. In fact, one of the schools NMU is helping with WiMAX access is Powell Township, a K-8 school on top of the Huron Mountains. To get the signal up to Powellm the NMU WiMAX team had to get creative, bouncing the signal from the campus to a tower on an island in Lake Superior (owned by an NMU alumnus) and up the backside of the mountain to the little country school.  That wireless access is also important to the 9-12 graders who can now attend their high school 20 miles away virtually during periods when inclement weather makes traveling up and down the Huron Mountain highway dangerous.
In November 2010, NMU assisted UMass-Dartmouth in installing a WiMAX network. Today, NMU’s WiMAX system serves has the control center for the UMass-Dartmouth network with all of the  the flow traffic goes through Northern’s system. UMass-Dartmouth is another end point in the NMU network, although one that is literally thousands of miles away. Over the years, NMU has consulted regularly with other universities on how to build WiMAX networks. In 2011, the university was the recipient of the ACUTA Award for Institutional Excellence in Information Communications Technology among mid-size institutions.
Northern, a rural regional comprehensive master’s- large institution of about 9,400, first put itself on the technology map as one of the first laptop universities in Michigan.  Eleven years later, NMU still has one of the largest university-supported laptop programs with nearly 10,000 laptops on campus.  All full-time students receive use of a Lenovo ThinkPad (or MacBook for art and design majors) as part of tuition and fees.  The computers are switched out every three years.  Since launching the laptop program in 2000, NMU has won numerous awards and been selected to a number of lists for “most wired” and “most wireless” campuses. In 2005, NMU was cited by Meru Networks as having the “world’s highest density wireless network” in its Jamrich Hall.  Two examples of using the laptops at NMU in unique fashion include the university engineers designing and manufacturing special music stands to hold the laptops during music students’ practices and streaming live video of the United States Olympic Education Center short-track speedskating team (center is located on the NMU campus) to the national team coaches in Colorado Springs, Colo., prior to the last Olympic Grams. 
Who is one of the best technology innovators in higher education?  Northern Michigan University’s tech team, of course.

I nominate Indianapolis-based
entrepreneur Mickey Levitan and Indiana University professor Alan Dennis, the founders of Courseload, a software that integrates e-texts with the modern university curriculum. Dr. Dennis’s research shows that most students prefer electronic materials over paper books (so much cheaper, for one thing) and ‘ware like Courseload makes it easy for faculty to incorporate them.

As someone who’s done some work with Saint Leo University, I’d like to nominate them for bringing technology into the classroom, and using technology in revolutionary ways to make education accessible. Saint Leo is (http://www.saintleo.edu) is redefining education for the 21st century. Founded in 1889 by Benedictine monks, the private, nonprofit university – recognized as one of the top in the South by U.S. News & World Report — has grown into a nationally recognized leader in online and continuing education for adults and military, while remaining true to their Catholic, liberal arts roots.

Saint Leo’s main campus outside Tampa, Fla. educates more than 1,900 traditional-age students, using the most cutting-edge technologies. For example, the brand new School of Business building is pursuing LEED Gold certification, and features video conferencing, two to four SMART Boards per classroom, a soundproof broadcast studio and state-of-the-art computer labs. And School of Education students remain ahead of the curve with a digital classroom where they get hands-on experience using MacBooks, iPads, iPod touches, student response systems, interactive whiteboards and LCD projectors to create lesson plans that set them apart on the job market.

Saint Leo also offers regionally accredited, 100% online associate, bachelor’s and master’s programs, and has 33 education centers in seven states across the U.S., including on many military bases.

One of the 10 leading providers of higher education to the U.S. military. Saint Leo makes a university education available to all through an investment in innovative, location-spanning technology, including a new website for online programs (http://online.saintleo.edu) launched in 2011. Combining 1,500-year-old Benedictine tradition with 21st century leadership, Saint Leo creates an accessible, student-centered environment that recognizes the dignity, value and gifts of all people.

If you’re interested in any additional information, please contact Kathryn McFarland, Saint Leo’s VP of Enrollment and Online Programs: http://www.saintleo.edu/About-SLU/Directory/Contacts/Kathryn-McFarland .

I am nominating Imagilearning, and its founder, Dr. John Jamison, as a candidate to be profiled. Here is a description of its latest (and extraordinarily innovative program:

“We are in process of adding a new resource to our projects and services in 2012. We will shortly be unveiling our new Learning Management System which will be used for hosting online courses, training and live events. We will be using the platform for our own content, but also offer it as a platform for others to offer their own learning activities as well.

But…what makes this different from EVERY other LMS currently on the market is that we have been able to now blend the features of the traditional LMS with the features of the online 3d virtual world technologies, to offer a platform for web-based, 3d virtual activities. And since it all runs inside a formal LMS, all registration, payments, data recording and reporting is incorporated inside that system.

