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In preparation for our new Office Warming Party today, our creative team decorated our office with a special chalkboard mural. Check out our new time-lapse video documenting the creation of our chalk mural here:

Have you ever wanted to learn how to create your own time-lapse video? To learn more about how we created ours, read on to follow the five steps the TechChange creative team took to produce this video:

Step 1: Establish how long you want your final video to be.

We wanted to keep the video short and sweet at 1 minute.

Step 2: Figure out how long your time-lapse will last

Most videos run at between 24-30 frames per second. This means that for 60 seconds of final video, we would need a minimum of 1,440 still shots from the camera in order to fill each frame with a photo (24 frames/second x 60 seconds = 1,440 frames).

Step 3: Estimate how long it will take to film all the action you’re trying to capture.

We needed to make sure that Rachel, Pablo, and Alon would be able to finish in the amount of time that it would take our camera to shoot those 1,440 exposures. If we were to shoot at one-second intervals, our camera would only be running for 24 minutes. Now, our creative team is fast, but not that fast.

By estimating that it would take the team two hours (120 minutes) to complete the chalk mural, we can solve for 1,440* interval = 120 minutes to get that interval = 0.083 minutes, or about 5 seconds between shots.

Step 4: Set up your camera and film

To create the time lapse, we mounted our Panasonic GH3 onto a tripod and set it to take one photo every five seconds for 1,440 shots.

Step 5: Import your still image series into video and edit

After setting the camera to take these exposures, we imported the 1,440 stills into PremierePro by using the option to import an image sequence, rather than as individual stills. This import method is quick and matches one photo to each frame of the video sequence. Lastly, we cropped the video so that it would fill a 16:9 aspect ratio, added music, and edited in the TechChange logo animation.

Come check out the chalk mural in person tonight, May 7, 2014, at the TechChange Office Warming Party! RSVP here. We can’t wait to see you!

Written by Jennifer Estevez.

Check out our entry here: http://kng.ht/1erYBej

Have you heard of the #NewsChallenge? It’s a funding source for innovative ideas managed by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Since 2007 the Knight Foundation has run various challenges and given away over $75 million to over 400 winners. In August the Knight Foundation launched its latest #NewsChallenge on the theme of Health asking, how can we harness data and information for the health of communities.

When the health theme was announced we immediately realized it would be the perfect time to present a new and fun idea we had been kicking around the TechChange offices for a while, a Massively Open Online Conference (MOOCon). Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which enroll thousands for a single class, are rapidly growing in popularity. Coursera, Edx and Udacity offer MOOCs from big names in education including Harvard, MIT and most recently the Wharton School of Business. Even Google is getting in the game with MOOC.org. However, as this Time article points out, MOOCs face a major problem; very low completion rates. While thousands sign-up, only a small fraction go onto finish, and even then it can be difficult to measure the learning impact of those who enroll.

That’s what got us thinking. If a MOOC has great engagement from the start, but limps to a finish, why not just limit the experience to those exciting first few days? In this way, a conference adaptation would have a lot of potential. The concept of the MOOCon is still in its infancy. Hewlett Packard is the founding partner of one of the first ever instances, the Global STEMx Education Conference, and it starts today (September 19th). The MOOCon idea is incredibly inclusionary because it can offer a quality learning opportunity without the high costs of travel or admission.

TechChange’s mHealth course is incredibly popular, so it became the natural topic for our MOOCon idea. The online conference would run for three days, non-stop, and be open to participation by anyone, anywhere with a connection to the world wide web. Those that join our MOOCon would participate from their computers at work or home in a highly interactive environment. Participants would have the opportunity to hear from mHealth experts, network with other participants in forums and chat rooms, and engage in public health data simulations. We think this proposal gets to the heart of the challenge, creating a public-facing innovation that educates and ignites conversation about how mobile phones can harness data and information for the health of our communities.

What do you think of the concept? Have any ideas for the MOOCon or want to put in your opinion? For the next three days all the #Newschallenge entries are open for feedback. Checkout out our Entry and over 600 others at: https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/healthdata/feedback/massively-open-online-conference-on-mhealth

Traditional education in the US has long been required to accommodate those with disabilities through statutes like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), but online learning has lagged behind. The excitement for improving online access to Ivy League classrooms should extend beyond just connectivity to intentional instructional design. But what standards and guidelines exist?

