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.

Acronym of the day

Ok, things are looking up. A big advantage of the online attendence is the ease of channel hopping between concurrent sessions.

1. The 2009 Campus Computing Survey, with an valuable commentary from Kenneth Green - headlines were:
   • Budget cuts and competing priorities
   • Continuing reorganisation of IT departments
   • Open Source LMS gaining traction
   • Security issues with cell phones and thumb drives, and...
   • Owners of non-central servers are petulant adolescents(!)
   
2. The Climate Change session seemed to have plenty of science in it, didn't seem very relevant to the conference.
   
3. The third session (Cloud Computing) had technical problems and didn't stream. Is there an irony here?

Ok, acronym of the day: it's come up three times today, so I don't think I can avoid learning it even if I've managed to hide from it until now. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). The most useful thing this wikipedia page says is: that ERP systems are cross-functional and enterprise-wide. I get that.

Lukewarm

Okay, I've just been to my first session. The online conf had a seperate keynote: Collaboration Is Strategy, Brad Wheeler, (Vice Pres. for IT, CIO, Indiana U)

Took me a while to get value fom Brad, as his initial premise was that the reason for collaboration is to leverage financial benefits in this economic downturn. Once he mentioned that collaboration might also contribute to the 'common good' I tuned back in. He saw the goal the construction of a 'meta-university'; I see it as meeting the challenges of planetary environmental sustainability.

However here are some notes:

• Competition = differentiation;
• Colloaboration = becoming similar.
• Collaborators need to align their goals, values, timescales, governance, problem solving methodologies.
• Expect consortium IT sourcing as an economic necessity.
• Plus a new Open Content site to explore later: cnx.org - "to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks".

This is not exactly a good advert, but one participant said: "All sessions should display a video feed of the speakers as well as the slides. Slides and audio are not enough to engage the audience" - i.e. it wasn't just me who found the presentation really long! There will be video for most sessions, so it can only get better from here. Phew.

Greetings, fellow travellers

Hokay, I have an hour to go before checking in to Educause 09. I've booked a room (meeting room, not hotel room), and checked the laptop will perform. I don't know how much I'll get out of the Online Conference, but getting there is certainly easier.

Now I just need to choose which sessions I'd like to get to, and figure out if I can get to the live events or not. If only I had a 9 hour flight in which to look at all the session descriptions!
Ah well, here goes...

Competition 3 - edublogugagement

OK - so main conference starts today and therefore it must be time to start another competition. This time let's  see how engagement and competitive spirit fit. Work related comments about the sessions/posts will earn points but also we thought it might be fun for you to set us challenges or tasks (conference related of course as we will be in sessions most of the time) to complete whilst we are here. Points are awarded for the challenges/tasks set with extra points if they are fun/useful/interesting, but beware really hard challenges will result in a forfeit for you.

Reminder of the competitions then:
1 - flickr keyword - still running (rated: easy)
2. quiz part 2 - 3 tricky questions and now you set the questions (rated: medium)
3. edublogugagement - as above, engaging with the conference (rated: hard)

Come on, come along and play ;-)

Seminar 03F - Developing an Information Literacy Faculty Institute on Your Campus

I know this is sort of back to front, my earlier digital literacy post was the last 1 1/2 hours of the above pre-conference workshop but seemed to me to stand alone. The rest of the day session was Cornell sharing their model for an Information Literacy Faculty Institute. This was a really good session and I particularly liked the way they did not present a blueprint of "how to run your own" but got us to consider how we might approach different aspects of the institute within the context of our own institutions, so more like "how might this work for you?". They also recreated some of the activities that they do with their faculty as part of the institute and I was impressed by their willingness to devote time in the institute sessions to have an open and frank discuss the concepts, prior experiences and issues, rather than just moving straight to "how to".

I suppose it is only fair to flag that the institute was not entirely about what I thought it was going to be about before going any further (insert appropriate "divided by a common language" reference here). I thought it was going to be a professional development institute for faculty about, and to develop their own, information literacy skills. In fact it was about a professional development institute for faculty focused on curriculum design, specifically about assessment/project design, facilitated by educational developers, learning technologists and librarians that encourages use of authentic learning opportunities and builds undergraduate student research skills. So not what I expected but then not a bad thing either.

