Crazy week, but all sorts of good things going on. I was out of town on Monday, so the 17 official meetings I had were crammed into some tight spaces. I gave up my standing "Friday is to think and work day" so I could fit in a Digital Commons planning meeting. I've tried to capture the highlights here but am posting this a week late ... things just didn't work out last week.
Tuesday, 6/6/2007
Meeting with Kyle Peck and Jackie Edmondson
The three of us met to follow up on the Chalk and Wire ePortfolio meeting we attended a couple of weeks ago. Good discussion that lead to Jackie and Kyle to say they would run a small pilot in the Fall to see how Chalk and Wire performed. I also urged them to talk more with their colleagues who have adopted TaskStream.
Discussion Related to CE Awareness
Allan Gyorke and I met with Kitt Camplese from Outreach to discuss ways we can help bring CE faculty up to speed with the things currently happening within ETS. We decided that we would start planning a series of ETS Briefings that can be delivered in a face to face mode or via Adobe Connect. We plan to make these all standard presentations -- following the "7 Things you Should Know" outline. They will also contain lots of contextual, "this is how it works in the classroom" examples and videos. We are planning to revisit with Kitt in the next few weeks.
Wednesday, 6/7/2007
Meeting with David DiBiase & Keith Bailey
I try very hard to keep regular meetings with directors of College eLearning groups. I enjoy these meetings very much primarily because prior to arriving at ETS I was one of them in the College of IST for close to 7 years. This one proved very interesting as it was the first time Keith, David, and I got together as a group. We have been fighting with how we engage our groups in more meaningful activity. The goal of the meeting was really to discuss open educational resources and how ETS could help with the visioning on that ... it was also to talk about content management tools to help support that.
It turned more into a brain storming session related to the integration of Web 2.0 technologies and philosophies into course design. I mentioned that I have been designing a course "in the open" that I plan to teach in the College of Education in the Spring ... this sparked a lot of discussion related to David's plans to redesign a course that he has been teaching for 10 years ... we came up with a plan to bring a group of learning designers together to help reshape this course using a learning design community approach. SOmetime in early September we plan to get people from ETS, Dutton, A&A, IST, and WC together to think big and see where it goes. We'll likely track the design in the open at the emerging learning design community hub. Should be interesting and could be very important work going forward.
Jim Leous
Jim and I got together to plan our Web 2007 presentation. It didn't take us long to go from being on topic to going off the rails. It is always enjoyable to work with Jim, so this was a pleasure. You can take a look at what we pulled off by jumping over to another blog post.
Thursday, 6/7/2007
Larry Ragan and World Campus Relationship
Larry and I have been talking a lot lately about how we create meaningful contributions to each other's organization. One of the outcomes will be a scheduled visit to the Outreach building to talk about the things ETS is up to and see where we can create opportunities to engage. Looks like I will be heading out with Allan sometime in August to get things rolling. Lots of great opportunities for the things we are thinking about to influence the work happening at the World Campus.
ePortfolio Committee Meeting
Looks like I am now part of this group ... good discussion and it is good that I am more than partially engaged in this space. I have started to talk to several people on campus as to the emerging needs for ePortfolios and I have gained quite a bit of insight into the varying levels of ePortfolio needs. This meeting was good as it was really a status check and a time to talk openly about where we are headed this year. More to come on this as it unfolds.
Friday 6/8/2007
Administrative/Infrastructure Penn State Online Sub-Committee
I had to join this meeting by phone, but was still able to take part. The discussion focused on the final recommendations to be taken to old main for several key pieces to the Penn State Online plan. Looks like the final draft will be sent on to the committee for review.
Digital Commons Planning and Implementation Meeting
The Digital Commons project's goal is to place digital media studios at every location of Penn State. This is a huge undertaking and this meeting brought all the key players together to create a briefing package that will be shared with all interested campuses next week. The immediate goal is to select 5 campuses to take part in the pilot implementation this Summer. The briefing package will help us determine what campuses are ready to immediately work with us. The website is starting to take shape. This project will occupy a majority of our time this Summer.