This means that users can use the familiar LMS steps to view a catalog of available activities, select, register and pay for an activity, and then open a window and enter directly into the 3d environment for that activity. This is in addition to the features for any standard 2d activities that might be available on a full function LMS.

And one more feature…

Because the 3d activities created are browser-based, it is possible for the LMS and 3d environments to communicate with each other directly inside an activity. This means you could give learners specific things to “do” in the 3d space….and their performance can then be communicated to the LMS database. This means that less effective “quizzes” can be replaced with more authentic “performance” activities, and have that specific performance data clearly tracked and recorded for assessment purposes.

If we reverse that, responses to a quiz or survey in a traditional course activity could then determine what the learner sees and experiences when they enter the virtual space. The learner could be presented with a leadership problem, be allowed to choose their response, and then be dropped into the “Tuesday morning staff meeting” where they then have to deal with the impact of the decision they made…just one example.

– 

John Jamison, PhD.

john@imagilearning.com

217.416.4506

http://www.imagilearning.com

Skype: virtualbacon

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jjamison

Zintro: http://www.zintro.com/expert/John-Jamison

Second Life

“Virtual Bacon”

http://slurl.com/secondlife/imagiLEARNING/38/6/21/

“I never try to teach my students anything. I only try to create an environment in which they can learn.”

— Albert Einstein

Professor Ronald Yaros of the University of Maryland. His pioneer class, “Information 3.0: Exploring Technological Tools” focuses on technology and its ability to be used in new and exciting ways–in and out of the classroom. Professor Yaros encourages students to get involved in blogging, photography, podcasts and more during class assignments–even allowing students to tweet questions and updates live from class to a feed posted in the front of the classroom. The interactivity and “newness” of this class made it hands down the best course I have taken at the University of Maryland. As a public relations major, the skills and insights I gained from Professor Yaros have tremendously helped my classroom and experiential studies. Professors and employers are consistently impressed by the amount of information I have available to me from this class and the skills that I learned–SEO tricks, blogging etiquette, image capturing, interacting online and much, much more–and I am constantly suggesting this course to younger students. It takes a special professor to teach students from a variety of major in a multimedia environment while capturing and retaining the attention of each and every one of them. Professor Yaros manages to do this day in and day out through his class using online quiz tools, Wimba interactive classrooms, class blog assignments and Twitter updates and more. College is not just about grades on paper–it’s about what you can take with you when you leave and apply to not just your career but the world around you. That is Professor Yaros’ goal with Information 3.0–one that I can confidently say he meets and surpasses with his students.

Coursekit!

The simple way to manage a course and engage students. And it’s free!

Great article by Alexandra Rice http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-course-management-software-promises-facebook-like-experience/34488

I would like to nominate Coursekit!!!! Coursekit is connecting higher education and social networking in a why that will aid the education experience massively. coursekit.com

Coursekit (http://coursekit.com/) is bringing social engagement to the classroom though an intuitive and engaging platform for instructors that is easy to use and free.

Gotta love Coursekit. It has such a slick GUI. It’s simple to use and the best dam thing is…..IT’S FREE

Coursekit! It is the next big thing for education and will surely surpass Blackboard/Sakai in the near future.

Check it out: http://www.coursekit.com 

I’d like to nominate the two individuals responsible for integrating e-textbooks into the mainstream academic curriculum: Indianapolis-based entrepreneur Mickey Levitan and
Indiana University professor Alan Dennis. Their product is called Courseload, and it’s in use at many major universities, including Indiana University.

Dr. Dennis’s two-year study of e-texts at IU found that most students preferred e-books to paper books. Students like e-books because they’re cheaper, lighter and more sustainable. The Courseload app developed by Levitan and Dennis makes it practical for professors to use e-textbooks for their classes.

CourseKit is an innovative, new online platform aiming to revolutionize higher education. Coming from a large, public university where many classes are taught entirely online with the help of e-Learning platforms, CourseKit has provided a very valuable alternative that reengages the student in the learning process – even when that student takes the course entirely from his or her dorm room. More information at: coursekit.com

Scholastica is an academic journal publishing platform and scholarly community. It’s been created by a group of current UChicago grad students and alums to improve things that they have identified as problems within the scholarly publishing community. Scholastica helps scholars manage academic journals, incentivize and locate reviewers, and improve the speed and quality of academic publishing. (www.scholasticahq.com) 

GradesFirst has expanded their program to support university-wide advising and student persistence.  The software allows academic advisors to manage their advising load, assign tags and categories to students, communicate with students via text messages and Facebook, and maintains the history of the communications in each student’s record.  Advising appointments are managed electronically and advisors from across the institution can review the advising notes made by other advisors. GradesFirst is an effective techonology for managing academic advising university-wide.