We recently took on the challenge of bringing all of our coursework into compliance with Section 508, a set of regulations which sets technical standards to promote equal access to (among other things) web content and multimedia for populations with disabilities.

Online learning can improve access to information by people with disabilities. Compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act isn’t just the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense. But we still have a long way to go.

According to Wikipedia: “Section 508 (29 U.S.C. § 794d), agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others.” These accommodations include things like closed captioning and audio descriptions for multimedia, machine readable design to allow screen readers easy access to and navigation through content, and other methods of ensuring that everyone has the ability to benefit fully from our courses. Some may say that regulations such as these impose a great cost, and likely help few. But we think differently, for several reasons.

This is an endeavor we want to be doing anyway, because it’s the right thing to do.

A lot of the courses we do are about inclusion: using technology for democracy, better health, and conversation across traditionally disparate groups. We are proud to have students from around the world in each of our courses. Leaving behind those who have difficulty accessing technology would undermine our mission.

It is not difficult if done from the beginning.

Though including closed captioning or audio description tracks obviously involves more than the bare minimum amount of effort, if included from the beginning, it becomes part of the content generation process, and overhead is low.

It makes us more competitive.

Federal agencies and contractors are required to conform to the 508 standards if compliance is possible. This includes procurement. So a compliant product must be chosen over a non-compliant one.

It naturally follows from good design and coding principles as well as web standards.

Good code and good design have a common theme: they are clean. Clean design and code is also easier for assistive technology like screen readers to read. It’s simpler to do things like make text larger if there is plenty of space to do so, avoid using colors to denote meaning since it can’t clash with your color scheme, and leave room for captioning and transcripts in empty space that doesn’t distract other users with unnecessary detail.

Thinking about the challenges of accessing our content helps us make the experience better for all of our students.

Thinking about how to minimize the impact of compliance on your media forces you to think about how you present material, and to present it in different ways that will complement each other. Not only because different people learn different ways, but also because reinforcement through a different mode is still repetition, the most effective form of learning.

Thankfully, the 508 Standards are fairly straightforward. Indeed, they involve a careful analysis of the problem and what solutions work, which is a long and arduous process we are ill equipped to duplicate.

What isn’t straightforward ways to test your product and underlying platforms for actual usability. The next couple of posts on accessibility will talk about some of the more troublesome edge cases in 508, our process to make all of our content as accessible as possible, and how future standards and technologies can continue to make learning inclusive.

What processes do your organization use to expand access to your services?

This is a guest post by Matt McNabb, Principal of Caerus Associates. If you are interested in using mapping for digital organizing, consider taking our course Digital Organizing and Open Government.

Today, my colleagues at Caerus Associates and I are able to announce the BETA launch of a new tool that helps businesses, NGOs, and governments collect, visualize, and share geospatial data in less developed emerging markets. We call it, CaerusGEO.

Geospatial in the Last Mile

The premise is simple. How can we leverage the cloud to deliver geospatial analysis to non-GIS users most familiar with basic, paper based workflows?

In our experience, most businesses, government institutions, and organizations in frontier markets rarely use technology across the enterprise. In some cases it’s a cost issue, in others it’s social stigma related. But whatever the reason, ICTs are often used simply to support manual, tabular processes that already exist.

Want to run a survey? Use Word, Excel, and printer.

When it comes to spatial data, this challenge is only magnified. Collecting geospatial information can be hard enough, visualizing and sharing it can be even harder. As a result, geospatial information is often relegated to the expert user. Of course, the GIS industry as a whole is trending towards accessibility, but rarely is it truly meaningful for most enterprises in less developed markets that simply want to know where things happen.

This is what got me interested in a tool widely used within the humanitarian response community called Walking Papers. The value proposition of Walking Papers has been that it extends geospatial data collection to pen and paper. Print off a map, mark it up, then convert what’s written into geospatial data. No magic. No optical character recognition. Just a simple paper insert that allows people without GIS units to collect spatial information in a way that could be easily geo-rectified.

