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Katie Livingston-Vale, Ed.D.

Team Leader, Educational Technology Consultants

IS&T Academic Computing

Online journals called "weblogs" or "blogs" are now being employed in MIT courses to teach students how to reflect on experiences and how to share their reflections in a written form with classmates, teachers, and other audiences. This article describes in detail the use of weblogs in a freshman advising seminar during the Fall 2005 semester and also points to other uses of blogs for educational purposes at MIT.

If after reading the article you would like to use a blog in your MIT class, be advised that technical support for class blogs is now provided by the educational technology consultants at MIT Academic Computing. The following services will be available, on a per project basis:

• Needs assessment and recommendation for an appropriate blog technology.
• Development of blog-enabled class web sites; if needed, with certificate authentication.
• Hosting of the web sites on servers maintained by MIT Academic Computing.
• Training on blog technology for faculty, instructors, and teaching assistants.

Freshman Seminar Makes the Most of Weblogs

First-year students at MIT have the option of enrolling in a freshman advising seminar, a weekly class taught by an academic advisor. Members of IS&T Academic Computing have been involved in teaching some of these subjects over the last few years; this past semester Dr. Katie Livingston-Vale and Dr. Philip Long co-taught a new advising seminar centering on the topic of blogs - with help from associate advisor Vivian Leung. The class was offered under the auspices of the Edgerton Center.

Because weblogs, or blogs, have become so popular - Harper's Index states that a new blog is created every second! - the advisors thought they might be a useful tool in helping new MIT students reflect on their transition to the Institute. Here is the class description that appeared in the summer of 2005 in the advising handbook:

SP.727

Blogs, Diaries, Journals and Portfolios: Reflecting on Your First Semester Here

Learn how to use different multimedia tools such as blogging software, e-portfolios, and photo-editing programs to create and maintain an online journal. We'll also examine specific examples of online and traditional diarists, and discuss ways in which blogs and portfolios can help you think about your experiences inside and outside of the classroom. During our meetings you will create an entry that looks back over your classes or events of the previous week. Because MIT is such a fast-paced environment, many students feel that their lives are just "happening" without any time to actually process the events. This seminar offers you a unique opportunity to take the time for reflection. After taking this seminar, we hope that you will continue to practice reflection throughout your MIT career - and beyond.

Six students, five female and one male, signed up for the class. It came as something of a surprise to the advisors that four of the six already had blogs. Several blog and other Internet content companies - including Xanga, Facebook, and MySpace - have been marketing heavily to high school students, and these freshmen were interested in keeping blogs as a way to stay in touch with friends and family back home.

Because Livingston-Vale and Long wanted the students to feel comfortable writing about potentially personal topics, they also set up a private blog site for the class using a pilot Academic Computing blog service. This MovableType-based blog allowed students to choose whether to make their posts readable to the rest of the class or only to the instructors and associate advisor. For the most part, students used their Xanga blogs, which are world-readable.

In Class

At the start of each class, the group chatted about the events of the week, and enjoyed snacks provided by the associate advisor - an integral part of most advising seminars. Next, the advisors provided a list of blogs for the students to view as inspiration for the day. These included:

• Citizen journalism blogs such as those written by survivors of the July 7, 2005 London suicide bombings, West Bank settlers faced with eviction, and people displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
• "Stuff I found interesting blogs" by people who like to collect and share information about technical or cultural items (e.g., notmartha.org, kottke.org, drivetime.ravijain.org - the latter a video-based blog by a resident of Boston).
• Project blogs by individuals who want to document a complex project they have undertaken. Examples included Northeastern University Professor Mark Bridger's blog analyzing the math and science in the TV show Numb3rs and the Blue Blog by knitter Alison Hansel, who guest-lectured about life as a knitting blogger.
• Technical and productivity blogs with advice on personal productivity, gadgets, and the like (for example, lifehacker.com, 43folders.com, digg.com, and technorati.com).
• Other resources such as Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit; RSS feeds; and aggregators such as Bloglines.

After the lecture portion of each class, the students were given time to compose a blog entry for the week. While some students blogged a few times a week outside of class, others relied on the in-class time to reflect on the previous few days.

Toward the end of the semester, Livingston-Vale and Long gave the students directed exercises and links provided by the Academic Resource Center to help them plan how they would get their work done and manage their time through exams. Each week the advisors reviewed the students' blog entries and commented on them.

