EdtechPost – Page 15 – Technologies for Learning, Thinking and Collaborating

Where can I meet you? How are you telling people the conferences you are attending?

Last year was a banner year for my conference attendance; on top of the always fun Northern Voice, I was able to attend the (not so fun, for me) IMS Alt-i-lab sessions in Vancouver, the mind opening Open Education convergence in Logan, Utah, the WCET conference in Atlanta, SREB’s Online Learning Task Group Meetings (again, back to Atlanta), and closer to home, the BC Ed Tech User’s Group session in Kamloops and Camosun College’s Distributed Education days.

As enjoyable as many of the programs were, the highlight is always the people, the hallway and barroom conversations where new ideas are spawned, plots hatched and connections made. Indeed, this year’s crop was spectacular in this regard; as much as I am in almost daily contact with my online network, the opportunity to see Chris Lott and Jim Groom twice in one year, and Brian and D’Arcy more times than was seemly was a great boon to my thinking, growth and personal well being.

I typically canvas my network of close friends and edublogger buddies about what events they are thinking about attending, as I know this will factor into my own planning. But this got me wondering (which I did aloud on Twitter) if there wasn’t a better “web 2.0” way to find out this information, especially a way that would allow me connect with people who I read and am interested in but don’t already have strong ties with.

As usual, Twitter yielded at least one good suggestion, upcoming.org, a site purpose-built for this. So I dutifully reactivated my account there, but I have some concerns. Not uncommon with any social software, the big one is “who else is there.” As much as I want to connect with new folks, the whole exercise began in an effort to more easily (less intrusively) find out where people I already know and like to talk to are going. The second issue is the lack of uptake of upcoming.org, epsecially amongst the educational technology conferences. A number of biggies weren’t in there (before I added them, a feature I quite like) which makes me suspicious of how useful it will be.

So, my question for you to start off 2008: where are you telling people (and how can I best find out) what physical meetings you are planning on attending in 2008? upcoming.org? Your blog? Facebook?

For myself, I will endeavor to use upcoming.org for now (cf. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/syndicate/v2/my_events/201841), but I am absolutely willing to be convinced of the merits of some other method. – SWL

Happy Solstice, Year End Reflections

(I have a half-dozen posts to write that don’t seem to be getting done, so this will have to suffice for now. Maybe over the holidays – oh yeah, right, “holidays.” Time *off*.)

Tonight (and tomorrow, we don’t discriminate) is one of our biggest celebrations of the year, Winter Solstice. I hope you have a great one too and drive away any winter doldrums as you welcome the rebirth of the light.

And being in a relfective mood I thought I’d note some things I am grateful for from the past year, and things I am wishing for in 2008

What I am grateful for in 2007

My family, and both mine and their continued good healths.
Being able to work in my chosen field and live where I live. Any gripeing you hear me do throughout the year is unfounded. I am truly fortunate.
The fellowship of the Unitarian Universalist community we are a part of in Victoria. Their ability to embrace difference and diversity while also standing up for social justice is an example I always hope to emulate.
Twitter, for all its failings. Or rather, for the people who I get to hang with in Twitter. Their support, conversation and everyday companionship means so much to me.
Being able to see so many good friends at different events this year. I “see” them everyday online, but the amount of cool ideas and projects that come out of even 10 minutes jamming over lunch or between sessions in a hallway just can’t be beat
Brother Leon and The Whoremonks, for saving my soul, getting me to play music and jamming with me no matter how bad it sounds to anyone else
To The Flaming Lips, Radiohead, Amon Tobin, The White Stripes, Beethoven, Beck, Blockhead, and M.I.A. for all doing their part to make joyous raucous music that lifts me up

And my wishes for 2008?

More time (and more focus) to get more skills, do some development work
For Dr. Bruce Landon’s continued and speedy recovery.
That my proposal for a new “social and web 2.0” Edutools site is accepted and supported
That Gardner Campbell will come out West and I get some time to hang with him

Blessed Be.

