1. Blog platform
2. Intense Debate comment engine

If you want to open it up to people all over the world easily and get questions from the outside, add in the optional component of a live UStream of the session. Not real hard, but if you imagine this post is being for a session happening live you'd see the commenting options below as a way to add questions live. The ratings would allow top questions to rise to the top and be openly addressed live. If you add the uStream, questions can flow in from anywhere ... and with the video commenting option people can sort of be there.

So if you click the title of this post (if reading in the stream of the environment) you'll see how easy all this works.

Twitter tag search results.

Keynote James Boyle

Excellent speaker --> No slides and exceptionally engaging

Previous Chair of Creative Commons

Hypothetical Situation #1

If you were asked to design two different systems:

Imagine 1992 --> Terminal --> Designed to restrict access to the network --> You are a consumer, consuming from a predefined list of functions (print, send)

Imagine 1992 --> WWW --> The network will carry anything --> The Internet treats blocking as a malfunction and routes the user around it --> Recipients can also be producers (they can put stuff up that we've not attached a value to it)

Thoughts --> Network #2 will be a disaster --> Porn, SPAM, Idiots, Ranting, Stupid Rumors will be spread, and Piracy --> No one will do commerce on a public network --> It will be a disaster --> Let's go with a nice safe network where control lives

Who would have imagined that 17 years ago?

Hypothetical Situation #2

If you were asked to design two different encyclopedias:

Imagine 1992 --> "I want you to design the world's greatest encyclopedia" --> Build a large corporation who can execute top down control --> It is going to cost a lot (writers, review, editors, etc) --> Trademark and Copyright would be critical

Imagine 1992 --> "I want you to design the world's greatest encyclopedia" --> We would just put up a website and let people do it themselves --> We'd have that is crazy

Hypothetical Situation #3

If you were asked to design two different methods for creating software:

Imagine 1992 --> Closed source license --> Built around tight control with a model for generating revisions and updates --> Money

Imagine 1992 --> Open Source Software --> Open, free access --> Changes move back into the commons

Which would flourish? Both.

IBM makes twice as much on OSS as they do from patent enforcement. IBM is the world's largest patent holder.

"if you want a secure system it has to be open"

Each of these choices is between open and closed. At the time most (if not all) would have chosen closed.

Open is not always better, but we have a cultural bias against openness.

Teaching should be about open --> How do we learn to teach? --> We take others peoples work and remix it --> Raises a set of really interesting observations --> Surely textbooks have been crowd sourced, open educational resources, and other ideas have not come into focus.

It is not just the freedom to copy, it is the freedom to remix.

We have a flourishing global encyclopedia and OSS movements, but not an active approach to openness in education.

Search engines are failing us not b/c of their algorithms, but b/c of the closed nature of our information -- the Science web is trapped in 1993 search results --> terms, not context and value --> Content is too closed

Right now we are being more cautious with our content than Viacomm --> That is pathetic

Everyone is an edge case in someone else's discipline

Conclusion:

The norm should be open --> Common sense must win --> SSN --> No --> Course materials, Scholarly Presses, Technical Systems --> Yes

Mock Debate: Is the CMS Dead?

Jim Groom and John St. Clair

This was perhaps the most fun I've had at a conference. Jim went first and claimed that it wasn't that the CMS was simply dead, that it is undead -- like a zombie. It cannot be killed. He clearly has a negative impression of the notion of the CMS as a Institutionally driven, top down system. I think one of the best assertions is that too many people think the CMS/LMS itself is that it isn't about teaching and learning, it is about managing course rosters, uploads, etc.

The real wonderful thing that happened occurred when John St. Clair (Distance and Blended Education) started by saying Jim misunderstood the challenge -- that he wanted to debate if the "Conventional Midsize Car" was dead. All I can say is that it was brilliant on so many levels.

All day yesterday I was able to hang out with David and I can say he is a smart and engaging guy -- our afternoon session with a group of PSU faculty was just first rate. We spent an hour and a half having one of the best conversations I've heard at Penn State. I really can't wait to hear him give his talk this morning and I am betting that danah lights up the room at the lunch hour! More later.

Could we do that with our own Blogs at PSU? It would be a bit of a game changer for the PSU Voices concept. Imagine that I come across a post that really should be contributed into a Voices page for psuets... instead of me reporting it and using that tag, I could just add that tag to the original post. Interesting? Make any sense?

In lots of ways, by blogging in the open we are already asking people to learn from our work and reuse that knowledge elsewhere.

So what does that have to do with the Blogs@PSU? Jamie is always looking for story ideas to share openly on the site and I know he's sent emails to people in the past to get them to submit stuff ... I mean to submit myself, but that often falls well outside of my workflow and I don't do it. What I am proposing you do is when you are writing about the projects you are working on you use the tag "psuets" ... this will pull that content into a centrally aggregated results page that at the moment is being called "PSU Voices." These pages aggregate content from PSU and mashes it up with content from the social web -- Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, and Twitter conversations are currently included in the resulting pages.

