Distance Course on Electronic Democracy and Identity Theft

Indeed, one of the problems is that in DL classes you don't usually see the person with whom you are interacting.

The students don't see the professor.

The Professor does not see her/his students.

What to do?

Easy!

First, make images of yourself available. An easy way to do this is to open a Flickr account - http://www.flickr.com/ - and post some picture of yourself. Use images that may help the students understand you as a professional. Students can also open an account and post images of themselves -

Second, everyone has some sort of video camera or can borrow one for five minutes. Shoot a five minute or less introduction of yourself, create a "Group" or "Channel" on Youtube and post the short videos there. That way you will all at least gave a short mind map (a mental picture) of each other when you interact in the class. I have a coastal zone management group that will be used for my Coastal Politics and Policy class http://www.youtube.com/group/coastalzonemanagemen

Of course, the other way to do this is to use one of the many video enhanced communications tools such as Skype or Instant Messenger. In fact, this semster my TA Mike McCoy is Skyping with the students in a small course on Identity Theft Prevention we are teaching this semester. It works very well and it's also an excellent way to have "virtual office hours" with distance students.

If we are going to make distance leraning ever better and more exciting we must use all the tools of IT and enable our students to go there with us. I am certain that the future of distance education lies in making it as rich and diverse and engaging an experience as possible. Technology lets us do that.

Posted by Steffen at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I posted a "grabber" as my first blog -- why?

In distance learning classes where you don't see your students and they don't see each other, the level of passion and importance had to be significantly higher than in a face-to-face class.

In my 37 years of teaching, and five years of teaching 100% asynchronous distance learning classes, I am convinced that in DL we need to have higher "thresholds of intensity". Every course regardless of the discipline has very high thresholds of emotional and normative tension. In traditional classes we may actually want to diminish this passion. In DL clases we need all the passion we can find!

In distance learning classes the passion is a fuel for creating incentives for students to engage, participate seriously.

I use the moments of tension and apprehension about the subject of my classes - Identity Theft Prevention, The Politics and Policy of Coastal Areas, Electronic Democracy, the Iowa Caucuses and The Selection of American Presidents - as a useful "teaching moment".

More on this later.

Posted by Steffen at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Once again people are at risk from Identity Theft.

The Iowa Department of Education web site got hacked - GED applicants files were compromised.

"The GED web application includes names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers of individuals who obtained a GED from Iowa between 1965 and 2002.
Question: Who is affected?
Answer: Individuals who obtained a GED from Iowa between 1965 and 2002. The application contains approximately 160,000 records, but at this point in the investigation it is estimated that no more than 600 records may have been viewed. "

Sure, I really believe that they know what files were "viewed"! Isn't that a great term for compromised, stolen, highjacked, absconded with, or even TAKEN!

Of course, recently 25 MILLION military files were compromised, bank card holder files have been "viewed", terrorists have used people's identities to commit acts of violence, illegal immigrats work under assumed names which are obtained by stealing the "real" persons identity.

We are at war!

No not in Iraq and not against terrorists, this is a war against the people of the United States! Of course, it is the one war for which we were not prepared! Now we ae paying the price for our indifference and over 50 million Americans a year have some part of their identity compromised.

At Iowa State University we have launched several classes and seminars on ID theft prevention. I and my co-author Michael McCoy have also written a book "Who is You? The Coming Epidemic of Identity Theft".

We are working with colleagues around the country and the world on this issue. We are also working on a National Science Foundation NSF grant and working with the Principal Financial Group on a major ID Theft education and training program.

Stay tuned for more news!

Posted by Steffen at 06:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)