Walking the Web 2.0 Talk…and you can help

http://solr.bccampus.ca/wiki/index.php/SREB_Web2.0

Next week I am back in Atlanta to give a talk on “Web 2.0” to the educational technology working group of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB).

At this point in the game, giving a talk on “Web 2.0” is pretty daunting, not because the topic is that difficult but because it’s been done so well so many times before that the challenge is how to keep it fresh and interesting.

I thought about this for a while and came up with the above approach. First off, rather than try to speak of “Web 2.0” in the abstract, I decided (inspired by Cogdog’s recent examples) to tell a story, in this case my own story of the various points where I came to accept that something new IS going on with Web 2.0. Like many, my tendency was to try and understand the present and the future in terms of the past. While at times this can serve you well, it also results in a tendency to underestimate the magnitude of true discontinuities. And it seems to me that anyone still needing a “what is Web 2.0” talk is likely suffering from this phenomenon, underestimating the disruption these innovations are already affecting.

The other approach I thought I’d try is to do the presentation as a page in mediawiki and then use the mediawiki presentation script during the presentation. (As an aside, I modified the script to work a little better, if you care you can install it from this page.) The idea, obviously, being to

use Web 2.0 tools to talk about Web 2.0
turn the presentation into a demonstration of some Web 2.0 phenomenom (write once/read anywhere; participatory web, etc)

That’s where you come in. I am about to send this page off to the organizers so that they can circulate it to the attendees with the request that they add to it, but I’m also looking for feedback and additions for you.

Each section has two links to areas I’m hoping people will add to. Each section heading has a link where I have added some additional notes, links and an invitation to steer the talk on that particular topic. And at the bottom of each section, there is a link for people to add their own stories of how they came to stop doubting and embrace the change being heralded in by Web 2.0. It’s there that I especially hope you will consider adding links back to your own blogs, your own personal stories of how you came to understand these various aspects of Web 2.0

If you decide to, you can edit the wiki using a generic account I’ve set up (username:wiki, password:wikiwiki). I’m hoping for at least a couple of outside contributions in an effort to demonstrate to decision makers from 16 southern states the power of the network. So please, consider adding a link or note on one of the sub-pages, and I will try to then work it into the larger presentation. – SWL

Recent Presentation – The Pros and Cons of Loosely Coupled Teaching

http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/The+Pros+and+Cons+of+Loosely+Coupled+Teaching

The other presentation I did at WCET this year was a lot more fun. Asked to do a 15 minute spiel on a panel entitled “The Once and Future LMS” I promptly ignored the title of the session (as is my wont) and came up with my own, The Pros and Cons of Loosely Coupled Teaching.

The M.O. here was an interactive session to examine three different examples (in part culled from suggestions offered in the comments of a post from a few weeks back) of online classes taught using ‘loosely coupled tools.’ I asked the audience for their ‘Pros and Cons’ of these approaches (which Chris Lott graciously captured in the background) which I then contrasted with my own list of Pros and Cons that I had built ahead of time.

The goal here wasn’t just boosterism, but instead to be honest about the current set of tradeoffs involved with choosing these approaches, in hopes of re-focusing effort, attention and dollars towards filling these gaps rather than continued spending on walled gardens and monoliths that ultimately serve the wrong masters.