Check out the PSU Voices page for psuets.

At the moment it is only stuff I've written, but if you update your old posts or create new posts with the tag psuets it will get included. I talked with Derick this morning about the idea of this being a primary way for Jamie to discover new stories ... so if you are working on something you'd like to share this is a great way to do it. Also, if you use a feed reader you can subscribe to the Voices page and receive updates whenever someone adds a new entry tagged psuets.

By the way, if you go to the Blogs Search page you can run tag searches and content searches that produce new Voices pages. Give it a try and let me know what you think. This is all still in the experimental phase, so the result pages haven't been styled yet ... but we are making progress.

World Builder

This is a wonderful short that I really thought some folks around here could enjoy.

The Twitter Global Mind

Smart and quick, "WTH is Twitter?" piece from Rocketboom ... they make some interesting claims in the video. Worth the watch.

Microsoft Vision of 2019

Again, an interesting short -- this time by Microsoft (gasp). Lots of interesting tools that probably could/will come true. I wonder if given the economic turndown in this country will innovation like this be slowed?

Yacht Rock #2

I wish they had an embed code -- damn QT only! No matter ... if you grew up in the 80's you'll recognize some of the players. I got this via a pointer from Brian Lamb of Abject Learning. This really made me laugh.

• More than 90,000 students


• More than 22,000 World Campus enrollments


• More than 5,000 faculty and 10,000 staff


• 24 locations across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

We use MovableType as our blogging platform.

Blogs at Penn State Back Story

We launched our "blogging" service about 18 months ago after some real heated discussions about affordances of a system like this. Our argument to our primary IT group revolved around creating an environment that was an open publishing platform -- not just a blog service. When we stopped talking about blogs they began to understand the power. On thing we've heard them say over and over is that the Blogs at PSU make their infrastructure look great! Visit the Blogs at Penn State

The growth hasn't been at the webmail level, but it has surprised us. Last year we saw growth that really blew us away on a couple of levels. The big stories being the use of blogs for the promotion of course conversations and ePortfolios -- from the start of the Fall 2008 semester we saw 3,700 new users, 3,500 new blogs, 16,360 new posts, and 5,840 new comments.

We are promoting the idea that faculty shouldn't require a course blog, opting instead to talking to students about how one space is more powerful. One overall space can be used across a career by effectively employing categories and, more importantly, tags to keep things organized across their academic and personal lives. This is ultimately the direction we are taking this -- a Learning Life Stream.

What is emerging is that people are getting the fact that blogs are powerful personal content management environments. Because of the way one can instantly post, tag, search, and edit students can organize materials in an online space like never before. This notion has lead to some really interesting uses -- the most powerful being the use of blogs for program assessment.

Stacks of papers can become a thing of the past as students move their content into integrated online spaces that are fully searchable and belong to them. Some departments have worked to identify and clearly articulate the program outcomes so as students create work (evidence) they tag it with the program outcome statement so it is easily aggregated together. When the time is right our Pack it Up tool allows program assessors to create a fully functional archive and move it into a program assessment environment.

Some Examples

• Amy's Portfolio
• http://www.personal.psu.edu/awb5000/blogs/andreas_portfolio/
• http://www.personal.psu.edu/hst5004/blogs/helenes_portfolio/
• http://www.personal.psu.edu/pjh5020/blogs/paiges_portfolio/

Some Related Resources

Blogs in Plain English by Common Craft

A Vision of Students Today by mwesch

A Vision for the Networked Student by wdrexler

I was shown this little gem by Chris Hubing in ITS' Emerging Technologies group. He has a great post up over at his blog (dude, get an offical PSU blog!) where he lays out all the settings. One word of warning, it works very slowly on my iPhone ... I am guessing b/c I have a large number of calendar entries. But it does work -- as a matter of fact it is working its magic right now!

The big difference this year is that I was invited to be a member of the advisory board and let me say it was an honor working with so many smart and talented people in our field. You can read the finished report on your own, so I won't get too far into it ... but the section on the Personal Web was a place I lobbied hard to make sure it appeared.

What I found fascinating was the process the NMC took to gather the items for the report. We were given wiki space, a collection of tags, and some heavy duty deadlines to make sure we contributed. Each step of the process was well regulated and kept us all pushing each other to not only dream, but to provide evidence that our dreams could come true. If you are interested in a well formed collaborative process for publication take a look at the Horizon wiki.

While at ELI, they formally released the report to the community in a session. It should be required reading for all of us! Grab a copy and take a look.