When I hear the term “Top Technology Innovator,” the only person who comes to mind is Professor Ronald A. Yaros from the University of Maryland, College Park. Professor Yaros is an extremely enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and hands-on professor. Prior to taking his Online Journalism course I had little to no knowledge of reporting for an increasing online audience. Professor Yaros provided step-by-step guidance and patience to teach us how to create websites, interactive videos, slideshows, and the basics of other media tools such as Adobe Photoshop CS3, Twitter, and Facebook.

Professor Yaros is a technological innovator because he has a diverse portfolio of skills which can be utilized across a variety of disciplines, industries, cultures, and scenarios. His passion for new media and technological innovations has led him to become a respected and sought after educator at the University of Maryland. He developed one of the first blended learning classes at the University of Maryland that combined online work and  in-classroom sessions, which challenged the traditional in-classroom teaching style. He incorporated the new collaboration tools of our era to create the future of what higher education will become in an age of digitization. Rather than seeing change as futile, Professor Yaros’ embraces the technological revolution of this era and finds ways to constantly incorporate new technology into his teaching methods without hindering the quality of students’ education.

Salman Khan, perhaps more than any other person I can think of, is someone who is thinking big about how technology can change education—and putting his ideas into practice. He has made his work available to the world, free of charge. Any person, any where, can have access to Khan Academy.  Other instructors and teachers are using his content in their classrooms. 

GoodSemester – hands down: http://www.goodsemester.com/

This is what BlackBoard wishes it could be!

Michael Staton and his team at Inigral are quickly becoming key thought leaders in this space through their Schools App.   Check them out (http://www.inigral.com) to learn more how they are building a new experience of college community by leveraging Facebook’s platform.

I would like to nominate Dr. Ali Jafari – Indiana University/Purdue University – Indianapolis - Ali Jafari is well known for his research and entrepreneurship in the area of Information Technology (IT), more specifically, on development of a series of Course Management System(s) (CMS). Dr. Jafari is currently working as a Professor of Computer and Information Technology at the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology and Director of the CyberLab[1] atIndiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). He continues to bring innovation and new perspectives to the smart learning environment industry to make teaching and learning easier and more powerful. His latest endeavor – Coursenetworking may prove to truly change the world the world learns.

A few of my professors have recently started using Coursekit. It’s really changed the way that I think of educational software. Now I can get course information from a usable website (finally) and also communicate with my profs and fellow students.

Professor Tim Stelzer and his colleagues in the Physics Education Research Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have transformed teaching and learning on our campus and beyond with these leading-edge innovations:
 
i>clickers, one of the leading classroom response systems available, foster student collaboration and enable formative assessment. More than 2.5 million students (in over 1000 educational institutions in North America) use i>clickers. http://www.iclicker.com

Smartphysics is a complete, tech-driven course package that redefines interaction between students, instructors, and course content—inside and outside of lecture. http://www.smartphysics.com/smartphysics/

Professor Stelzer and his colleagues don’t stop; they are currently developing IOLab, which allows students to do Physics labs from their dorm rooms: http://news.illinois.edu/ii/11/1020/physics_device.html

Professor Stelzer grounds his innovations in extensive research. He shares his expertise generously with the campus community. And he excels as a classroom instructor.

This nomination is endorsed by the Teaching Advancement Board of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I nominate Abilene Christian University’s Mobile Learning team. Folks like Bill Rankin, Mark Phillips, and Stephen Baldridge are doing some amazing work that’s changing the way we think about technology and the classroom.  Mark, for instance, is helping his students develop mobile-friendly electronic textbooks as part of an on-going classroom project. Every new class starts from scratch. He’s showing how student-created alternatives to the common textbook are a viable option.Then there is Stephen Baldridge and the way he’s getting his students to build on their classroom experience. They’re using mobile devices to upload pictures and video from the field and to create podcasts that stimulate group discussion on the fly.
Finally, you may also be hearing a lot from Bill Rankin, ACU’s resident mobile learning guru. He’s fresh off a trip to Dubai where he just delivered a TEDx program. Bill’s mantra is that we have to completely reconsider the architecture of learning. With advances in mobile technology and access to information, we can’t be content with teaching and learning the way we always have, nor can we simply tweak the formula.ACU’s Mobile Learning team is charging ahead on this front and, at venues like this year’s Connected Summit, also trying to share what they know with the wider education community. I never cease to be amazed at the level of creativity, energy and intellect this group brings to the table. They are helping all of us be better educators.

Are we discussing who USES the most technology, who has the most fun, or what improves the learning of students?   We (today!) submitted a paper on a multi-year study that shows an inverse correlation between use of certain very common technologies and student learning.