Even more importantly, my goal was to illustrate this conclusion, that the interest in these approaches and tools isn’t about strong willed kooks not wanting to conform (though there’s nothing wrong with that) but instead an issue of freedom that is not just relevant but ultimately fundamental to how we teach and learn online. The choice of tools and environments, and the *choosing* of them, is not incidental, nor is one’s attitude towards openness or authentic engagement. But we do need to move forward with stating the basic institutional requirements that need to be met and putting in place lightweight, loosely coupled mechanisms for meeting these, otherwise 5 years from now we will still be railing against the monoliths, and still forcing students and instructors who want to authentically engage with these tools and methods to act like renegades. – SWL

My Recent OpenID Preso

http://www.slideshare.net/sleslie/open-id/

Somehow I think this is likely of limited value if you are reading this blog. I don’t think I really know that many people who don’t know what OpenID is or why we in higher ed should be paying attention to it. But when I gave this talk during an ‘student authentication’ session at the recent WCET conference in Atlanta, a scant 2 people in a room of 50 put their hands up when asked if they had heard of OpenID. So maybe there’s still some folks who might find this useful. Anyways, here it is, hope it helps. (As an aside, I was presenting alongside some scary biometrics ‘1984’ remote proctoring tech in a session entitled “Student Authentication: Do You Know Who is in Your Classroom?” My joke, which I didn’t dare make to the crowd, was that I thought the session was titled “OpenId – Are students still the same people when they are in your classroom?”) – SWL

My interview with the CogDog

http://cogdogblog.com/conversations/scott-leslie.mp3

As part of the cogdog’s recent tour down under, he interviewed a number of blog colleagues for quotable quotes. I just found the one I did with him now and listened to it for the first time (what, like this is a revealing admission, from a blogger?)

I must admit I’m actually kind of proud how it turned out – I must have had my coffee that day and been slightly less sleep-deprived than usual, because this is probably as coherent a statement of what I think and what I am interested in right now as I’ve produced. Thanks for the great questions Alan, and for helping me frame these scattered thoughts a little better. – SWL

Zero-Install Remote Screen Sharing Apps?

Both as someone who supports online learning and as someone who supports remote users of various software services, I have a keen interest in screen-sharing software and techniques, as these are often the quickest way to diagnose and troubleshoot problems.

Now there are a huge number of good solutions that let you share your own desktop/screen with remote users without requiring them to install any software. I’ve written before about my ongoing fondness for Webdialogs Unyte, and I’ve had good success too with Glance (though it is not free). In addition, you can find good write-ups from Robin Good and a more recent writeup from Online Tech Tips on tools that make it very simple to share your own screen.

The piece I am missing, though, is a simple way to help users having trouble share their screen with me. And simple is the operative word here, ideally meaning no install or other configuration on their end. Of the various solutions mentioned in these articles, SkyFex seems the only one that may fit that bill (though only for Windows, and its website makes me very nervous). Of the others CrossLoop seems promising because it’s install is pretty painless, but the idea is to find a solution that does not burden already troubled users with additional downloads and installs.

It may be that such a beast does not exist. I can imagine a host of technical reasons this may be so. I am also not overly keen on the idea of bringing the user into a system like Adobe Connect/Breeze or WebEx and getting them to share from within there, as the overhead seems just as bad. But before I give up I thought I’d ask you folks – what’s the best way to help remote users share their screen with you, and have you found an easy, no-install way to do this? – SWL

Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange 2008

http://www.ttix.org/

Got an email today from someone at Utah Valley State College asking me if I would place an ad here on edtechpost for their upcoming Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange conference. I told them that I do not accept advertising, but given that the conference is FREE I told them I would at least point to it in a post.

So if you are down Utah-ways June 5-6, 2008, consider dropping by. I know from experience there are some very smart people at UVSC (as well as the sponsoring Utah Education Network) and if the conference archives are anything to go on, it should be worthwhile. – SWL

Suggestions for best sources on teaching with loosely coupled tools

So, if you’ll induldge me again, I have another question as a follow up to the last one.

What is your favourite source for finding new examples of people teaching online with loosely coupled tools? Is there a blogger you already follow who regularly posts great examples from the field? Or is there a trove of examples already identified that the rest of us might benefit from.

If you have specific examples to point to of people teaching with Web 2.0 tools or in a loosely coupled way, I would love to hear about those too, but right now I am trying to gather regular sources/feeds, people who regularly note best practice examples. Suggestions truly welcome – SWL