Ancient History Ramblings

Global Campus

The University of Illinois Global Campus is now up and running. This is a program designed to reach out to the adult learner who is off-campus and focusing on a career-related degree or certification. It will be interesting to see how it works out. Online education is continuing to grow and many campuses are trying to figure out how to incorporate distance education or boost its presence among their offerings. While online education offerings are increasing, I do worry about some of the courses. Many colleges are desperate to offer online courses but are unwilling to invest in the proper technology or the training for the faculty. There seems to be a belief that if you can teach, you can teach anywhere or in any medium - which is not true. Many academics lack the technology skills to offer courses online and it requires more than a passing familiarity with WebCT, Blackboard, etc.

RSM

Meresamun Followup

As a followup to my original post on the exhibit Meresamun at the Oriental Institute back in February. I received an email telling me about a new interactive web-page that allows you to get a taste of what the exhibit is like. It is worth checking it out and spending some time playing around with the interactive features.

RSM

Handbook of Emerging Technologies

I ran across an interesting article in Wired Campus entitled "U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology." Two researchers have created a web based guide (Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning) in an effort to help colleges and universities modify their teaching methods to reflect better the new ways that students absorb and process information. I am intrigued by the idea, but have some reservations about some of the information in the article.

• In the its introduction, the handbook declares the old pedagogical model—where the students draw their information primarily from textbooks, newspapers, and their professors—dead. "Our learning and information acquisition is a mash-up," the authors write. "We take pieces, add pieces, dialogue, reframe, rethink, connect, and ultimately, we end up with some type of pattern that symbolizes what's happening 'out there' and what it means to us." Students are forced to develop new ways of making sense of this flood of information fragments.

I intend to spend some time on the site and see what it says.

RSM

Latest PKAP Meeting

As the season gets closer, we are going to have more PKAP meetings for plan for the season. I have to admit that I feel like the summer is sneaking up on me and I have begun to worry just a bit about getting things done in time. We held a meeting this week between me, Dave, and Bill. I talked them into trying out a new piece of software I was able to obtain - Adobe Connect Pro. I was interested in seeing if it worked well for a video meeting for the three of us and if it did, I was hoping to have all PKAP volunteers meet together for an introductory meeting before we all arrive in Cyprus. It did seem to work well, but the learning curve for being able to advantage of all its features is a bit daunting.

RSM

Second Life Competitor

It looks like there is a new competitor for second Life to worry about. The University of California at San Diego announced recently that one of its professors is working on creating a new virtual world environment that will offer more flexibility than Second Life. An article on the subject says that:

• The center will use a new hybrid-computing platform developed by IBM. Sheldon Brown, a professor of visual arts at the university who is also the director of the new center, said artists working with simulations have been limited by the computing technologies available. The new IBM platform, Mr. Brown said, offers an increased level of flexibility and power that will give artists more freedom.

 

For more information check out the Wired Campus article "New Research Center to Design 'Next Generation' of Virtual Worlds."

RSM

Dead Sea Scrolls

A recent article on the Time website "Scholar Claims Dead Sea Scrolls 'Authors' Never Existed" details the claim by scholar Rachel Elior that the Essenes, who have loge been believed to be the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, never existed. Elior contends that the Jewish historian Josephus invented the Essenes as a way to prove to the Romans that there were exceptional Jews worthy of respect. Needless to say, this theory has drawn criticism from other scholars.

RSM

Byzantine Monastery Found

Farmers near Jerusalem recently uncovered the site of a late fifth or early sixth century AD Byzantine monastery. The site which covers about four acres is located along the slope of a spur that descends toward Nahal Dolev. Archaeologists have been working on the site since November and has uncovered about 1/3 of the site.

RSM

Interesting Article

The Wired Campus had a very interesting blog today. The article "Randy Bass and Bret Eynon: We Need R&D for Teaching With Technology" addresses the fact that higher education is always one of the last groups to react or adapt new technologies. The blog opens with:

• When it comes to innovations in teaching and learning, higher education seems like the last to know and the slowest to respond. In every other way, we push at the frontiers of knowledge, ask critical questions, take risks. In all other realms of research, practices of peer review, dialogue, accountability, and replication engender innovation. Why is it the opposite for teaching and learning?

The article goes on to suggest that 4 shifts in thinking are needed:

1. Tthrow out old assumptions about diffusion of innovation, early adopters, and mainstream faculty.
2. We need to recognize that learning has expanded far beyond what higher education can handle at the moment.
3. We must create communities within institutions that truly engage experimentation in the context of inquiry and systematic improvement.
4. We need to engage new social tools to develop a culture of knowledge building around teaching and learning.

They promise to expand on these four thoughts in future blogs. This promises to be a very interesting series of posts and one that I will follow closely.

RSM

Branching Out

It has been spring break week for me and there were many things I needed to work in order to catch up (grading, curricular matters, departmental stuff, etc.). As is my usual, however, I failed to find time to work on them (so far) and instead focused on items that were a bit more relaxing. On the bright side, I got a chance to do some things I wanted to do and one of those things might actually turn out to be beneficial in the long run. For 2 days this week I was able to participate in training sessions that taught me how to use a Geoscan FM 256 Fluxgate Gradiometer. While my main function on PKAP has been as a ceramicist, I thought it wouldn't hurt to branch out a bit and see if I could develop some ability in other areas - in case I am phased out out of the project. It is clear that mastering this geophysical device is going to take some work on my part to become even marginally proficient. We have some more training to do next week in the field so I will the chance to see if I have any ability in the area of geophysical survey.

Quick thought, if you get the chance, check out Rome - The Imperial Fora: Archaeological News, Excavations & Discoveries. It is a nice collection of items dealing with the Roman Forum.

RSM

PKAP Season Looming

I am on break this week, even though I have been into the office every day so far and plan to go in tomorrow also. It dawned on me today that the first PKAPers will be arriving in Cyprus in only 75 days. This was a sobering realization, since so far this off-season I have felt like we have had a really good handle on things for summer 09. Now that I know we only have 75 days, I am starting to have my doubts and feel like we are falling behind. There are several issues contributing to this: 1) the project keeps growing larger each year, for example this fieldseason the project will consist of  probably 32 people, and don't get me wrong - this is a good thing, but the degree of difficulty in managing logistics is growing exponentially, or so it seems; 2) my co-directors and I seem to have less time for planning in the off-season since committee and departmental work seems to grow each year. I keep waiting for it to decrease, but that will never happen. Anyway, what this means is that I need to contact Bill and David and set up either a Second Life meeting or some other videoconference to discuss PKAP "stuff."

RSM