The problem with Walking Papers is that it offers little back to the data collector. There is no visualization or data management. In fact, it’s really only a lightweight tool that lets the user print off a map and, through some gymnastics, let’s her then use it to edit a basemap on Open Street Map. It offers nothing for the non-technical user simply interested in using paper to collect information about events, or perceptions, or whatever other kinds of information one might be interested in seeing over the basemap.

For the past year, we’ve been wondering what it would take to create a tool that filled this gap. Let normal users capture geospatial data in paper formats and return analytical value once collected.

How It Works

This BETA of CaerusGEO is our first answer to this need. A user is able to create her own survey, find a place in the world where it will be centered, create an atlas and data collection sheets through a standard schema they created, and then manage, visualize, and share the data once uploaded. By bridging cloud analytics to paper workflows, we are able to drive value at enterprise level.

If you’re an NGO and want to integrate mapping into your polling, you can create a survey, manage the data, and facilitate sharing from start to finish. If you’re a business looking to understand your market, you can integrate it into your customer registration process and benefit from basic market intelligence. Although basic in form, the value is derived from a more reality-based understanding of workflows in these markets. Paper matters.

Smarter Public Safety

The very first place we thought to experiment was in the domain of public safety. What could be more obvious than the need for taking those antiquated paper and pushpin constructions used for crude crime mapping and making it more dynamic, analytical, and transparent?

As the Deputy Minister of Justice in Monrovia told me, ‘we send the police where the people are, not where the crimes are… this could help us see how to use our resources in a smart way.’ We can address this challenge by finding minimally intrusive places to insert paper maps into the pre-existing workflows of policing institutions and fusing them together for digital analytics by a single node with connectivity to the cloud.

In parallel, NGOs and violence observatories have the capacity to collect and share their own data, creating a basic framework opportunity for enhancing social accountability within the security sector domain. Perhaps most interestingly, by integrating paper-based mapping that connects to real geospatial data, the longstanding art of Participatory GIS in conflict management and of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design can be used in so many more ways.

Driving Value For The Private Sector

Public safety institutions are not the only ones we have learned can find value here. It’s also a pull for private sector development, particularly in the bottom of the pyramid. Microfinance institutions and others engaged in understanding their customer base face similar challenges.

By extending geospatial data capabilities to private sector development institutions and retail organizations, we have the prospect of significantly improving the precision and reach of private sector particularly to underserved areas.

So Much To Learn

Bending ICTs to the real-world challenges and workflows found in the last mile holds tremendous value to public and private sector institutions alike. For us, this experiment with geospatial information is only the beginning. We hope you’ll join us and give us feedback as our experiment moves on.

Matt McNabb is a member of the Board of Advisors for TechChange, and a Principal with Caerus Associates. For more, you can follow Matt and CaerusGEO on Twitter: @mattrmcnabb @caerusgeo

This guest post is by Sara Buzadzhi a past participant in TC309 Mobile Phones for Public Health. Can’t wait for June 3? Sign up for TC105 Mobiles for International Development launching on March 4th, which will feature a week on public health.

While the use of various mHealth applications and text-messaging services are
surging in both high and low-income countries, Russia has been somewhat behind
the curve in adopting these solutions to address health issues. The Russian NGO I
work for, the Health and Development Foundation, has been striving to change that,
introducing the country’s first national mHealth programs.

This January, HDF launched a new nationwide program for clients considering and
undergoing infertility treatment. This initiative, IVF/ART School uses an innovative
-combination of traditional and mHealth approaches. The target audience, women
and their families, will be reached through a multi-tiered approach including offline
seminars with reproductive health specialists at clinics; social networks, a program
site, and regular, interactive webinars online; and text messages to participants’
mobile phones. This comprehensive approach will enable us to maintain a strong
connection with our target audience, each component informing and reinforcing
program messages, and provide them with multiple chances for interaction with
peers and experts.

Why IVF?

The demographic situation in Russia has been a point of concern for the government
and the general population since birth rates began to decline in the last decade of
the 20th century. Population increases in the last several years have injected some
optimism into the discussion, but state and public organizations are still eager to
do what they can to promote population growth (including monetary incentives for
pregnant women and mothers).

