A "New" Kind of Virtualization for Distance Learning

IT communities have been buzzing for a few years with the belief that desktop virtualization is clearly the path of the future. The June 13, 2011 issue of InformationWeek has two separate articles regarding desktop virtualization, a system whereby all functions of the individual user including the applications required to run them are pulled from a remote server. With on-campus virtualization, you do not necessarily need a powerful computer at your desk. Instead you need only a device, such as a Citrix Xen client, capable of pulling everything it needs from the server, displaying it on the screen, and taking inputs from mouse and keyboard. In theory, a college should be able to outfit its lab or classrooms in a more cost effective way.

However, virtualization is also the path of the past. Before personal computers (either Apple or IBM versions) came into being, the business world used large mainframe computers with mindless, aka CPUless and hard driveless, terminals to access them. At some point it just became much cheaper for an organization to own several or many PCs rather than a very expensive and difficult to maintain mainframe. Mainframes in general required their own atmosphere controlled spaces. They had significant trouble with power losses or fluctuations. They required very specially trained and skilled technicians. If a mainframe goes down, every terminal in your organization is down. Designed long ago, the architecture for mainframes could not operate the resource intensive applications of today or even 5 years ago.

Although in virtualization we are not talking about mainframes, a good deal has changed. In fact, virtualization now does not necessarily mean you need a special client device. Instead, it may be possible for a virtual server to work with existing desktop computers, laptops and tablets.

I believe this has a fascinating potential to resolve the issues we see in our technology classes. Typically, students sign up for a technology class who do not have the required software, who have incorrect versions of the software, who have hardware that cannot run a demanding application, who have software installed that conflicts with the application required for the class, and who at least at the start of classes do not even understand the impact these problems have on their performance in online classes. With so much being said about the importance of all students getting the best possible start in class, it is even more important in a distance learning class, where technical deficiencies at the beginning will place even a good student in peril throughout the course.

At this point, I am not convinced that desktop virtualization will mete out its potential on campus but it does have the potential to solve a number of problems online. Hopefully, the new CEO of IBM, Virginia Rometty can see the new path of virtualization.

Educational Twitter Problems

Twitter has and has had tremendous promise for use as an educational tool but bringing it into broad educational usage is fraught with challenges, some that have to do with students, the administration, and faculty…and some with Twitter’s own policies.

Added in 2009 Twitter lists are also a great way to group together and make the tweets you follow more manageable. Since your lists can be private or

public, you can also follow lists themselves, essentially follow the tweets of sets of others without following them individually.

For a few years, we have been using Twitter as an administrative communications tool. We post weather and classroom closing, registration, and student program information. It has been a hard sell to our students and to our faculty. Our faculty members believe they do not have the time to learn new applications. Our students also do not want to learn anything they are not already using. Our increasingly younger students attempt to use Facebook for everything rather than explore other things that may be useful for other purposes. Additionally our IT administration of our collective colleges does not trust the permeability and security of free systems. After our college successfully began using Twitter for weather messages, the system of colleges licensed a pay system that can send emergency messages to cell phones but not much else.

Last year my department cosponsored bringing to speakers Mark Freydenberg and Ben Aslinger, Bentley University professors, to our college for a presentation on Web 2.0 technologies that they use in the classroom. I find fascinating their discussions about using Twitter and cell phones in the classroom as a way to get better and more rapid participation and feedback from their students. Their integration with Twapperkeeper meant

that they could capture and archive Twitter discussions for better analysis of their content and quality. It was disappointing to hear that Twitter used their terms of service to eradicate Twapperkeeper. However, there may other ways to capture the content.

For the past semester, our numbers of Twitter users were at about 17% our official college Facebook Insight numbers. We began using more than a year before Facebook but despite concerted efforts the number of users has not budged by more than one percent.

The future of Twitter is unclear. Twapperkeeper founder John O’Brien believes that Twitter is forcing out helping applications so that they can develop and somehow monetize these aspects themselves. However, I have not seen the results of their efforts so far. The popularity of Facebook dominates the college landscape. Facebook also continues to morph into the social media application that does what all others do. So far the only uncopied advantage Twitter has is that it forces users to be more concise with its 140 character limit. But is that an advantage or simply an anachronistic novelty?

Rubrics & the Fudge Factor

Rubrics ensure fairness in grading the work of students. I was talking to a colleague once who did not want to use a rubric because it did not allow her to use the “fudge factor,” assigning a grade based on what you know—or feel you know—about a student rather than wholly upon the student’s actual performance. She thought the “fudge factor” was an equalizer helping to ensure students got what they deserved not just what they earned. I was horrified and took it as my mission to help her understand how not using the rubric was innately unfair to the majority of her students in a class in which the essay was the major method of assessment. With a diverse student body, many kinds of biases could creep ever so quietly and unknowingly into the grading process. Ethnicities, language, social status, styles of clothing, hairstyles, etiquette standards or lack thereof…and just the good old fashioned disdain much of the young have for older adults and authoritative types mean that, despite how hard you try, the way you see the student (in a ground class) plays into their score, in mostly subtle but perhaps sometimes in very large unconscious ways...even online. The fudge factor works against us by allowing us to reinforce subconscious biases. The only way to manage our own subconscious skewing is to use rubrics.