#ldsc09

I am still buzzing from ldsc09. I was unable to make last year's learning design summer camp, so this was my first experience with the event. I am not sure how to begin to talk about it or if it is even worthwhile to attempt to convey the energy and enjoyment the event provided me.

First off, having Dean Blackstock provide live music while people were filtering in and getting registered, and later as people were returning from lunch was a great addition. I really felt like it served to not only energize the crowd but open our minds to participation and engagement. It signaled that this is not the traditional event on campus, and I think it got our attention and put us in the right mood.

Pretty much the whole event was captured on ustream and also youtube, but I have to say that connecting to people before, during, and after the conference in physical space was the highlight of my time. I think the size of the event may have hit a sweet spot in terms of real-time backchannel. The discussion via tweets and live question tool were very manageable to me, and made the event much more rich. It definitely kept me actively engaged during the panels. Even if I wasn't tweeting, just reading what others were saying helped keep me involved.

One thing that came through is that the blogs@psu is becoming more and more of the general purpose platform that I had hoped it would. Examples were discussed of blogs to support portfolio learning, courseware authoring and sharing, geotagging, and community interaction (a la psu voices). The "when is a blog not a blog" notion may be hitting the mainstream here.

Computers in general and the internet in particular are special in that they are designed without any clear function or use case. The people using them get to define that. It is a constantly evolving. Events like this are so important. We need engaged faculty and others interested in learning to continue to hash out how these tools can and more importantly should be used. If this group isn't doing, then who will?

Thanks to everyone who made this event so awesome. Now I need to go back to trying to make blogs@psu rock harder for everyone who was in that room.