19Dec 2018 by Mike Sharkey No Comments

My Turn as a Futurist – The Mindshift Era

Ecosystem
I don't really strive to be a futurist.  Technically, I am a Kurzweil descendant, so I've got that going for me.  I'll leave the Ed Tech futurist stuff to the pros, though.  That being said, after you've been in the same field for 17 years, you see lots of ideas and threads and can't help but to connect the dots.  So, consider this my first (and likely only) stab at painting the future of learning as I see it.  Big caveat -- none of this is new and none of this is so insightful that I'm the only person to see it.  Many of my colleagues have talked about and written about elements of this vision over the years.  This is just me putting pen to paper to share how…
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13Aug 2018 by Mike Sharkey 7 Comments
The Bastardization of Bloom’s Two Sigma

The Bastardization of Bloom’s Two Sigma

Analytics, Learning
I'm really torn over this blog post.  One one hand, it can be an insightful commentary about how the goal of attaining benefits comparable to Bloom's two sigma findings has been a negative catalyst in the higher ed tech space.  On the other hand, it can be an AWESOME title for a Hollywood screenplay treatment.  "The Bastardization of Bloom's Two Sigma" is the story of an over the hill spy who comes out of retirement when he finds out the son he never knew he had has developed super powers as an adult.  The crafty old spy needs to work his magic to get his prodigy on the right track.  Starring Michael Douglas as Boris Von Bloom and Dustin Diamond (Screech from Saved by the Bell) as Charlie...the son who…
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11Apr 2018 by Mike Sharkey No Comments

Data Lessons From a Robotics Tournament

Analytics
I enjoy connecting events in my data & analytics work life with events in my non-work life.  There are often good lessons to be learned there. On the non-work side, I'm a huge fan of K-12 robotics programs. I was a coach of a FIRST Lego League robotics team for five years and now a mentor for a FIRST Robotics Competition team for the past two years. Non-humble brag -- the Chaparral High School Firebirds just qualified to go to the FRC World Championships in Houston! One aspect of the work the team has done this season has a direct crossover relationship with data. At FRC tournaments, there's a task called scouting.  While all of the different robots are competing on the field, your team needs to observe and rate…
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26Feb 2018 by Mike Sharkey No Comments

Blackboard + Caliper + AWS = LRS

Analytics, Architecture
No, this equation isn’t the foundation of the Grand Unified Theory.  It’s just a simple way of getting LMS activity data into a Learner Record Store where it can be analyzed.  Arizona State University is among institutions that are pushing the learning analytics envelope, and continuing down that path requires agility when it comes to accessing and analyzing data.  To address this agility, the Action Research Lab and the University Technology Office partnered to build a cloud-based LRS using the Amazon Web Services cloud platform.  The goal of this post is to illustrate the steps we took to get Blackboard LMS data loaded in to a cloud-based Amazon Redshift database. Blackboard has long since committed to the IMS Caliper standard, so extracting events from the LMS is easy.  Unfortunately, there…
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