The Rest – Page 12

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 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

What would help you make better technology choices?

So I need your help.

For about 5 years I worked on the Edutools project with my friend and colleague Bruce Landon. Whether you liked the site or hated it (there seemed to be hundreds lined up on both sides of the fence) ultimately our goal and motivation was to help people make better decisions around educational technology.

In the Edutools project, the effort to help people make better choices was around the idea of ‘rational decision making.’ While I think the site was successful in many ways, it had its fair share of problems too. It didn’t offer hands-on access to the technology (it never tried to). Its “feature-centric” approach meant that people wanting to take a task or goal-centric approach (e.g. how well does this technology assist with teaching) were always frustrated. (And that approach played its part in reifying the concept of “course management systems.” Shudder. I will keep paying for that one for a long time.) It had a central review model and was hard to keep up to date. You can likely tell me many other problems. That’s ok, I’m not offended.

What I am more interested in, though, is your opinion on what helps you make better (educational) technology choices? Whether it be through Edutools or some other venue, I expect to continue trying to help people make better educational technology choices, and so before I even start down that road again I’m interested in any feedback on what might help or gaps that might be filled. A few of the ideas that have come up in conversation with others:

ed tech ‘sandboxes’ – inspired by the UMW folks, a service that lets educators ‘try before they buy’ at little or no cost (either effort or monetary)
a more community driven review site as per http://www.weblogmatrix.org/ or http://www.wikimatrix.org/
extending an existing social network (I am loathe to create yet another one!) to help people connect with existing peer adopters/practitioners
‘database’ of best practice examples that are classified in multiple ways (discipline, technology, learning approach) to help people to see what can be done
clearninghouse wiki focused on issues to help individual faculty first make (and then defend) choices on loosely coupled (non-CMS) technologies

But I am really interested to hear from you what would help you make better choices? Operators are standing by… – SWL

CAS’ifying Mediawiki 1.9.3

http://solr.bccampus.ca/wiki/index.php/CASify_this_mediawiki

In case it proves useful to anyone, I wanted to point out this short write-up by my colleague Victor Chen on how he got our new mediawiki installation working with our Central Authentication Service account. We wanted to use mediawiki to power this new wiki aimed at collecting, documenting and creating CMS interoperability best practices in B.C. We couldn’t get the solution described in this helpful write-up about Case Western’s efforts to work, but he very quickly got the described approach to function instead. – SWL

Real Social Learning or “I promise, I’m not a modernist, really”

Most nights for the past few weeks I’ve been working away from my home office in a local coffee shop with free wifi. Partly I find it easier to work on ‘after-hours’ projects out of the house, away from the family, but in truth part of the reason I like working here is that it is full of students. Unlike people located directly on a campus, I don’t see students everyday, so it still gives me a buzz, especially because I am seeing them where and when they are learning. Everywhere I look there are groups of 2, 3 and 4 students with textbooks and laptops open, working, talking, studying, together.

It brings back really good memories too; I was the type of learner who liked to talk (no kidding!) and I was fortunate to fall in with a gang of 5 or 6 others in first year (at the time we were ‘The Smokers’) who met every Sunday afternoon to go over our philosophy work. What some might have taken for arguing (and sure, there was some of that) was really peer teaching, and as I sit here in the café and look around, I see it everywhere.

I got a double dose of this recently down in Logan. I guess working in your basement really makes you notice and appreciate it. I feel really lucky to have a large and supportive online network of friends and colleagues who I interact with regularly on a daily basis. There’s very little I don’t feel I can share anymore (just ask them, they’ll tell you – king of ‘Too Much Information’ 😉 and we learn together everyday.

Yet over the space of 4 or 5 conversations in Logan, especially in two where I talked with Justin and Joel from the COSL team, my thinking and learning on a huge spectrum of issues expanded more than it had in a year of banging my head against the keyboard in my basement. While I was jamming with them (because that’s how I think of it, improvisation, the only music I know how to play) it felt like three or four foundational chunks just fell into place, thunk, so that what had previously been something I’d heard and processed at one level, became deep understanding, knowledge, internalized so that it is now part of my rapid decision making structure. I’m sure you know the feeling too. If only the other 3 had known had far gone I was by the end of the trip, they would never have let me drive the mini-van back to Salt Lake City!

The experience hardly seems noteworthy these days; you can’t swing a cat online without hitting someone stressing the ‘social’ nature of learning, how it’s conversational. But as someone who actually does most of his learning and interaction online, the gap between the dynamism of the peer learning and conceptual jamming I’m talking about and the kinds of interactions we mostly see online still seem huge. Maybe this is the way it will always be. Maybe this is the way it should be. But I kind of doubt it. I talked with Alan on Skype today for about 45 minutes; that was productive and creative, but still, it paled compared to the times we’ve been together and let the ideas flow.

This isn’t meant as a lament so much as a clarion call and pointing to opportunity (and also just a warm up exercise for the 1000 words I need to crank out tonight 😉 And also I guess, as a small bit of resistance to what sometimes feel like people trying to make the current paucity of conversational interaction into an asset of online communications. I’m not arguing that it has to be the same, and indeed the different forms of communication and interaction we’re inventing and discovering online throw uncritical notions of ‘real life’ presence and identity into doubt in productive ways. But it still feels like we’ve got a long way to go to catch up with the learning that 4 people “in flow” around the table can achieve. Oy vey, who knew I was such a modernist?! – SWL