I recently watched a high school chemistry class in which the students were stumped by long division.  They could not divide 300 by 12 without a calculator.  They could not explain what an exponential function was or its implications.  But they sure could push the buttons on their TI-graphing calculators….

The companies that sell technology (and even the ones that now sponsor on-line talks for the Chronicle of Higher Ed) have little incentive to study if it actually helps learning. The most successful educators approach technology this way:  “What do I want my students to be able to do?  What technology would best achieve that?”  Sometimes the answer is the web, or technology; sometimes it is a piece of paper.  Many never ask that fundamental question to start, and they tend to spend lots of money and achieve little – or worse – actually reduce learning.

Dr. Derrick L. Cogburn is Executive Director of The Center for Research on Collaboratories and Technology Enhanced Learning Communities (COTELCO) and Associate Professor at the American University School of International Service and the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. This summer, Dr. Cogburn led the establishment of the world’s first virtual Master’s program on disability policy focused on Southeast Asia: a Master’s of International Affairs in Comparative and International Disability Policy (CIDP). The CIDP degree is offered by American University’s School of International Service, and is the centerpiece program of the Institute on Disability and Public Policy (IDPP), also led by Dr. Cogburn and funded by The Nippon Foundation.

A 14-year veteran of cyberlearning and geographically-distributed teaching and learning, Dr. Cogburn offered his first virtual classroom in 1999 while serving on the faculty at the University of Michigan School of Information. The design was based on his 1998 article “Globalisation, knowledge, education, and training in the information age” published by the International Forum on Information and Documentation, which is considered by some to be a landmark piece in the field of information and communications technology for development. In his global graduate seminar “Globalization and the Information Society: Information, Communication and Development,” Dr. Cogburn taught simultaneously US and South African students from the University of Michigan, American University, Howard University, University of Pretoria, University of the Witwatersrand, and the University of Fort Hare.

Dr. Cogburn, based in Washington DC, and other CIDP faculty around the world, are using the COTELCO accessible cyberlearning environment to teach an inaugural cohort of masters students – all of whom are blind or low vision; deaf or hard of hearing; or mobility impaired, and dispersed amongst four countries in the ASEAN region. All CIDP courses can be experienced in real-time or accessed on-demand. Courses incorporate numerous universal design principles, and are accessible to blind, deaf, and mobility impaired students.

The IDPP promotes an inclusive, barrier-free, and rights-based global society by providing increased access to higher education for a traditionally underrepresented population of persons with disabilities (PWD). The CIDP program further enables PWD to become disability policy leaders, allowing them to shape the policies that affect them directly.

I would like to nominate Dr. Michael Garver and Brian Roberts from Central Michigan University. Together Brian and Mike have radically increased students’ interaction with course content, each other, and the instructor both in and out of the classroom via the use of screencasting with Camtasia Studio and podcasting. The two have experienced great success by building their version of a “flat classroom” in multiple courses to date. Active learning and student engagement are alive and thriving in their classrooms.

See the interview with Brian Roberts on TechSmith’s Education Community Blog: http://edublog.techsmith.com/2011/10/edu11-presenter-brian-roberts.html
Inside Higher Ed covers Mike Garver: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/15/professor-tries-improving-lectures-removing-them-class#ixzz1e4rghOLx
How Mike is using clickers and competition in his classes (video): http://facit.cmich.edu/tag/mike-garver/
Example lecture from Mike (video): http://facit.cmich.edu/2011/11/18/exploding-the-lecture-cmu-prof-in-the-news/

I nominate Carl Blyth of the University of Texas at Austin. He directs our Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning, and has led the development of a new publishing model for foreign language instructional materials as an alternative to costly textbooks. His center has developed an interactive, online French textbook that is free of charge and free of copyright and licensing restrictions. A beginning foreign language textbook typically costs $125 (and $200 with all the ancillaries, such as audio tapes, video tapes and workbooks). By comparison, Français interactif, http://www.laits.utexas.edu/fi/ offers a range of prices and options: free downloadable PDFs or print-on-demand textbooks for as little as $16.95. More about Carl Blyth here: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/public-affairs/features/2010-archived-features/Texas-Language-Technology-Center.php

I nominate Professor Tom Luxon, at Dartmouth College, who created the John Milton Reading Room http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/, an online study edition of all of Milton’s poetry and selected prose. It was featured in the Chronicle (2008); reference libraries around the world refer their users to it; Wikipedia articles on Milton refer to it; so does the online Encyclopedia Britannica. Teachers around the world use it for their primary text in Milton courses and courses in 17th-C English literature. Over the last 14 years, twenty undergraduates have worked on various aspects of the project, from transcription to translation, annotation and introductions. It has been supported by Dartmouth’s IT Venture Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the State Farm Companies Foundation.