The things I really liked about their model:

Seminar 07P - Web 2.0 and the Changing Face of Education: Hands-On "Prosumer" Education in Practice

Sarah Smith-Robbins and AJ Kelton

This session explored the use of Web2.0 technologies such as Delicious, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook etc. I won't go into too much detail here as you've probably heard of most of them but here's a few links to some of the things I'd not heard much about: -

Poll tools

polleverywhere.com

textthemob.com

Video tools

corp.kaltura.com

voicethread.com

Creative tools

www.befunky.com

www.aviary.com

Chat tool

tinychat.com

...and a Web2.0 Application Aggregator

go2web20.net

Grow your own Horizon Report

This session demonstrated the methodology used to develop the Horizon Report. The Horizon Report identifies emerging technologies and trends that will impact education. The method used to compile the report can be adapted for use in strategic planning at institutional level. It is based on the Delphi Method developed in the 60's and uses a range of experts including innovators, opinion leaders and early adopters to reach a consensus about what will and won't be the next big thing based on their expert knowledge. Ideally, the team of experts should have different backgrounds and each bring something different to the table.

The process takes place mainly in a wiki, and while the team of experts are allowed to contribute to the wiki they are not allowed to interact with each other. This is so that each expert is allowed to develop their own opinions without being influenced by strong characters. The first step is for each expert to bring newspaper clippings, reports, press releases etc about new and emerging technologies to the wiki. Together they build a bank of resources of all potential technologies to be included in the report. The wiki look like this: -

http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/

The next step is to develop the research questions. These can also be seen on the wiki. The experts then attempt to compile a list of technologies to answer each research question. Today, we attempted to address the question:

What are the key emerging technologies you see developing to the point that learning-focussed institutions should begin to take notice during the next three to five years?

Once we had compiled a list (there weren't many of us to our list was made up of 36 items but in reality this would be much longer), a process of elimination began. Each expert is given a number of tokens with which to vote for their favourite technologies (general rule of thumb for number of tokens given at this stage is the square route of the number of items on list). We were given 6 tokens, so we could put between one and six tokens in the items that we felt most strongly about. From this, the top six items, based on all experts votes are taken through to the next stage. Experts are then given half the number of tokens to vote again in the next round, and the top three go into the report. The report is then written based on descriptions, press reports, discussions and any other relevant information.

During the session, we reduced the process which would normally take three to four weeks or longer to just three hours but it was definitely interesting session and I think the approach might be quite useful for our 'Horizon Scanning'.

More detailed information about the session and session resources can be found at: http://www.educause.edu/node/175997

Strictly speaking part of the digital literacy session, but such an important link I thought it deserved its own post

NMC and UoC Call to Action for Open Education

Comments welcome

Digital literacy….expanded (last part of preconference workshop)

This post is full of links to really good visual resources - highly recommended

Really big thrill for me today as I got to have lunch with Tracy Mitrano from Cornell, trying really hard not to gush like a foolish schoolgirl. Then after lunch she and Joan Falkenberg Getman gave a presentation and led a discussion on the topic above, considering how we move from information literacy to digitial, visual, technological literacies and fluencies.

Starting with the video Copyright v Copyleft 

Tracy went on to discuss the obligation we have to students to help them navigate the online world, not to scare them with horror stories but not to be complacent about the law either. She really struck a chord with me, talking about our moral duty to educate students about the law, the reality of the now that they must follow, whether they like it or not, but not to just leave it at that. It is just as important to help them understand the basis of the current situation and let them see they can have a voice to influence change. 

Moving away from legal area of copyright, she drew the distinction between that and academic integrity. Again starting from a different perspective and avoiding being directive of referencing/plagiarism dos and donts. Her approach was to welcome students into the academic community and to help them recognise that as part of that academic community, they are adopting our philosophy of being respectful of other people's work, contributing to the community by sharing the work of others and citing it accurately. 

Joan shared her experiences of being part of the Horizon Report committee and their commitment to "eat their own dog food". Picking key features of their approach:
Immersion - collective intelligence (of 50+ members), wiki (online collaborative writing), social bookmarking (share resources that persist), online ranking (helping sort and synthesise), publishing (pdf of "fixed" version plus living version produced through comment press), openness through creative commons

Horizon Report - CommentPress 

More about CommentPress

Joan then went on to share a whole range of digital resource/visual literacy resources, all were really interesting and definitely worth further investigation

Graphic Facilitation (a flipchart activity will never be the same for me again):

Jim Nuttle graphic facilitation
OpenEdTech Summit Visual Meeting Notes (by Rachel Smith of NMC)

Visualisation Methods - Periodic Table

Explore Research Literature visually - RefViz

New approaches to presenting:

Virtual Macbeth - by Angela Thomas

Digital storytelling - Alan Levine's 50+ ways to tell the Dominoe story

Flickr - Tell a story in 5 frames

Vaiku - a video based haiku that must be exactly 17 seconds long and made of 3 frames (5 seconds, 7 seconds, 5 seconds) - Example

New approach to thinking (?)

