I'm on the plane, returning from the 2009 ELI Annual Meeting held in Orlando, Florida working on my notes and reflecting on an amazing few days. This is one of the first events where I didn't post thoughts as it was going on, instead choosing to take notes in Evernote for posting later ... I just decided to maintain a lower profile while being out of town. I apologize for not having these available sooner, but it has taken me longer to collect my thoughts this time. I'm also sorry these seems so scattered, but the event has my head spinning.
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!