As one measure of its impact and current use, here are some recent usage statistics (Figures in parentheses refer to the 7-day period ending 14-Dec-2011 13:45):
Successful requests: 452,698 (182,620) 
Average successful requests per day: 3,058 (26,088)
Successful requests for pages: 307,244 (123,471)
Average successful requests for pages per day: 2,076 (17,638) 
Distinct files requested: 931 (870) 
Distinct hosts served: 33,099 (14,496) (from almost every country on the globe)

Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, has brought technology to bear on educational challenges from pre-K through higher education. His CREATE Lab has spawned such developments as Finch, a robot designed specifically for teaching computer programming and now being sold by a spin-off company. Tools such as GigaPan and GigaPan Time Machine are being used by researchers to provide lab experiences for students and as a tool of discovery; a recent discovery by CMU astrophysicists regarding supermassive black holes was made with the help of GigaPan Time Machine. The CREATE Lab itself, with an array of community- and education-related projects, is now being duplicated in a satellite lab at Marshall University. Nourbakhsh has approached robotics as a tool for empowering people, whether they be students, artists or simply members of a community. He is sensitive to the social and ethical issues surrounding robots and has helped engage a broad community in exploring and understanding the technology. 

Inigral, doing great things to help make students more prepared for success before starting at the school by connecting incoming students with others who share similar interests.  Helps to reduce the situations where a new students feels lonely and isolated.  Gives them the needed social circles  from day one (actually before starting) to assure they succeed.

I nominate Rich Demillo- Director of the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) at Georgia Tech. Demillo is bringing a unique fusion of razor sharp insights honed as Chief Technology Officer at Hewlett Packard and hands-on experience as former Dean of the College of Computing to drive real institutional innovation.

Recognizing that the Academy appeared to be increasingly divergent from many of its stakeholders’ needs and wants, Rich started C21U as a thought center for disruptive innovation and institutional change, focusing on the idea of using “living laboratories” to explore technological and institutional innovation. Much of this work is based on insights outlined in his , Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities, where he details the need for institutional change in higher ed and proposes strategies for facilitating it. Right now, key ideas being prototyped at C21U include new metrics for measuring and assessing institutional effectiveness, the use of “unconferences” to stimulate new ideas, and MOOCs (massively open online courses) to encourage participatory learning.

As an organization committed to collaboration, C21U has successfully developed relationships with a wide array of organizations, including my employer, the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Over the last few years IFTF has worked with dozens of individuals interested in shaping the future of higher education. However, Demillo stands out as unique both for the depth of his thinking in this area and his commitment to converting these ideas into real world experiments. It is a pleasure to be able to nominate Professor Demillo and to highlight C21U’s innovative work.

Phil Regier and his team at ASU Online should be recognized for their devotion to innovation in the classroom. They’re using technology to make data-driven decisions; through their projects, like those with Pearson’s eCollege, Knewton, and the University of New South Wales, classes are becoming more engaging and personalized to fit individual students’ needs. What’s going on at ASU online right now will change the way students learn at ASU and be a model for other large universities looking to use technology to improve education.

I’d like to nominate TESOL’s Electronic Village Online (EVO) for providing free professional development on integrating technology into the educational classroom for English language instructors worldwide for the past 11 years.  It started as a special project in 1999 of the computer-assisted language learning (CALL) interest section of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).  Last year around 1100 teachers participated in the free online training sessions that take place annually in January and February.

Our goal is to allow learning anywhere, anytime, with as little expense as possible. Thus EVO moderators and mentors are all volunteers, and participants need only provide their own Internet access to take part in activities. Participants and experts engage in collaborative, online discussions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. Here’s a listing of our sessions for 2012 with powerful workshops on everything from digital storytelling to video productions on SecondLife to online mentoring and more:
http://evosessions.pbworks.com/w/page/48510148/Call_for_Participation2012

Without a doubt, I think the leading Higher Education Social Media Expert is: DR4WARD

Importantly, I didn’t even go to Syracuse but I see him and his posts most days on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. Almost sound, professional tips, strategies, case studies and useful. Wish I had of had cool, transparent, collaborative Professors like William J. Ward aka. DR4WARD

Geoff De Weaver

Here at Kaplan University we use technology to advance accountability for our learning outcomes across the institution. At a nuts and bolts level, this means keeping track of all the details needed for over 400 program-level outcomes and, as of today, 7,027 course-level outcomes through a custom-developed data repository. The repository interacts with our online learning platform which serves more than 53,000 students total and approximately 6,000 on our campuses. We collect, through online forms available for all faculty, how students are doing in achieving these learning goals. And then the fun really begins as we collect all the data together, analyze how students are doing, and share the information – through a variety of technologies: everything from emails to constantly updating online reports – to stakeholders across the university.