One thing to mention about an event like ELI is that it attracts quite a few innovative people.  I got to spend time with lots of smart friends from all over the country -- the CIC was well represented and I got to talk with people I missed at the November LTI meeting.  I was so excited and thrilled to see my old friend Carl Berger.  Carl is truly one of the greatest people in our space ... to see him still attending and participating at such a high level even after he's been retired from Michigan for so long is inspiring.  He is the model of the Yes we Can attitude our community needs to embrace.

Before I get into the specifics of the event, I should say that I found great value in the whole experience.  I traveled with several colleagues from TLT so there were lots of opportunities to really talk and reflect on what was happening across the event.  We were well represented as attendees and as participants.

I saw on numerous occasions our staff asking really good questions, pressing presenters, and meeting with others in the halls between sessions.  I have to say that traveling with so many people made the event more powerful as we had real time to think through issues.

We didn't just have presentations, Allan Gyorke shared a poster he designed that was very well received.  He spent time sharing the story of "Community as Committee" highlighting the collective work that created the Learning Design Summer Camp and DC Tailgate.  People loved the approach and are very eager to continue the conversation.

I presented two sessions on a related topic -- Blogs at PSU as an enabler ... both of which can be explored further at my PSU Updates blog and the ELI site itself.  They were well received with lots of great questions and full rooms.  The first was with Alan Levine and Jim Groom so it was a chance to work with remote colleagues on something we all feel strongly about -- open tools for easy publishing online.  We decided to skip to power point slides and go with a blog as the presentation platform so there is a living resource left over ... I also think Alan recorded the session.

The second session was done with Brad Kozlek and Carla Zembal-Saul highlighting our notion of the ePortfolio as a social tool to support learning.  The one take away from both sessions is that people are very concerned with FERPA and privacy -- almost to a fault.  In both sessions the first questions were dialed into very negative thoughts related to what we are doing to students ... it was a little disheartening.  It was great to hear that during the closing keynote that FERPA does not limit open web publishing -- that is consistent with the advice we have received from our own council.

A real highlight was the Obama Inaguration that happened while we were there ... tons of the conference attendees gathered in the hotel bar area to watch the event together.  As one can expect with an education focused event everyone was excited to see a change in focus for the country.  We all stood, cheered, and toasted as Obama took the oath of office.  The social netowrks were buzzing, cameras snapping, and tears flowing.  It was an interesting and memorable way to be part of a new community of people.  Very exciting and emotional for me personally.

Yesterday after the last of the afternoon sessions, Brad Kozlek, Allan, and I met in the bar area to record ETS Talk 52.  Brad and I were lamenting the negative approach of the questions coming from our community -- we felt there was a "No we Can't" attitude permeating a certain group of people and it comes through in the early minutes of the podcast.  By the end we had completely shifted out focus and were certainly energized by the event and the trip.  The podcast is available on iTunes U and at the ETS website.

The rest of this post is a series of unedited notes and random thoughts about the things I saw and went to.  Some sessions were interactive and kept me from taking notes.  Other sessions were less inspiring (but still good), so I didn't bother breaking my laptop out ... instead opting to simply listen.

Some General Ideas:

• Make sure we do as good of a job as Julie Little did in the introduction to the conference.  She pointed out all of the social networks and other items in great detail.  Bad for experts, but great for novices.
• They did some sort of a game during the event ... I didn't follow along, but they used an outside service at savebluth.com

Keynote 1

• Constance Steinkuehler
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Keynote topic is virtual worlds

• Brett should consider having her come to campus for a gaming talk
• All of EGC should read her dissertation and her work
• Populations of the most popular MMOPG's is not trivial 13.5 (NYC X2)
• 8-18 year olds play games the same amount of time as they spend doing homework
• For industry, it is becoming "the new golf"
• Her argument is that they are not only culturally significant, but are also academically significant.
• Some interesting things she discovered in WoW ... the chat is actually socially productive as players were problem solving (86%) -- insert scientific discursive practices picture --
• After about three months players have to start hitting the support forums to progress effectively

While I am not a gamer at this level or really participate in the online games space, Constance did a really good job of pulling this into the light of the social web in general.  At one point she made the claim that, "what people are doing in their play places looks a whole lot like what people did to elect their new president."  That works for me on a bunch of levels.

The idea that what kids are doing while playing is really related to building real relationships, are engaging in real cognitive activity, and banding together to come up with new ways to solve complex challenges is really interesting.  I think that is a really important notion to wrap your head around.  While her populations seemed small for the size of her claims, there is no doubt that she is on to something really big.  I am interested in really folowing her work and seeing where it goes from here.

My other takeaway is that ELI took a real risk asking a true academic researcher to address this audience.  Lots of us spend time in the classroom, but very little time engaged in the type of high quality scholarship she does.  Her talk was academic, though provoking, and cause for attention.  I enjoyed it very much.

