Worker\’s Playtime!

I just left a 2-hour meeting with a group committed to shaping the mission and vision for academic technology.  It’s very encouraging because we’re all pretty much on the same page and believe that we need to communicate our values about teaching and learning before we begin to have conversations about applications, hardware, enterprise systems, open source, networks, and other things technology. It goes even deeper then that though. You can identify and communicate your values all you want but if you don’t have the support of the administration then your project is sure to sink.  We have support though - heck, our Provost is leading the charge!

At some point we will have to have a bigger discussion that addresses assumptions about learning and teaching and the neomillenials. I’m sure it will be…invigorating . I’m just brainstorming here but we might pose the questions below to help ease into the conversation to help reduce any friction between traditional approaches to education and the diverse ways in which learning occurs:

• What will your class look like in 20 years?
• What do you wish you could do?
• What do you wish your students could do?
• What is a generation in technology?
• What is a generation for a building?
• What is a generation in curriculum?

We’ll see where we land with this but in the meantime we’re turning the ship!

Wow, it’s July….JULY…already! It’s time for reflection and annual reports.

So much has happened at KSC that it’s hard to take a fair inventory of the changes that have happened over the year. Listing them hardly seems interesting. Singling out one, two, or even five events subtly means that something left out is somehow less significant. Not true. For instance I really don’t want to talk about e-Portfolios because that ‘project’ was tough, it was very tough, and by all indications it was not successful (see how I side step the word “fail”? I just can’t bring myself to say it failed).  We do have a better strategy for the coming year and we have shared our challenges with colleagues at conferences so I feel some relief in knowing that other folks can choose a less bumpy path.

The year has been rewarding but if I had to single out two major coups, one would be the hard work that we (two talented colleagues and me) did to create an academic technology Vision for KSC. It’s still very much a draft but it’s significant in that at its core it speaks of our values. No, not how we value technology but how we value learning and engagement. Technology is merely a pathway to learning and engagement pedagogies. Phase two of the process brings together a committed group charged with creating an academic technology plan (with the draft Vision as the backdrop) that will guide decisions and initiatives.  We’re headed to Orlando in 2 weeks to participate in a working conference that will help identify academic technology priorities. I’m not too excited about the heat and humidity of a Florida summer but I’m really looking forward to the conference and what we bring back to campus.

The “center” is the other significant development that will have a huge impact on KSC. The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) is now official after much hand wringing (mostly on my part!). I was first made aware of the “center” concept last summer where the idea of a place for faculty professional development, student support, service learning and technology was still being batted about. I witnessed the growth process and how the “center” idea went through a metamorphosis to finally land on something that speaks volumes about KSC and our direction.

“The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching will provide resources and experience to support deeper learning, effective teaching, and community and professional engagement at Keene State College…
…We want to support a community of learners, where faculty, staff, and students can share ideas, transform curriculum, and deliver education through action”.

CELT will be critical in helping talented people work together to find new approaches to solving problems. KSC has an abundance of dedicated, intelligent people who are eager to make our institution shine and with CELT and campus leadership the sky is the limit!

Okay, so it’s not really one-on-one but YOU do have an opportunity to get involved and ask questions to experts such as Tim Berners-Lee about net neutrality, democracy and the role of the web. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) is hosting a June 11th ‘08 interactive debate on the future of the web in which YOU submit question(s) which are then ranked by the web community a la DIGG. The best questions are selected and pitched to the panelist of experts including Berners-Lee and Nova Spivack among others.

Some interesting questions have already been submitted and ranked including: “Is net neutrality essential for democracy?” and “How do we create a truly Semantic Web?”.

For details about the event and how to submit and rank questions, go to: http://tw.rpi.edu/launch/.

Melanie McBride posted this video documentary about net neutrality that needs a broad audience - hence I’m cross-posting it here (though it’s a slightly different version). The video, “Humanity Lobotomy: Net Neutrality Open-Source Documentary”, is 11 minutes long and contains information that is of interest to all internet users.