We think of it as harnessing technology to truly close the loop on assessment information informing one of the fundamental purposes of higher education: answering the question, are our students learning what they need to be successful in their educational journey for improved employment prospects? Technology isn’t the end in and of itself; it’s about keeping us accountable to our mission.

Office of Institutional Effectiveness, Kaplan University
http://www.kaplan.edu

I’d like to nominate Concord Law School of Kaplan University for its Peer Evaluation
System (PES), which debuted this year and is completely online.  
Concord launched in 1998 as the first wholly online law school.  The PES
evaluates our 25 full-time professors and numerous adjuncts for teaching
quality in 53 discrete areas based on student assignments, student
interaction and live class performance.   Concord’s online learning
platform manages the data for the review of more than a dozen events including: 
Peer and Self Evaluated Essays or Assignments; Peer and Self Evaluated
Student Interactions; and Peer and Self Evaluated
Classes.  Using Concord’s online technology to support PES allows the
evaluation and feedback for each event to occur relatively quickly and for
comprehensive reviews to occur on  a regular, on-going basis. (And it
is all paperless!) Peer evaluation emphasizes our commitment to a quality
learning experience for the students and to fostering a learning community not
just for the students, but also for the faculty. Faculty members receive a
summary of their relevant metrics, including individual response times to
student assignments and email questions vs. the average response times for all
Professors. Faculty members also receive the benefit of peer suggestions as to
how to improve communications with students, provide even better feedback on
assignments, and tips on having more effective classes. Faculty members also
receive the benefit of student evaluation comments. All in all, the system is a
tremendous asset to the school in improving the student experience.

Andrew Tallmer

Associate Dean of Faculty

Concord Law School of Kaplan University

I nominate Professor Perry Samson at the University of Michigan for sure!

I would like to nominate CALI, the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Education.
See cali.org
Legal education is largely unchanged since the late 19th century when Christopher Columbus Langdell began using the case method of instruction. With projects like eLangdell, Classcaster, and the Legal Education Commons, CALI is helping to drag legal education kicking and screaming into the 21st century. And through its conferences and webinars, CALI is sharing these techniques with legal educators.

http://www.nacubo.org/Business_Officer_Magazine/Magazine_Archives/November_2011/Self-Service_Budgeting.html
XLerant has taken a decidedly unsexy activity that Academics
of all shapes and sizes simply hate – budgeting – and turned it into something
that anyone can do… easily. I realize that this does not grab headlines the way
online learning does, but given the enormous pressure that colleges are under
today to manage resources deliberately and thoughtfully, it really matters. Parents
can’t afford rising tuitions, students don’t want to take on a mountain of
debt, and Administrators know they need help.

The link above is to an article in last months’ Business
Officer Magazine profiling how Howard Buxbaum partnered with XLerant to bring
self service budgeting to Drew University.

http://www.XLerant.com

I’d like to add my support for this nomination. I first discovered TESOL’s Electronic Village Online in January 2011, and participated in two sessions.  I found it to be a very useful and convenient way to develop professionally as well as build my personal/professional learning network.  I was amazed to find that this very professional training is all done by volunteer ESL educators: sessions are conducted by a huge team of volunteer moderators, capably assisted by volunteer mentors and led by a team of volunteer co-ordinators.  This year I was invited to join the moderation team for one of the sessions and happily agreed. I took part in the extensive training session for moderators and experienced all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to set up the sessions before the call for participation goes live. 

TESOL’s Electronic Village Online (EVO) deserves to be counted amongst the top technology innovators.

I too would like to nominate Michele DeStefano and Michael Bossone for creating the LawWithoutWalls (LWOW) programme.  A previous post has detailed the nature of the programme and to avoid duplication I would therefore limit my comments to the following (further information can be found on the LWOW website: www.lawwithoutwalls.org ). Whilst many professors have utilised technology to enhance teaching in the classroom Michele and Michael have taken the role of technology in education one step further by using it to create a new teaching model that would not otherwise be possible.  By embracing a broad range of IT tools (Adobe Connect, Skype, Google + and Twitter to name but a few) Michele and Michael have taken legal education to the next step by enabling students from around the world to participate in online lectures and debate whilst forming relationships that will last well beyond the duration of the programme.  LWOW is a ground-breaking programme for a profession that is at a crucial stage in its development (whether studied academically or pursued in practice).  Information technology and globalisation are having (and will continue to have) a profound impact on the future of the legal profession and it is essential for students to be aware of this and to develop the skills necessary to flourish in this environment.  LWOW provides a unique opportunity to do this and, in particular, allows participants to understand how IT can enable relationships and thought leadership to be developed on an international basis, where previously this would not have been possible.  In doing so, LWOW enables students to develop the skills (and mindsets) necessary to become innovators of the future and it is for these reasons that I consider Michele and Michael themselves to be true innovators in using technology in higher education.   On a personal level, LWOW is the culmination of intense hard work, coordination and strategy; bringing together universities and pre-eminent academics and entrepreneurs from all over the world to better understand how technology can innovate legal education and practice.  This is no small feat and would not be possible without the drive, commitment and belief that Michele and Michael have in the objectives of LWOW, making them deserved recipients of this award. I would be happy to provide any further information/clarification that may be required.