Keynote 2 * Mike Wesch * Kansas State University * From knowledgeable to knowledge-able

I called it quits on trying to take detailed notes during Mike's talk -- it was just too compelling to spend moments with divided attention.  His delivery is amazing and his ability to weave pop culture observation with true scholarship is enviable.  He was bumble as can be and spent a good deal of time offering real advice to people working to integrate social media into their courses.  He took time to tell us what he's done right and wrong ... and that is the mark of someone who is grounded in his work.  Some other random thoughts ...

Mike asks, "do you like school?" ... over half of his students say no.  But when he asks if they like learning, they all say "yes."

Neil Postman ... why the revolution failed (late 60s): * War ending * Stagnating economy * Utopian hype * Back to basics movement

When he compares it to 2009 it sits in the exact same place ... what are we going to do about it.  Mike is very critical of the current educational environment, but I sense a great deal of optimism in his thinking.  He cites work discussing new media literacy and its critique of the back to basics movement outlined in "The Dumbest Generation":

• Pandering to students
• Neglects basic literacy skills
• Difficult to implement

Mike talks about what he thinks is going back to the basics ... he feels one of the things is that we neglect to push students to ask good questions.  Students are just trying to get by and end up asking questions like, "how much is this worth?"  Personally that is my most hated question as a teacher.  He says that these notions are being challenged by a new mediascape ... transparency, authority, following along, etc.  He says that learning is about sharing, creating, and meaningful connections (not information) to get to significance.  So his question is "How do we create students who can create meaningful connections?"

Students must harness the entire mediascape -- this includes books.  He makes the claim that there are no natives here -- the tools are less than 4 years old so there are no natives.  This is a point I want make sure I Carry forward ... the fact of the matter is very few of my students know what is really going on with the social web outside of Facebook.  Certainly an important take away.

Tools to explore:

• Kaltura.com -- wikipedia of video
• diigo.com -- time explore that again

He uses a wiki to let students take live notes in class ... he talks about how interesting the notes are as he looks at what the students are taking from the lectures.  He ultimately views the use of the wiki as a failure for a few reasons, but the main one is that while the students are doing all this creation, they are still only guessing what he wants and not build deep connections with the material.  He uses a commercial wiki service as the University hasn't gone there yet.

A shining moment ... a very emotional example for me personally is when he put a picture of himself in the front of the room next to a picture of his 200 students in his intro anthropology course and questioned who is smarter.  He is 33, has lived in a bunch of countries, has over 200 credit hours, etc.  He asked his students questions and he discovered that the collective experience in the room is overwhelmingly humbling -- thousands of years of collective experience, travel, military experience, fighting and protesting war, and so on.  Was quite a story for me.

While he was sharing his World Simulation activity I immediately was pushed to recognize it as a game.  A game that doesn't require flash developer or programmers ... the students do the creation within this framework.  That is the kind of game we should design.

He and his students are now exploring 2D hyperlink tags to link the real world to all of the stuff that is going on all around us in the air.  There is some real potential in this.

Returning to Postman, ultimately he thinks the new revolution will succeed.  Citing:

• Urgency not grounded in a single political issue
• Mostly free
• Technologies are implemented in many diverse nits and pieces
• Driven by "rethinking the basics" movement

All in all one of the best keynote talks I have ever seen -- perhaps second only to Lessig's talk at the Symposium last year.  I asked Mike to personally hold the date for next year's Symposium.  We spend a lot of time during ETS Talk 52 talking about his session as well.

Informal Learning Spaces

ELI had an area set up to demonstrate several informal learning spaces ... it was very interesting and has me really excited about the work Allan and his committee plan to do.  I spent time in there listening to different groups talk, participating in round table conversations, and just hanging out.  Herman-Miller sponsored it so the whole thing was first rate.  Lots of risky designs and approaches were shown ... stuff I'd love to see emerge.  Strangely enough, one of the setups reminded me of the ETS Cafe.

I went to a session on assessing rich media assignments that made me think quite a bit.  They actually shared real rubrics designed specifically for assessing not just student work, but a balance between it and overall institutional impact -- things like instructor time, academic support, and technical support went into the assessment of the design.  It was a smart approach.

I spent time in several digital storytelling sessions -- the one I really enjoyed was from folks at Ohio State.  We met up afterwards and we exchanged cards.  It sounds like Chris Millet will be following up with them about their digital union project and share thoughts on the Digital Commons.

At the end of the day my only regrets are missing my friend and colleague Bryan Alexander's digital storytelling workshop and the cold weather.  Other than that it was an amazing few days of learning and engaging with and from from friends across our extended community.  First class event -- nice work Educause!

You'll have to right click on the link to the feed and download it before you can upload it ... in other words, don't just click the link, save the document locally first. So grab the XML file and watch the video below to learn how to do it.