Mile High twitter debate

This point/counterpoint session was facilitated by Gardner Campbell and Bruce Mass started with the Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme tune - just in case you didn't know it was gonna be a showdown

I'm going to struggle to do justice to the session in a short blog post - it had its own hashtag so if you want to see what people were saying about it before during and after take a look (you don't need to be a twitter user to see the stream)
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23edtwitter

if you don't have time to read the stream someone has kindly created you a wordle of it

Link to larger version

some quick headlines of the things said outloud:

• the age of aquarius is better than the era of duck and cover
• are we pushing forward or preserving the status quo
• as a CIO I'm the orange cone that stops you falling down the hole
• you just sit there, I'll advance your slides for you
• twitter can be the glue that holds a project team together
• students need to be educated about how to build a thoughtful online presence - it is a core digital literacy skill
• thinking about what it means to be an online citizen is no substitute for getting out and being one

Entitled to Question

Really enjoying Lawrence Lessig, challenging the current copyright paradigm, talking about an ecology of creativity, and questioning whether copyright law serves education or sicence well. Pointed out that we don't necessarily need the same type of incentives as Britney Spears in order to want to send great ideas out into the world, and that we are entitled to question the status quo. He's still in full flow, but I have to go soon.

Meanwhile another highlight: dipping into "cloud sourcing - hype or hope". Quote: "The cloud sourcing agenda may be driven by both institutions and by students". Right enough! Here at SHU we've begun to take steps down that road with Gmail, however our help desks have yet to sign up for supporting student chosen external tools for portfolios. I'm meeting someone soon to talk the issues through and may revisit the ECAR study before I do so.

Lastly, the most fun you can have at a remote conference: An online application with letters as game pieces in which you can collaborate or obstruct other players. We played in the break.

An Experimental Teaching Space Bound Only by the User's Imagination

Speaker(s): John Arpino, Yianna Vovides, PB Garrett

This session presented a flexible learning space created at the George Washington University. The space incorporates flexible furniture, audio and video equipment and mobile wall-mounted whiteboards. The room can be configured to meet the needs of the users. They use Echo 360 to record sessions and evaluate how the space is being used (links to video recordings are sent to the user). During the session we watched a live feed of somebody who was in the room on the phone to a co-presenter and he walked around the room. This might have worked better if there were actually students in the room rather than one man walking around for five minutes not really knowing what to do with himself. So far, the room has proved to be very popular with staff who like the flexibility of being able to move things around, but they've yet to do a full evaluation. The session focussed on why they decided to create the room and how they advertised it to staff.

The Digital Bridges Initiative: Student Transformations of the Library

This session reported on a strategic initiative at Columbia University launched in 2007 to build bridges between the library and educational technologies. The initiative aimed to improve services and respond to opportunities. Students are encouraged to remix, annotate and enrich digital collections for the benefit of future students and the public. Through a variety of projects the library and educational technology unit are working together to provide students with rich learning experiences.

In one case, students used archived artefacts which hadn't been seen or used for many years to create digital artefacts by taking photographs, scanning old papers etc., giving students the opportunity to experience primary research artefacts. However, this does raise issues about the conservation of the actual artefacts.

Another project gave students the opportunity to collect video and audio interviews to create a 75th anniversary documentary film for the Apollo Theatre. The footage was then put into a digital archive in the library.

A third project enabled students to annotate digital images of Tibetan objects with object biographies. Each student took ownership of one digital image and explored in great detail the history of the object in order to create a biography. This involved collaboration between librarians and educational technologists. The library had the subject knowledge, and the educational technologist had technical capability to create digital biographies.

Details of all the projects can be found at: http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/digitalbridges/

Meet the "Free Agent" Learner: Coming to Your Campus Soon! Are You Ready?

This session presented the findings from the 'Speak Up National Research Project'. Since 2003 the project has collected data from 1.3 million K-12 students. Detailed findings from the project can be found at: www.tomorrow.org but here are a few headlines.

• There is a digital disconnect between how teachers use technology and how students expect to use technology
• There is also a gap between how students learn and how they live
• 12 year old students are using the internet to check that their teachers are 'correct' in what they are teaching them - and the teacher don't mind as this enhances their digital literacy skills
• Participants were asked what the number 1 tech tool or service that will impact their learning was. The answer has been the same over every year of the survey regardless of age and every other factor - Personal laptops

The full findings are well worth a read, and perhaps the most interesting thing for me was the differences between tutors and students, maybe something to think about for next years expectations survey. The full presentation can be viewed here: Meet the "Free Agent" Learner: Coming to Your Campus Soon! Are You Ready?

The Future of Higher Education

This session considered the future of Higher Education in the context of the challenges of increasing student numbers and decreasing government funding. It started with a look at the 'need' for higher education - the provision of education to enable people to better themselves, for innovation in all sectors and for economic vitality. Oblinger described Higher Education as 'the norm', the new baseline requirement for employment and outlined government aspirations for education.

UK - By 2010, 50% of all 18 - 30 year olds should participate in Higher Education
USA - By 2025, 60% of the population should hold college degrees or credentials

The challenges faced by HE were also described, though these were in the context of the US. Students are arriving at college unprepared and subsequently drop out (having to take remedial course for no credit but at significant financial cost). Adult learners also have barriers to education (language barriers, no high school diplomas).

Some emerging models to overcome the difficulties faced by HE were described and these include digitized books, data archives and the use of consumer channels to overcome resource issues, self publishing tools and 'rent an article' tools (such as Deepdyve) to overcome issues faced by publishers and flexible degree programmes to overcome the issues of cost, access and quality.

Teaching and Storytelling with Web 2.0: State of the Art, on a Budget

Speaker(s): Bryan Alexander

This session was run by Bryan Alexander who I had heard a lot about from Louise. She attended the same session so I'm sure she'll have more to add, but I'm glad I attended the session and I now know why she's such a fan. He's a very enthusiastic speaker. He talked about digital storytelling, the tools used and also what makes a good story.