Against this background, the need for easy access to assisted reproductive
technology treatment for couples dealing with infertility issues is clear. In fact, the
Russian government recently announced that infertility treatment would be covered
under the free state insurance starting in 2013.

But while financial support is important, it is also vital that women and couples
seeking treatment, or considering seeking treatment, are well informed as to their
options, and are receiving the emotional support that can greatly influence the
success of infertility treatment. That is where the IVF/ART School can play a key
role; program participants will receive expert, unbiased information and support
from several sources, including their peer group, increasing the likelihood that they
will maintain treatment until reaching a successful outcome.

Text4baby Russia

HDF’s first national mHealth program was Text4baby Russia, a nationwide maternal
and child health text messaging program that will celebrate its one-year anniversary
this February. Through this program, new and expectant mothers receive
information on caring for their health and the health of their children through free
text messages to their mobile phones. Subscribers receive 1-2 texts per week on topics like nutrition, safety, substance abuse prevention, legal rights, breastfeeding, and more.

Text4baby Russia (SMSmame in Russian) is based on the successful U.S. program
text4baby, but was significantly adapted by HDF and its government and medical
community partners to ensure that the messages meet the specific cultural and
socio-economic needs of its Russian target audience. HDF is currently piloting a
webinar series to address text message topics in greater depth, and plans to launch
the series in early 2013.

We would be happy to hear from any organizations/individuals working in similar
areas, as we have found international collaboration and knowledge sharing (in
forums like the TechChange course we attended, Mobile Phones for Public Health)
to be very helpful in developing and disseminating our work. Follow HDF and their projects on Twitter: @HealthDevtFound @Text4babyRussia @IVFSchoolRussia

As K-12 teachers experiment with iPads in the classroom, Twitter streams in the backchannel, and TEDtalks as the new textbook, university professors are figuring out what to make of massively open online courses and how it will affect their classroom. After reading the barrage of stories this past year on new innovations in education technology, from the flipped classroom to edX, I began to wonder why K-12 teachers reported feeling empowered by the new technologies while massive open online courses (MOOCs) seemed to pose a threat to all private higher education institutions that’s so indecipherable most are unsure how to react. Why were stories on the flipped university classroom so rare this past year? With our upcoming course on Social Media and Technology Tools for Research in mind, we wanted to find a model that was actually leveraging tech tools in a way that was improving higher education learning on a broad scale.

We found Dr. John Boyer of Virginia Tech, who has been innovating and enlarging his World Regions classroom for the past decade. When he started he was in a classroom of 50 students using an inherited world regions textbook that leaned heavily on Western history. Now he is in a 3,000 seat auditorium, using the 6th edition of his own textbook and a companion website for digital and social media content that more than twenty other universities have adopted. We came across him in the same way that many have–through his plea to Aung San Suu Kyi for a Skype interview (which she agreed to) and the ensuing visits from Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, and Invisible Children’s Jason Russell. “We hope to have President Obama visit, which would make a lot of sense for him. Why wouldn’t he want to have 3,000 screaming university students tweeting and facebooking his interview?” He told me that those celebrity visits are not planned in the syllabus but come about organically, which also reflects the nature in which he adopts technology into the classroom. From my chat with him I gleaned three questions for university educators to ask themselves as they adapt hybrid classroom methodologies.

1. Will it improve communication between the professor and students?

Effective teaching depends on the way that information is communicated to the learner. Professor Boyer literally brings his curriculum to the fingertips of his 3,000 students on his website, plaidavenger.com. While his textbook may cover very recent issues in its sixth edition, the website covers global news and issues of the week. Students can easily scan video interviews, articles, and twitter streams and they can earn credit by participating in class dialogue over social media networks.

In a class of 3,000, students can easily feel distanced from their professor, but his online office hours and regular availability on Twitter and Facebook provides a safety net of communication. In my worry that he was online all day and night communicating with students he reassured me, “just a very small percentage actually use it and having the safety net of knowing it’s there satisfies the rest.”