I attended an AAC&U (Association of American Colleges and Universities) conference in June 2007 and had the opportunity, along with the team I was traveling with, to be coached by Dr. Dee Fink. Fink has authored numerous books about student learning experiences, evaluation and assessment of faculty teaching, and team based learning. Fink’s primary focus at the AAC&U meeting was to help us further develop a center that would support and create significant learning experiences for students by moving away from a teacher centered approach to a learning centered approach. During our sessions together Fink made several references to technology but the phrase that caught my attention was this one: “technology can be use as a pathway to engagement pedagogy”. It’s a simple phrase but it really had an impact on me and helped me define great use of technology. I thought one of the most exciting examples of this was a class taught by Tracy Mendham an English professor at KSC who teaches an ITW 101 class (Integrative Thinking and Writing: A Blog of One’s Own). Here is a presentation she gave about her experience teaching the class and how she integrated Web 2.0 components to engage her students:

I found this great clip on YouTube from Charles Leadbeater about the intersection of innovation and community and how one nourishes the other. While creativity and new ideas can certainly happen in isolation it’s not until people come together as a group and allow themselves to think big, listen, and think differently that innovation and change will occur.

I watched this video through my higher education lens and thought about how this idea of community, creativity, and innovation could really blossom if we made it a part of what we do. What do I mean? Here’s an example: we have many talented faculty on our campus and many are doing amazing things with technology but few know about it. We have faculty using www.nationalatlas.gov, Google Earth, Google Pages, PBWiki, Word Press, Flickr, Ning, Windows Movie Maker, etc. as a part of their curriculum but there is no entity to bring these innovators together to talk, to share and to *innovate. Is an online community a way to connect people not only from our campus but from other campuses and with other creative technology users? An online community would also provide a space to anyone passionate about technology a forum in which to be heard. It’s structure and purpose would allow people to pipe-in and add ideas to the conversation or lurk if that would grease the thinking process.

I don’t pretend to have an answer but the video really did force me to think more about connections and the role of the connector.

*Innovation = includes not only research and bleeding edge but also experience and practice.

So today was the day that the ATSC (academic technology steering committee) held an information forum on the college’s Academic Technology Vision that Mike Caulfield (http://mikecaulfield.com), Irene Herold, and I drafted last fall. The idea is that the document will help inform requests, initiatives, and plans involving academic technology so that they align with the mission and values of the college. What an idea, eh? But it goes beyond just alignment. At its core it’s about learning, teaching, and transparency. Period.

We posted our work on a public wiki and invited comments…from anyone. We received a few on the wiki, some via email, while others found it easier to talk face-to-face over coffee. All in all we probably had a dozen or so people who gave us input or asked for clarification. After the first flurry of feedback the document sat…and sat. 3 months later we (ATSC) held an open forum to discuss the document, how it would be used in the planning process, and how this vision might be pulled in and applied to classroom strategies. To be honest I think most of us were expecting 6, 8, 10 people at the most to show up. We had over 40 people attend! We were blown away by the number and encouraged by some of the questions and comments.

There was a lot of interchange about how the vision might or might not support the following: the desire to revisit funding structures for software, the exploration of a student laptop initiative and what that might mean for IT support, faculty pedagogy, financial aid, etc., and support for faculty to find ways in which technology could strengthen learning. I understand why there was focus on process and how to “get stuff” but I hope this leads to broader conversations and an exchange of ideas about pedagogy, learning and how technology can be used to support both.

Again, the conversation was interesting but the following two items resonated with me:

• There is a real need for people to be able to come together to share and talk about their experience using technology in their teaching/with student learning/in their professional development.
  • I think this could be done a number of ways including brown-bag luncheons, however, I think this limits the audience/participants and further tightens already-too-tight work schedules. So to model sound and innovative use of technology we should think about blogs or other social space that would encourage conversations and provide examples (Ning anyone?)

• There is an assumption that students are born tech-savvy and intrinsically “do technology”.
  • If ‘doing’ technology means surfing the web, packing an iPod, or setting up a gmail account then yes, students are probably tech savvy. But if students struggle with sending a coherent email or creating a Word document then we have a problem. But this has nothing to do with technology. It’s a communication, presentation and collaboration problem - skills needed in the 21st century work place. While I think some support can be offered to help address these deficiencies I think it would better serve the student if solving the skill gaps were core to their experience at KSC (service learning, community service - i.e. grappling with real problems and designing real solutions with technology as a backdrop). By doing this students are refining their skills in context of life after KSC.

