Camping @ the Library
Attending Teaching and Learning w/ Technology's Learning Design Summer camp in the library today. Cool name badges..."Hello, I like teaching because..." is what mine says. Lots of moo stickers too :)
First presentation of the day: Cole Camplese and Scott McDonald are presenting "Community Engagement: How Disruptive Technologies Enabled New Social Learning." They taught a grad. level class organized around community, identity, and design. Students used blogs, live question tool, and other social tools.
Things to think about - classes contain both technologists and theorists. There will be people who struggle with the technology, and there will be people who excel and get bored with the technology explanations...
Course used...
Student Blogs - gave students their own space/identity. not bound by rules/procedures of the space. Had students use Google Analytics to monitor readership of their blogs.
Pligg: Social Aggregation software which brings all of the students' blog posts into one community. Social rating site that brought posts into one community. Students could then comment on one another's posts and vote on them as well. Course community site got 1000s of hits per week, vs. the 5-10 hits per week on individual blogs. Vote count was used to determine the overarching questions used to drive each week's discussion.
Students were in groups, and each group had an assigned technology to follow, incl. Facebook, Twitter, etc. Twitter created an interesting phenomenon. Twitter provided a vehicle for engagement and interaction that was surprising. (Editorial comment - I too am surprised by this. My sense is that most of our students have never heard of Twitter.) Twitter became like "passing notes" in class - but the notes were substantive, not recreational.
I think it's an interesting argument that technology enhances engagement. Right now, I'm listening, blogging, tweeting, and IMing all at once, and I'm feeling a bit fatigued...and not sure whether I'm more engaged, or just busier. I'm going to keep trying it today...the jury is out.
First presentation of the day: Cole Camplese and Scott McDonald are presenting "Community Engagement: How Disruptive Technologies Enabled New Social Learning." They taught a grad. level class organized around community, identity, and design. Students used blogs, live question tool, and other social tools.
Things to think about - classes contain both technologists and theorists. There will be people who struggle with the technology, and there will be people who excel and get bored with the technology explanations...
Course used...
Student Blogs - gave students their own space/identity. not bound by rules/procedures of the space. Had students use Google Analytics to monitor readership of their blogs.
Pligg: Social Aggregation software which brings all of the students' blog posts into one community. Social rating site that brought posts into one community. Students could then comment on one another's posts and vote on them as well. Course community site got 1000s of hits per week, vs. the 5-10 hits per week on individual blogs. Vote count was used to determine the overarching questions used to drive each week's discussion.
Students were in groups, and each group had an assigned technology to follow, incl. Facebook, Twitter, etc. Twitter created an interesting phenomenon. Twitter provided a vehicle for engagement and interaction that was surprising. (Editorial comment - I too am surprised by this. My sense is that most of our students have never heard of Twitter.) Twitter became like "passing notes" in class - but the notes were substantive, not recreational.
I think it's an interesting argument that technology enhances engagement. Right now, I'm listening, blogging, tweeting, and IMing all at once, and I'm feeling a bit fatigued...and not sure whether I'm more engaged, or just busier. I'm going to keep trying it today...the jury is out.
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