@chronicle-ace10e175a83842dffb8ca1612b707fc:disqus ………my classmate’s step-mother makes $72/hour on the computer. She has been fired for 6 months but last month her income was $8134 just working on the computer for a few hours. Go to this web site and read more http://nutshellurl.com/22i5

Have to nominate @DR4Ward, Prof William Ward at Syracuse for this. Having been in his classes (as a visitor) seen his syllabus and engaged with him on the social space, it appears there are few people who are embracing all that’s new (socially and digitally) and imparting it to students in a way that can benefit them personally and professionally as well as Bill. 

I’d like to add my own personal story, too.  My knowledge base for online learning and teaching has greatly benefited from my involvement with EVO for the past 2 and a half years. I can’t think of any other organization, school or company that has provided such a fantastic menu of tech training, especially for free.  I was able to apply my newly learned Web 2.0 skills during these sessions as a moderator and then a mentor.  This experience aided me tremendously when I later applied it to my professional online course design for my job at the university.  The atmosphere of the EVO learning environment is always courteous and welcoming to new learners.  I’m forever thankful to those experienced Webheads who trained me and who now encourage me to lead!

MindMixer – Although new to the higher ed market, MindMixer is currently working with 75 communities across the country to better engage their citizens. Now, the model is taking shape on campuses. Many companies/campuses have addressed the service aspect (online registration, upload homework), but no one has effectively addressed the social aspect. MindMixer provides an easy and cost-efficient way to engage students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, and local constituents in conversations dictated by the administration.
Demo site: http://nebraskastate.mindmixer.com
http://www.mindmixer.com

Andy
Petroski Educates, Motivates Students to See Technology Potential

In leading projects for training in the Virtusphere, where
virtual reality meets real life—where, for instance, anatomy students can
traverse the human body—Andy Petroski continues to forge new inroads in
innovation.

As the Director of Learning Technologies and Associate
Professor of Learning Technologies at Harrisburg University of Science and
Technology, Petroski parlays his drive and passion for technology to educate,
motivate, and inspire students to develop careers in technology fields and
become lifelong learners.

Changing educational experiences and improving student
motivation and performance through the use of technology has long defined
Petroski’s personal and professional mission.

And it didn’t end when he won “Technology Educator of the
Year” honors from TECHQuest PA in 2010.

Petroski engages his students, encouraging them to take
front seats on “technological thrill rides” such as the Virtusphere (http://www.harrisburgu.edu/virtusphere), a versatile simulation platform
comprising a 10-foot, hollow ball of ABS plastic, hardware that includes
wireless head-mounted display goggles, and software. In Virtusphere, users can
safely traverse a real or imagined 3-D world in micro or macro; walk through
the human nervous system, a battleground, a crime scene, an alien planet, or
even a data set. Virtusphere transcends the physical and financial limitations
of time, space, and materials.

The Virtusphere was in the spotlight at the school’s
Learning and Entertainment Evolution Forum (LEEF), an event (co-coordinated by
Petroski) that attracts a national audience of e-learning designers and
developers, educators and instructors, and game designers and developers, and
examines the impact of games, simulations, and virtual worlds. The Virtusphere
has been used by the U.S. military for training, and two were set up for
entertainment purposes at a Las Vegas casino.

Petroski works with other
faculty and staff at Harrisburg University to create learning solutions that
take advantage of the sphere’s ability to add locomotion to the learning
experience. Petroski’s work also involves creating alternate reality games for
learning. 

Petroski sees unlimited potential for the technology,
including bringing historic sites alive and building battlefields and towns as
they were in their prime to construct a snapshot of the past.

But it’s his eye on the future that ignites Petroski and
makes his courses “must take.”

He helped launch the region’s first gaming meeting between faculty
and businesses with the SSGX group (simulation and serious games eXchange),
which has the goal of creating a gaming hub and raising awareness of the talent
in the gaming, simulations and virtual worlds in this region. He is educating
businesses that “gaming” does not equate to wasting time.  “Playing” can be a productive way to learn
and work.

New technology and the influx of a younger generation have created the
opportunity for more effective, engaging learning tools. The ability to
interact with a scenario, while learning new material, decision-making skills
or “how to” accomplish a task is an important element to employee training and
growth.

Few educators have the opportunity to create new academic
departments and fewer still give rise to the only academic program of its kind
in a region that is home to 21 other universities. This award-winning
instructional technologist developed the Learning Technologies Master of
Science (LTMS) program at Harrisburg University, spearheading recruiting
efforts and forming partnerships that allow the program to be delivered at
multiple sites around the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

His passion and dedication to
changing the learning experience with technology has helped grow the LTMS from four
students in the fall of 2008 to almost 65 students for spring 2012 and has
helped Harrisburg University and the Center for Advanced Entertainment and
Learning Technologies (CAELT) become recognized as a national leader in the
exploration of games, simulations and virtual worlds for learning.

Petroski has created
innovative delivery methods for the LTMS program, including programs that
emphasize extended time for application of class projects with real-world
audiences and combining online, synchronous learners with face-to-face
classroom learners in one class section. He connects the advances in the
LTMS program to teaching and learning at Harrisburg University as well.

Through training,
communication and sharing of best practices, Petroski has introduced the Harrisburg
University faculty to classroom
technologies, social bookmarking, social media, alternate reality games and
simulations.  He is on the Board of Advisors for the Social Media Club
education initiative and is coordinating the formation of a student chapter at the
university. 

He is also on the board for
the Central Pennsylvania ASTD, where he manages the chapter’s Twitter activity,
including providing monthly webinars on getting started with Twitter and managing
bi-weekly Tweet chats. Petroski has also been on the planning committee
for EdCamp Harrisburg, an unconference for teacher professional development and
devoted to K-12 education issues and ideas.

For the past two years, Petroski
has been working with others at Harrisburg University on a concept that will
combine the most impactful learning approaches and technologies into a learning
system that would re-engineer the higher education experience to be more
competency and learner driven. The first step toward putting the system into
action will take place in fall 2012, when an alternate reality game, designed
by Petroski and the university’s CAELT, will be put into place for the new
student “Welcome Weekend.”

Petroski knows where
technology, innovation, and education intersect. He also knows work in these
areas succeeds only if he’s able to find newer, alternate routes. Based on his
resume, Petroski is ahead of the game, 
eminently qualified to be the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Technology
Innovator of the Year.

Harrisburg University, its
students, and those ready to explore the next great thing in technology can’t
wait to see what Andy Petroski does next.

I have been singing the praises of Electronic Village Online since I first participated in 2006. This engaging, energetic approach to worldwide conversations about language learning and teaching exemplifies both professionalism and volunteerism at their best. For a live demonstration at my university (LIU), connecting with international colleagues at other institutions in real time, I chose the title, “Online Learning: Is it Cold or Is it Warm?”  EVO is the warmest place on earth in January and February!  Beginning as a participant, I was mentored and encouraged, nudged and cheered on, to become a moderator, a coordinator, and a mentor – all roles I have had to grow into in a natural progression. EVO makes online activity seem not only natural but irresistible. I cannot think of a better way to recognize this outstanding educational effort than to include it in the Chronicle’s list of the top ten innovations!

Video on Social Reading: http://youtu.be/FeAklqexR88?hd=1

GradesFirst is an educational software company that provides an innovative Student Support System. It helps advisors, tutors, professors, and coaches work together to identify and assist at-risk students when they need it most. It also allows students and faculty to easily communicate using whatever technologies they prefer, like texting or Facebook. This helps to improve student success and increase university retention rates. GradesFirst has many unique features, but here are a few:

1. A Facebook app that lets students schedule advising appointments, request tutors, and check how many required study hall hours they have left each week. It even allows students to interact with faculty who don’t have a Facebook account of their own.

2. Centralized and automated student support documentation, such as appointment notes, at-risk status, and class attendance logs. Access to these records can be shared across the support ecosystem, which allows advisors, tutors, professors, and coaches to easily work together to give students the best opportunity for success.

3. Precisely targeted group communications. Rather than bombard the entire student body with mass messaging, GradesFirst enables precisely targeted communications to specific groups of students. Need to contact all the Football Linebackers? Freshmen in English 101, Section 3? Juniors with a GPA less than 2.5? Faculty can do it in a matter of seconds with
GradesFirst.

4. Communications tools that work like a technology translator, so different people can have a conversation using whatever means they prefer. For example, a conversation can occur between an advisor using e-mail and a student texting from their phone! Or, a professor can send out a group text from their computer, and if students are in the mood to talk, they can simply press call. GradesFirst automatically receives the phone call, routes it to the professor’s phone, and the conversation continues.

If you want to learn more, you can visit http://www.gradesfirst.com.

I would like to vote for  TESOL’s Electronic Village Online (EVO).  I think they have been doing some awesome things. They have provided free professional development on integrating technology
into the educational classroom for English language instructors
worldwide for several years. Also, EVO is open source for learning and you do not have to be a member to join sessions.