2. Is tech interaction built into the syllabus?

As opposed to traditional pedagogies where students start out with an A and then lose points as they respond incorrectly, his students start with nothing and are rewarded for each activity they complete. Grades are determined by gross point accumulation and students can choose the way they want to earn those points. They can go the traditional route and take standard tests, fill out atlas quizzes, and write papers, or they can earn it through interacting with world leaders on Twitter, commenting in global news reports, or listening to podcasts.

According to an article in The Atlantic, flipping the learning model in the university setting in this manner leads to more personalization of the learning process. Professor Boyer’s exemplifies this by allowing the student to choose the assignments (not a single one is required, not even tests) that fit their learning method best. From the start of the semester, students have the flexibility and the accountability to complete the class how they want to.

3. Am I offering technology that students already use or can easily start using?

Virginia Tech is not only at the fringe of the flipping the university classroom, but physically it’s at the fringe of an urban-rural divide. Located in Blacksburg, Virginia, 60% of the town’s 42,000 are students and many come from rural communities. Students may not be used to many of the newest apps or devices. “I would love to start using foursquare to have students check in for attendance but I’m pretty sure only 1% of my students even know what it is,” Dr. Boyer told me. Despite some limitations, he is able to use quite a diverse tech toolset in his class. He uses (most links go to the unique class page) Delicious for bookmarking articles, online discussion forums on the class page, international movies, iTunes U, Skype, UStream for online office hours, Turntable.fm for their class international playlist, and one of my favorites, PollEverywhere, is used to instantly poll to students on what they want to learn that day. These tools offer a plethora of options rather than required tools to use so that the students can involve themselves in the way they like.

Each of these questions asks what kind of options do the students have to learn the material and how they will be awarded for it. The hybrid classroom puts more accountability on the student to take the time to learn the subject matter, but also allows them the freedom to choose how they want to learn it. Dr. Boyer is evolving his classroom depending on the way that his students use technology and not the other way around. It won’t be long until university students are expecting the hybrid “flipped classroom” experience, especially when they have come from high schools that have already been implementing it.

If you are interested in international peacekeeping, consider taking our next course, Social Media and Technology Tools for Research, starting Monday, August 20th.

USIP event on mobile phones, peacebuilding and Afghanistan organized by TechChange

TechChange equips organizations with a suite of customized, strategic technology solutions that keep them at the forefront of emerging tech trends and their social applications. Ok, we admit it – we’re big tech nerds. But we’re also educators and trainers with a passion for using emerging tech tools to make our world a little better. We recognize that few companies can bridge both worlds- being able to provide clients with technological know-how and content experience ranging from conflict management to emergency relief, and from peacebuilding to development. Our services fall within the four broad categories: social media implementation, distance learning (e-learning), multimedia development for education and training. For a more detailed listing of each category, please see the attached documents.

Social media implementation
The “new media” revolution of social networking websites (Facebook and Twitter) and participatory media (YouTube and blogs) are the new face of global media. Not sure what Web 2.0 is or how to navigate the multitude of options? Don’t worry- we can help. We’ll help you assess the what tools you should incorporate into your strategy and get you started on using these powerful tools to build your constituents, extend your message, and energize your constituents, effectively communicate through new tools.

Distance learning (e-Learning)
Distance learning continues to experience 12-14% annual growth in the U.S. each year. Experts predict this trend to only continue. Effective eLearning enables a highly cost effective means to extend your education and training goals to reach an unlimited audience worldwide. But the choices can be daunting. Should you use a synchronistic or asynchronistic delivery method? Which content management system is best for your needs: Blackboard, Moodle or GoingOn for example? How do you migrate face-to-face curriculum into a virtual learning Desire2Learn Self-paced or hybrid? What are the best practices for instructional design and trends in online pedagogical delivery? TechChange can help you navigate the choices by creating a strategic plan to help you meet your programmatic goals.

Multimedia development
Effective education and training today demands the integration of multiple formats for delivery. As video conferencing, podcasting and video tools become not only accepted into education and training, but are also expected by today’s learners. TechChange not only has the technical skills, but as professional educators also understands how to utilize these powerful media tools to enhance the effectiveness of your teaching and training and to increase the learning experience of your participants.

Sample Projects:

US Institute of Peace: