By keeping the toolbar centrally managed, we can easily edit all of the links available for all students and the instructor. THis means we can delete the things that “disappear” on the web, edit links that move and easily add new tools that are identified by students and faculty who are using the room.

We are using a toolbar from Conduit to do this. The really neat thing is that anybody can download this toolbar so they will also have the links and resources available on their home computer as well. If they refresh the toolbar, the changes are there….like magic!

We really want folks to tell us what they want in the toolbar. So, if you have a suggestion, head over to the NEXT Classroom suggestion box and pass along a tool or resource that needs to be in the NEXT Classroom toolbar!

NEXT Classroom Toolbar suggestion box!

Image Credit: ‘This box, it suggests?‘ (used with CC license)

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If you want to see it as a super groovy slideshow, check it out here:

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• Desks
• Chairs
  (see it in action action)
• Teacher Station

Our current step is the setup of computing environment. For this, the concepts of user (student and faculty) generated content, open source, cloud computing, collaboration and sharing are very much in the forefront. This is why we chose to go with dual boot laptops for the students and a dual boot Mac Min for the teacher station.

The teacher station will contain many of the familiar elements like touchpad controls, document camera and remote mouse. It also will contain a few items that are not found in our current classrooms like:

• Webcam
• Airliner (now called the SMART Slate from same manufacturer as our Sympodiums)
• USB based second monitor
• Ports for iPod, media cards and other inputs
• Guest computer access

The computers are being set up with our standard load of Microsoft Office, SFTP clients and other software. We are also adding media creation software and mind mapping software.

Here’s where we are with that list right now:

Software:

• Audacity
• Inkscape
• Skype
• Picasa
• Livebrush
• VLC Player
• Mindnode (Mac only)

Browsers

• Internet Explorer 7 (PC only)
• Safari (Mac only)
• Google Chrome
• Firefox 3.5 with these extensions:

• • Delicious Bookmarks
  • Adblock Plus
  • Resizable Text area
  • Cooliris
  • Readability
  • Greasemonkey
  • Tabmix Plus
  • Jetpack
  • Screengrab
  • Mobile Barcoder

With an interest in cloud based services and tools, we are also building a custom set of bookmarks for the multiple browsers that will include links to services/tools that can be used by the faculty and students.

To centrally manage those within multiple browsers, except Google Chrome, we are going to use a NEXT Classroom browser toolbar (built from Conduit)

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The NEXT Classroom provides Pellissippi State with a test bed environment for trying out technologies that are cutting edge to explore their efficacy in higher education as well as a place to install higher cost technologies that could not be deployed in every classroom. Moving beyond the technology, the vision for the NEXT Classroom is also as a place to test new teaching techniques and approaches. The work of the SCALE UP project at North Carolina State University was influential in the planning of the NEXT Classroom even though the scale of their work was for much larger classes as was Designing Learning Spaces for 21st Century Learners by Diane Brook and Learning Spaces, an EduCAUSE book edited by Diana Oblinger

The room is being designed to allow maximum flexibility and adaptability to meet needs both known and anticipated as well as respond to situations that have not yet even been imagined. The furniture will be mobile and flexible with desks that are able to be grouped easily and chairs that transform into “game chairs” and tables so classes can configure the room as they need. The walls will be painted with whiteboard paint to create surfaces for instruction, brainstorming and other work that are not limited to normal whiteboard sizes and shapes.

The teacher station will be a dual boot computer so an instructor can teach with Mac or PC. There will be two projectors that will allow for input from any video source in the room in a mirror (both projectors showing the same input source) or in tandem (different video source to each project)

Students will have access to a laptop cart with dual boot laptops so they can work in PC or Mac environment as they wish or need. The room will be served by wireless networking to keep the layout fluid and flexible.

As many avenues for bringing in connections and media area also being planned including:

• webcams for all laptops and the teacher station
• microphones for all laptops and teacher station
• central sound system for all audio sources and teacher voice amplification
• media card readers for all laptops and teacher station
• iPod docking station for teacher station
• guest computer port for the teacher station

Teaching in the NEXT Classroom will be assigned by a competitive process that will be adminstered by the Instructional Development Committee (IDC). Faculty who wish to teach in the room will develop a proposal for testing new technologies or techniques and/or action research within the room. Future additions to the NEXT classroom will be based on criteria such as:

• Faculty request
• Demonstrations of new technologies at conferences or meetings
• Research based findings on the needs for the next generation of learners

What else does the NEXT Classroom need?
What else does our NEXT student generation expect?

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But, the work of Jane Hart at the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies to create the Top 100 Tools for Learning is always very helpful and informative for both seeing trends in popularity and discovering unknown gems.

My 2009 list is:
1. Firefox – same reasons as before. Free.
2. Tweetdeck – I have finally “gotten” Twitter and my personal learning network is pretty much based there now. Free.
3. Delicious – I have to have my bookmarks and I have to have them anywhere, searchable, tagged and shareable. Free
4. Keynote – I have been speaking more in the past year than I have in a long time. So, I have gone back to presentation mode and Keynote does the job for me. Not free.
5. Wordpress MU – We have it installed on campus and I am so tickled to see our blogging community growing bit by bit. Free!
6. MPEG Streamclip – handles most any video I throws its way and encodes, clips and more. Free!
7. Etherpad – I have been using it for collaborative work with faculty and ETS. I cannot believe it just got bought by Google but I have hope for the open source option.
8. Flip and Kodak Zx1/Zi8 cameras – these little web ready video cameras are great for creating quick content both for and by students
9. Google Video Chat – love it!
10. Vimeo – I like it better than YouTube because it has less ads, fewer crass comments and a nice privacy feature for sharing videos. For a while the encoding was better but I think YouTube has caught up with that.

Audrey J Williams’s Top Ten Tools (from 2007 and 2008)

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I have been thinking about this for several years now but some recent events have brought this to the forefront. The “camel meet straw” event was when our most recent course management upgrade was installed, it was extremely buggy with Internet Explorer 8, which had been installed on campus as a standard browser. Of course the CMS vendor was clear in their listing of supported browsers (and IE8 was not on that list). Still, we had to deal with MANY calls and frustrated users because they were trying to use their updated browser in our updated system and things just were not happy.

I see two major problems here:

1. it is time-consuming and expensive to continually develop a product and test it against ALL browser flavors available now so the supported browser list stays “dated” for longer than end users want or need
2. it is impossible to prevent end users from upgrading to the latest and greatest browser, (especially when Microsoft Software Update does the upgrade for the user)

So, I present the concept of the EDUbrowser.

It really is pretty simple. Take a browser engine like WebKit or Gecko and build your own browser around it. Using a plugin architecture (I know Gecko supports that – don’t know about WebKit), you can add features like HTML editing (like Xinha) , annotations (ala Scrapbook or Zotero), social networking options such as Flock has done and, perhaps, work with third party companies like Respondus to create optional secure browser features for online testing/quizzes much like Respondus LockDown Browser but within the EDUbrowser rather than using a totally separate product.

Add in some video editing capabilities (like Kaltura) and Audio Recording (such as the JetPack audio option from Mozilla labs) and student and faculty generated content and media becomes even easier.

And, of course, you can build a toolbar that “brands” your school so you can also provide access to support links, school event information and more. Something like Conduit would do the trick

Plus, if the LMS vendors take the EDUbrowser and test it against their products, then it can be come the ONLY supported browser greatly simplifying their QA testing and verification as well as the local school’s own technical support.

Thus, you simply tell faculty and students that they must use the EDUbrowser. Our experience with the RLDB has been that students are fine with downloading and installing something they need for class, so I don’t think asking them to use this particular browser will be an issue (except for those who are attending class at work and cannot install something on their computers there – I can see that being an issue).

What else does it take to get the EDUbrowser out in the wild? What else would you add to it?

Photo remixed from:

cc licensed flickr photo shared by kate e. did

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