A Better Lens on Student Lives

The process of presenting blogs and reading student blogs enabled Livingston-Vale and Long to get to know their advisees in a way not previously possible. Students who normally might have put on a brave face about their trepidation at being so far from home admitted or at least alluded to this in their blogs. Students who felt overwhelmed by a subject but were embarrassed to ask for help seemed more likely to come clean about it in their blogs. The advisors no longer had to wait until fifth-week flags were issued to have an idea of whether or not a student was struggling.

Reading blog postings also gave the advisors glimpses into student lives that they had never had before - the social norms in particular dormitories and living groups, issues relating to substance use among peers, and new insights as to how students manage their time. Even if this class is not offered next year, Livingston-Vale and Long plan to ask their future advisees for the address of their blogs. The role of an academic advisor is to help students learn how to be successful at MIT. Based on the experience of SP.727, blogs are proving to be a vital tool in doing that well.

Other Educational Uses of Blogs at MIT

Other educational web sites at MIT that use blogs include:

• MIT Undergraduate Admissions: admissions officers use blogs to provide up-to-date information to undergraduate applicants, incoming students, and their parents, and also support several very popular blogs by current MIT students.
• The MIT Teacher Education Program.
• The MIT Libraries.
• Several MIT classes with total enrollment of over two hundred students; class sites are generally protected (by request) through certificate authentication and are not accessible by the general public.
• Ed Tech Times: this and other articles in our educational technology journal are published with the blog software MovableType.

To enquire further about blog technology or/and to request a blog-enabled web site for your MIT class, contact IS&T's educational technology consultants.

Speaker: Peter S. Donaldson

Ann Fetter Friedlaender Professor of Humanities and Head of Literature Faculty

MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Day: Friday, Feb 24, 2006

Time: 1:00p–2:30p

Location: 1-375

Open to the general public

Cost: free

The iCampus Cross Media Annotation System (XMAS) provides tools to enhance the use of video and image collections in humanities courses and in any subject in which precise reference to visual materials is needed. XMAS can be used in conjunction with image and text collections, and is currently optimized for use with commercially available DVDs as video source. XMAS allows users to rapidly define segments of film which can be replayed by clicking on automatically created links that can be saved in a list or dragged and dropped into discussion threads or online essays.

Sponsor(s): Academic Computing

For more information, contact:

Katie Vale

253-0115

et-consult@mit.edu

Vijay Kumar, Director, Academic Computing, Assistant Provost

Jean Foster, Editor, Ed Tech Times

We are happy to introduce the Ed Tech Times – an interactive, online vehicle for communication about academic computing and educational technology. The change in format and delivery from its predecessor, the Insider, is intended to address the current nature of educational technology activity at MIT – dynamic and diverse, with a high level of widespread engagement. Our hope is that through the active participation and contributions of faculty, staff, and students, this interactive site will become a rich and relevant resource for the community.

Sharing Strategies and Solutions

This is a period marked by important growth and transitions in the educational technology landscape of MIT. Significant initiatives such as TEAL, iLab, and OpenCourseWare (OCW) are looking to move into the next phase of implementation. New services and areas of activity such as High Performance Computing and Spatial Data have been launched, changes in the student computing environment are being planned, a sustainable software infrastructure for education is being built, and of course, there is a new organization, Information Services and Technology (IS&T), to help support this work. In light of these projects, more than ever there is great need to share strategy and solutions and to receive feedback to support good decisions and useful practice.

The primary purpose of the Ed Tech Times is to provide a forum for the MIT academic community to announce and discuss these developments as they occur. Posted content will include articles about new or updated educational technology services and research projects on campus, links to educational technology news from outside campus, as well as announcements of upcoming events or presentations about education technologies such as Crosstalk seminars or training opportunities.

Interactive Features

This newsletter has been designed to be interactive, allowing readers to post comments on article content. Comments will be subject to review before they are posted to ensure appropriateness for a world-readable site, but we want to hear your comments and welcome discussions about the material posted here.

Other features of the Ed Tech Times include the ability to subscribe to e-mail updates whenever a new article is posted, or to receive a regular bimonthly email synopsis of articles posted over the past two months. To receive automatic e-mail updates of new articles, write your e-mail address in the "Notify Me" fill-in box which is located in the lower left hand side of the Ed Tech Times web page, below the "Search" box. To receive bimonthly updates, send e-mail to edtech-times@mit.edu

Those who use RSS readers can also receive updates of new postings by linking to http://edtech.mit.edu/times/index.rdf from their RSS reader.

We welcome submissions of educational technology news from other organizations on campus. Articles may be submitted electronically via email, either in plain text or as attachments in MS Word (.doc) or Rich Text (.rtf) format. Submissions will go through an editorial review before being posted on the site.

We'd like to know what you think about this new format for educational technology news. Please add your comments below or send email to edtech-times@mit.edu.

In addition to the redesign of the back room of the W20 student computing cluster, the cluster in 56-129 will be closing for renovations on June 9 and is scheduled to be reopened sometime in July. (See original article.)

Features of the 56-129 redesign include:

• an LTX Electronic White Board with web server
• modular and soft furniture
• wireless and Ethernet connections

Speaker:
William J. Mitchell
Head, Media Arts and Sciences
Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences

Daniel Jamous

Academic Computing is considering purchasing a site license for on-line video-based MATLAB and Maple tutorials developed by TechnicalMastery and is seeking feedback from MIT faculty, students, and staff. These evaluaton tutorials will be available until August 31, 2004 and can be run on any Windows machine residing in the "mit.edu" domain.The tutorials require Internet Explorer 5.5 (or higher) and Windows Media Player 9.0 (or higher) and can be accessed at:

http://www.technicalmastery.com/eval/

Note:Over the summer, Linux and Mac OS X versions of the tutorials will also be available.

We invite people to evaluate the lessons and post comments. After you have tried the tutorials, please let us know if you a have found them useful, either by commenting below, or by sending email to Daniel Jamous

What's New at What Runs Where

This spring has seen the arrival of important new revisions of Maple and
FrameMaker, as well as some new-to-Athena software packages, and all of these are described at the What Runs Where web site. More updates, including a major Matlab upgrade, are on the way this summer. Among the latest arrivals are two language applications and two graphics applications. (All applications are available for both Sun and Linux platforms unless otherwise noted.)

Maple 9.5

Version 9.5 of Maple, released mid-April, includes a host of new features.
Of particular interest to the MIT community are:

• Integrated algorithms for optimization problems.
• Solvers for differential-algebraic equation systems for advanced modelingapplications.
• Major performance improvements.
• User interface improvements that make complex operations intuitive and
  quick

Refer to the href="http://web.mit.edu/acs/www/numerical.html#maple" target="new">What Runs Where (WRW) Maple entry
for more details.

FrameMaker 7.1 (Sun only)

FrameMaker is a structured document publishing system, frequently
used for publishing
theses. Version 7.1 has added a number of new capabilities:

• Improved set of tools for XML authoring and publishing.
• Support for placing graphics in PDF format into FrameMaker
  documents.
• Rendering of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) as vector-based graphics
  in print and PDF files.
• Acrobat Distiller 6 technology.

Refer to the href="http://web.mit.edu/acs/www/text.html#FrameMaker" target="new">WRW FrameMaker entry
for more information.

Programming Language Packages

• SWI Prolog is an ISO
  compatible compiler for the
  Prolog language which has various enhancements including a C++
  interface, execution
  profiler
  and development environment
  for GUI applications. The Prolog compiler works with a related
  graphics toolkit XPCE, an object-oriented GUI system. SWI Prolog is both
  free and small.
  For more information, see the href="http://web.mit.edu/acs/www/languages.html#SWI" target="new">WRW SWI Prolog entry.
  
• Glasgow Haskell Compiler is a full implementation of
  Haskell, written in Haskell, which is a functional programming language.
  The compiler
  produces fast code, but is itself quite slow and needs a great deal
  of memory. This installation fills a need for this type of language, which
  has been
  lacking on Athena. See the href="http://web.mit.edu/acs/www/languages.html#ghc" target="new">Glasgow Haskell Compiler entry for more information.

Graphics

• inkscape is an open source, scalable vector
  graphics editor. Similar
  to Adobe Illustrator in capability, it aims to
  provide a fully
  XML, SVG, and CSS2 compliant
  SVG drawing tool. See the href="http://web.mit.edu/acs/www/graphics#inkscape" target="new">WRW inkscape entry for more information.
  
• Ipe is a freely downloadable drawing editor
  for creating figures in PDF
  or encapsulated Postscript format. It supports incorporating
  text and figures into LaTeX documents
  and has its own native xml format. For more information see the href="http://web.mit.edu/acs/www/graphics#ipe" target="new">WRW Ipe entry.

For recent additions and a complete list of applications available
on Athena,
visit the href="http://web.mit.edu/acs/www/whereruns.html" target="new">What
Runs Where web site.

A course reader is a compilation of
different materials chosen by a professor and assembled into a paper “book”
that students can purchase as reference for a particular subject. MIT's Copy
Technology Centers (CTC) are now offering expanded and simplified
course reader services to instructional staff and students. Students can
now purchase course readers online, and for faculty there is a more efficient
course reader request process as well as a href="http://web.mit.edu/ctc/www/copyrighttutorial.htm">copyright clearance tutorial to
guide them through the process for materials that are not pre-authorized.

“Instant” Copyright Permission from Expanded Database

The CTC has provided course material for students for many years. Now,
a new course content database not only stores the articles that comprise
the course reader but also the images associated with the material, which
allows - CTC staff to assemble the readers more quickly and efficiently.. Copyright
information for the articles is stored with the document and this vastly
reduces the length of time needed to get copyright clearance. The new database
connects directly to the national Copyright Clearance Center, which provides
instant copyright clearance for thousands of "pre-authorized" titles.

The database also makes it easier to reuse materials. If a professor wants
to use last semester's material with a few changes, the archived course bundle
can be quickly retrieved, modified, and sent to the CTC printers. A twenty-four
hour turnaround time on readers that have been sold out has reduced paper
waste and increased department satisfaction.

Harvard
Business School Cases Included

The CTC has expanded its relationship with Harvard Business School Publishing
(HBSP) and now its course content database has all the
Harvard Business School case collection, as well as other business school
case material distributed through them. This has been a time- and money-saver
for the faculty and students who use HBSP teaching material in their courses.
Reduced rate agreements with HBSP and other publishers make the CTC Copyright
Service cost effective. The CTC hopes to import more collections into the
content database in the future.

Purchase Online

The CTC has improved the distribution of course readers through its a new
online storefront. After selling course readers to "Distance Learning" students,
the CTC has. made all course readers available through. its storefront.. Course
readers can be purchased online via the “Readers Available” link ( href="http://web.mit.edu/ctc/www/coursereader.htm">http://web.mit.edu/ctc/www/coursereader.htm).

The storefront was developed in conjunction with MIT Information Services
and Technology (IS&T). Distance learning students can have their
readers shipped via DHL and local students can pick up their readers on campus
at either E52-045 or 11-004. Although students must still pick up their
course readers, the online ordering has eliminated the long lines at the
start of each semester.

For more information about this service contact the Copyright Administrator,
Donna Mulholland, donnamul@mit.edu, 617. 258.5275.

September 21, noon - 5:00 p.m., 37-312. Registration required.

A representative from Maplesoft will be giving two training sessions on Maple 9.5 the newest version of Maple (one introductory, one intermediate) in room 37-312 (Building 37 Windows cluster) between noon and 5pm on September 21, 2004.

Seating is limited so be sure to register if you plan to attend the event.

For more information or if you have questions about the training, contact Daniel Jamous via e-mail or phone at 252-1383.

General Session Objectives

• Introduction to Maple 9.5 – A first look for experienced users,
  newcomers, or anyone interested.
  • Rock Solid numerics for solving Optimization problems
  • Improved ODE and PDE solvers
  • Easy-to-access interactive task assistants help with
    common tasks, such as unit conversion and solving ODEs
  • A Math and Engineering Dictionary of terms with over
    5000 definitions and 300 diagrams
  • Enhancements to plots improve interactive manipulation
    through sliders, scaling, panning, and an enhanced plot builder
  • New dockable palettes make expression entry easier
  • The new CodeGeneration[Save] command allows user-contributed
    language definitions to be saved in a Maple archive more easily
  • The expanded Tools menu provides easy
    access to 40 interactive tutors, which guide you through mathematical
    explorations in precalculus, calculus, multivariate calculus and linear
    algebra
  • Curriculum-specific visualization routines improve students'
    comprehension in key topics
  • Enhanced context sensitive menus which provide more
    options for problem analysis
  • The Interactive Plot Builder has been expanded to allow
    easier creation of a greater variety of plots
  • Mathematica Notebook conversion and command translation
    saves time when migrating your work to Maple
  • Many new features offer advanced programmers greater
    convenience and programming tools, including debugging a running program
  • Easy-to-use interactive Mapletâ„¢ assistant to set up
    and edit problems
• Introduction to MapleNET solution for web-based teaching and
  learning.
• Introduction to Maple T.A. solution for comprehensive assessment
  and testing such as practice problems, proctored exams, and mastery based
  testing
  • Student Experience
  • Instructor Experience, including authoring questions, assignment
    creation, and grade book navigation