Whole new mind: Why right brainers will rule the world by Daniel Pink (Recommended book)

More information about Cornell's Digital Literacy Resource

Competition 2 - the quiz (part 2)

Part 2 of the quiz is:
a prize for anyone answering any of the final three "toughies": 

2. What German village from New Mexico got crazy once and tried to touch the sun?
(clue: musician)


13. What?
(bonus: where was in the UK in 1997?)
clue: band

17. Who?

clue: artist

Plus

your turn! feel free to add your own questions to the competition for anyone else who is playing to answer, the rule is that all questions must either relate to Denver or to something in the original questions (eg Q19 was about Molly Brown and the Titanic so you could add a question about the Titanic). 1 point for each valid question, 1 point for each valid question answered. Enjoy!

Preconference workshop

Today I'm attending a full day pre-conference workshop facilitated by Cornell University entitled:

Seminar 03F - Developing an Information Literacy Faculty Institute on Your Campus
(click on link for more info about the session)

I'm hoping that I will not only get information about how we might better support staff and students in developing digital fluency attributes, but also some new approaches to professional development networks that can be applied more broadly, information about students as researchers models and new models of collaboration....and with Tracy Mitrano on the bill, a masterclass in online presence and identify. I'll let you know how it goes later.

70 degrees in Denver

Two days ago there was 2 feet of snow, today blazing sunshine -we definitely brought a load of too warm clothes. Today we saw:

The University of Columbia Denver, the city and the mountains - all close together    














An interesting clock tower (OK, perhaps just an excuse to show very very blue sky)

An Educause attendee trying to get a sneak peak at the convention centre (with added snow)

We've arrived

Arrived safely in Denver - sky very blue, mountains very white, buildings very tall and jet very lagged!

There was a huge amount of fancy dress on the streets last night and Helen and I managed to just about stay awake to eat our burgers whilst feeling decidedly under-dressed. Clocks went back last night giving us an extra hour in bed (which was completely wasted on me, of course, and just meant I was wide awake at 3am rather than 4am).

We're planning to work on research papers today (as we are in the unfamiliar place of having both presentation and poster session sorted a whole week early). If you are interested in what we are presenting more info can be found at:
 "We've made IT essential because.." poster session (incl posters)
This is My Story: Students' experiences of e-learning (pres will be added soon)

Competition 2 - the quiz

(well part 1 of this competition anyway)

To give you all something to do whilst we are travelling and getting over jetlag, I've put together a 20 question quiz, the rules of the game say you can't start posting answers until at least Monday morning 9am (Sheffield time) so you might want to take some time to try to get as many as possible before you post. First person to post the correct answer to each question will get the points for that question. You don't have to do the questions in order. The person with most points by 9am Tuesday morning will win the most fabulous prize...

1. Name this film? "They can die quickly. They can die slowly. But they must die!"
   
2. What German village from New Mexico got crazy once and tried to touch the sun?
   (bonus point what is the out of this world connection?)
   
3. What is the “Mile High Salute”?
   (bonus: and who popularised it?)
   
4. Who decided to call the city “Denver”, why did he choose that name and why didn’t it work?
   
5. What is special about Colfax Avenue in Denver?
   
6. What 1990 film set at Xmas in (or around!) Washington was actually filmed in Denver?
   
7. How did the Denver NBA team get its name?
   (bonus point – name the mascot that went with it)
   
8. What is the Denver connection with a six-foot tall imaginary white rabbit?
   
9. Where?
   
   
10. What famous Denver was better known as Jesse...and for a while Jack?
    
11. What Denver hotel was proclaimed by Elvis as “the best hotel in the world”?
    (bonus: what's weird about its water?)
    
12. What does Denver lay claim to inventing with Louis Ballast trademarking the name in 1935?
    
13. What?
    (bonus: where was in the UK in 1997?)

14. Name the film? "A love story about two people who hate each other. 200 years in the future."
    (bonus: what is the Denver connection?)
    
15. Denver is the 740th most popular name for boys in the US, what does the name mean?
    
16. In August 2008, Denver hosted the National Democratic Convention, when was the last time it was in Denver before that?
    
17. Who?
    
    
18. Who designed the 16th Street Mall in Denver?
    (bonus: what famous Paris landmark did they also design?)
    
19. Margaret or Maggie when alive, she was better known as Molly after she died, which famous Denver resident didn’t go down with the ship?
    
20. In early October, Falcon Heene became Colorado’s famous #balloonboy, but who was #balloonboy2 and why was he in the news?

Competition 1 - flickr keyword

The slideshow on the right of the screen shows images from flickr with a shared keyword - the word is conference, theme or LTA related. Guesses as comments to this post will earn points, a correct guess will change the slideshow (timezone permitting!) There will, of course, be the customary fabulous prizes.

There's always one...

 We will be blogging the Educause conference again this year and hope that you are able to join in. There will be the usual posts about sessions, posts about the LTI travel curse, posts about hot topics, competitions (with a special request for easy ones this year!) and, of course, prizes.