It’ll be interesting to see where this vision ultimately lands and what academic technology plan(s) it breeds.

I just read a great post by Melanie McBride about Twitter, del.icio.us, and participatory learning. I recommend reading it if your curious about a how one professor took the plunge and began ‘doing’ engagement technology. Read her post - she has a few stories from the trenches including an interview with one of her students.

I cross-posted this on the KSC Academic Affairs blog 2/4/08:

Twitter is a microblogging tool that lets you post brief updates about your everyday thoughts and activities to the web, cell phone, or instant messenger. The messages are limited to 140 characters, so they lean toward pithy, haiku-like utterances. The fringe appeal is now becoming mainstream and is being adopted by both business and education. So what’s being discussed and what’s the appeal of a 140 character post?

I clicked my way over to Twitter and read a litany of *tweets including: “just 8 a gyro for the 1st time - yum”, “Considering moving to Europe”, “Just kicked off the NH bus tour in Hanover. Great crowd!” (this one was from former candidate John Edwards). When read individually the posts can teeter on the banal but the real power comes when you find people of like interests to follow. It’s the social benefits that allow you to network with like minded people. Imagine being able to follow what people like Howard Rheingold are thinking and doing. I was curious so I sifted through some of the lite tweets and found a few gems that captured my interest:

“Any student savvy enough to check my blogs can find out. I’ll use Twitter in class later in the semester/quarter.”

” First time I used Twitter in a class, it sent them into shock. When they need to perform coherently some multitaskers aren’t so adept.”

” Students used projected twitter as parallel channel during class discussion — through this class for a loop. Maybe not others?”

And finally I uncovered the biggest pearl of all :

“syllabus: http://tinyurl.com/yuyrzg“

Rheingold had added a link to his Comm 217: “Digital Journalism” syllabus. Not only was I able to get a glimpse of what his thoughts were as he introduced Twitter to his students but I was able to understand the context in which he was using social networking tools as a means to introduce digital age Journalism.

“…By the end of the course, you should have a clear sense of the various ways journalists have taken up digital media and a sense of how you might use those media yourself. You should also gain a broad understanding of the ways in which recent social and economic developments have changed both the practices of journalists and the nature of the publics with whom they communicate. The role of the journalist in the public sphere is emphasized — journalism is unique among the professions in its responsibility to provide the information and context necessary for free people to govern themselves. You will actively blog, wiki, RSS, tag, Twitter, flickr, create mashups and podcasts….”

Rheingold certainly isn’t the first professor to try Twitter in the classroom. In fact the 1/28/08 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education had an interesting article about David Parry of UT Dallas and his use of Twitter. More revealing however were the number of comments left by enthusiastic adopters and the cynics.

So to complete the metaphor: Blogs are to dinner conversation as Twitter is to a rowdy party: great entertainment, nuggets of thought provoking conversation and lots of comments that have you scratching your head.

*(a response to “what are you doing?”; Twitter’s perpetual question)

A colleague just returned from AAC&U in D.C. very excited about the 4-day conference but especially jazzed about an IUPUI session led by Susan Kahn and Steve Ehrmann. During the presentation they shared some questions asked of students prior to creating their learning portfolio:

• how do you learn
• when do you learn
• what type of learner are you
• what do you learn

At first blush the questions seems pretty straightforward but how many of us really know our what our learning style is? Doesn’t it make sense for educators to pay real attention to style, both learning and teaching, to better help students navigate the rigors of academic life?

So what if we really stretched this idea where students were able to select classes based on their learning style. The content would still drive the curriculum but students could match the way they learn with the teaching style of a professor. Learning outcomes wouldn’t compromised, professors wouldn’t need to adapt their style, and students would be given an opportunity to succeed. This would put more responsibility on the student and provide them some choice in their education.