Hear One, Do One, Teach One: Comments

Comment on "7 Things You Should Know About Google Wave"

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:48:46 -0500

Thanks, Allan! It would be interesting to understand how we could play a role in some of the 7 Things series. I love that they do this and I love that we work to make it a bit more contextualized to our environment. Google Wave is stirring quite a few conversations -- some think it is a waste and others think it has huge potential. I am guessing it will be what we make of it.

- Cole

Comment on "Using Web 2.0 Tools and an Open Philosophy to Plan Projects and Events"

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:52:25 -0500

Did you record it live during the preso or did you guys run through it a second time?

- Cole W. Camplese

Comment on "Using Web 2.0 Tools and an Open Philosophy to Plan Projects and Events"

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:18:54 -0500

Thanks. I updated it with the tag and a couple other changes. Used it as an example of how easy it is to do voice over annotation in Keynote.

- ALLAN SHAWN GYORKE

Comment on "Using Web 2.0 Tools and an Open Philosophy to Plan Projects and Events"

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:12:04 -0500

Nice work.

- WAYNE E ANDERSON

Comment on "Using Web 2.0 Tools and an Open Philosophy to Plan Projects and Events"

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:47:50 -0500

Great stuff ... only now digging into it. Please add the tag, psutlttraveltraining as this is a great example of a killer preso recap!

- Cole W. Camplese

Comment on "Voice Annotation using Keynote"

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:59:25 -0500

Very cool! Thanks, Allan ... very helpful.

- Cole W. Camplese

Comment on "Choosing a Course Management System is like Picking a Pet"

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:45:59 -0500

Hey Brett. We're talking about this issue right now. Much of what we're exploring are use cases instead of feature lists. In other words, narrative stories of how our faculty use the system or want to use the system and then seeing how each option stacks up.

Also, I should be clear that the difference I was trying to express above is not as much time-based versus assignment-based. It's more like user-centered design versus programmer-based design. The nice thing that I saw about Moodle is that you could organize it any way you like -- by time, by subject, by tool, etc... With Sakai, all of the drop boxes are lumped together under one menu. All of the discussion boards are lumped together. That typically doesn't give students (especially distance education students) the structure they need to figure out what they need to do each week - it's easy to miss something. I'm basing that statement on distance education research, years of supporting online courses, and having taken and taught online courses with various designs.

The meeting is wrapping up. Sounds like we will also be setting up some sandboxes and then seeing what happens when we try to move a real course into a new environment. That should help identify some hot spots.

We'll talk more when I come back. My brain is full of ideas.

- ALLAN SHAWN GYORKE

Comment on "Choosing a Course Management System is like Picking a Pet"

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:01:49 -0500

Flow is critical. Time-based vs. assignment-based should be at the choice of the instructor. Both can work well.

Many of us (me included) believe we know what a core feature set in a CMS should be. We should instead ask what faculty want to do in an online space.

Your thoughts remind me of the old mantra - Decide what you need first, then decide how you will do it. Too often we look at only feature sets that immediately color our perceptions. We need instead to ask, "What do you (faculty) want to do?" Ask enough folks, and from that a feature set naturally emerges. Then you can haggle over the best way to implement those features.

Do we have current data from PSU faculty that helps us define their needs?

- BRETT ALAN BIXLER

Comment on "When you or your students can't get to class..."

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:24:47 -0500

Thanks Dave. Our original list of technologies included a lot of third-party and off-site services: UStream, YouTube, Kaltura, Vimeo, etc... However, the official support for those services is very limited and we don't have good materials in the Knowledge Base. So if a few key people from Digital Commons got sick, the ITS Help Desk wouldn't be able to help much (assuming they would be busier than usual).

I'm not sure if you know this, but Pat's experience with UStream and the Learning Design Summer Camp was mixed. The live stream worked fine, but the archive had some severe audio/video sync issues.

So for now, the list is "safe", but I'm not adverse to doing some work to help a few faculty use something else if it's a better fit.

- ALLAN SHAWN GYORKE

Comment on "When you or your students can't get to class..."

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 06:22:16 -0500

Focused and useful Allan. This unified response to adversity feels like a move towards having every course in every college available all the time online. Would UStream be stable enough to be a help?

- DAVID R STONG

Comment on "B & H Photo Video"

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:31:56 -0500

I really wish I could have gone, but that was the ONLY weekend I wasn't in New York. I feel out of the loop.

- alfred

Comment on "Crisis of Significance, Ringing Ears, Fever"

Fri, 08 May 2009 15:46:45 -0500

Hi all ... a little late to the party here, but I loved the video and am psyched to hear how excellent your week was Allan! It was so satisfying to be a part of it and to see our guest walk away with such a positive impression of our community. To me, that is what still has me buzzing!

To the notion of exploration, disruption, or whatever all I have to say is -- bring it on! My thoughts rest in the idea that disruption makes us all think a lot harder about things we haven't before and I can't be part of an environment/community that isn't engaging in those ideas. The work Chris is doing is amazing to me -- to be a part of the journey is even more exciting. Watching Carla challenge so many of us last summer to raise our games and think hard about how what we do can fundamentally challenge scholarship was a game changer. This summer have Carla back, with Chris, Ellysa, and Stuart joining us will be a major turning point for our organization. I predict that what we learn this summer will forever change those of us who are interested in paying attention. Disruption will lead to transformation ... our conversations will never be the same. Thanks for the great post ... really enjoyed the conversation.

- Cole W. Camplese

Comment on "Crisis of Significance, Ringing Ears, Fever"

Fri, 08 May 2009 11:49:43 -0500

Thanks Allan. Just to be clear and fair to my colleagues, some of them really do get the importance of the sort of project I am undertaking and I am heartened by the number of people in my Department and around the University to support and applaud the attempt to engage technology in the ways we are.

- Christopher P. Long

Comment on "Crisis of Significance, Ringing Ears, Fever"

Fri, 08 May 2009 08:48:51 -0500

Hey Chris. "Disruptive" is a loaded term. In education, a classroom disruption is most often considered to be a negative distraction. In the technology sector, "disruptive technologies" are ones that change the game or challenge the status quo.

To your peers in philosophy, what you are doing may be considered disruptive. To me and my peers, what you are doing is exploring, transforming, innovating, and sharing. I'm happy to be a part of that journey.

Your other questions are the ones that give me the fever and have made me think about the implications of some of the things we are doing. Honestly, I didn't think about the power of tenure until you made the remark about your colleagues' reactions to what you've been doing. And our discussion of excellence afterward was a rare conversation that I don't often get to have about the fundamental principles of what we are doing and why.

- ALLAN SHAWN GYORKE

Comment on "Crisis of Significance, Ringing Ears, Fever"

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:47:42 -0500

First, I would like to thank you Allan, for this post, the question you asked and the recognition you offered for the work I am doing. I appreciated your comment about how important tenure is in allowing us to press the activity of education forward; and if I laughed, it was the laughter that comes with humility in the face of your very kind words of praise.

I do, however, also want to pick up on the question of the "disruptive" nature of the technologies with which we are engaged. There are disruptive aspects, to be sure, but it might be more helpful to think of the technologies as potentially transformative rather than as disruptive. Of course, transformation is most often both generative and destructive, so we need to think about the nature of the transformation we want to cultivate.

This was what was so exciting about our discussion on Tuesday: it began to focus on the critical question concerning the sorts of excellences, intellectual and otherwise, that we need to develop in ourselves and in our students if the technologies that are operating always upon us are to deepen our engagement with the world in ways that press it toward the better, the more just, the more beautiful.

From my perspective, this is just an extension of what the philosophical life, the human life, is supposed to be about: to live deliberately, to think and act in ways that are animated by a concern for the necessarily elusive good. How do these emerging technologies help us weave the elusive good into human community? How do they hinder us? And how can we respond to emerging technologies in ways that cultivate the sort of transformation education has, at its best, always sought?

- Christopher P. Long

Comment on "Crisis of Significance, Ringing Ears, Fever"

Thu, 07 May 2009 13:15:26 -0500

That's what Steve Thorne was asking in his 10,000-foot question to the panel. How can he, as a tenure-track faculty member, experiment in "disruptive technologies" while still being able to work toward his professional benchmarks that focus almost exclusively on publications in peer-reviewed journals.

The four faculty we have as part of the Faculty Fellows program either have tenure or aren't seeking it.

- ALLAN SHAWN GYORKE

Comment on "Crisis of Significance, Ringing Ears, Fever"

Thu, 07 May 2009 10:29:30 -0500

Hopefully there is not a cure for your fever ;-) I'm caught in your observation on the laughter; it's from people like Chris who have Gotten There, from people like me, who Don't Have to Get There, or those in the audience who are optimistic to One Day Being There.

So the interesting question is what is the system/environment where those in a pre-tenure position can have some of the freedom to experiment and those in a post-tenure position can have some of the responsibility of having to keep proving themselves (not that they don't- I struggle for the words of that state where tenured profs can have some of the driver/hunger that comes a bit from not being in an assured place).

Might not exisit....

- Alan Levine

Comment on "The 5 Minute Meeting"

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:51:11 -0500

As an update on this, we had about 470 people who were signed up or on the waiting list at some point. After the drops and no-shows, we had about 375 show up to the actual event. This ratio of peak to actual numbers is consistent with what we have seen over the past three Symposiums.

- ALLAN SHAWN GYORKE

Comment on "Teaching, Knowledge, Truth, Curiosity? (Or why I dislike politics)"

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:40:28 -0500

Wouldn't you extend that distrust to religion, nationalism, racism, any number of skewed belief systems that have too much invested in preserving their institutions? Anytime anyone struggles to make sense of something within their larger perspective they run the risk of willingly deluding themselves into misinterpreting their own observations, reinforcing the careful foundations that have supported them thus far through their journeys in the world.

As I'm always learning more of my own difficulty with determining truth, I also have less concern with the mis-truths held and told by others. But to the extent that I do object (and I do object) to tainted truth and its promulgation, I look well beyond playing politics for the greatest offenses, and well inside myself for my own mistakes.

- Ian L

Comment on "Grassroots Video Video"

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:23:33 -0500

Bravo!!!

OK, soooo, what shall we do next in the event of an onslaught of interest?

- MATTHEW N MEYER