Worker\’s Playtime!

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.

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.

I just had a 50 minute phone conversation with Dan Gilbert of Stanford University about the design of new and flexible learning spaces. Dan is an academic technologist at Stanford and is well versed in how to promote excellent teaching through innovative classroom design. I came away from the call energized and enthusiastic about what I had learned.

While we’ve given student learning, teaching and technology our full attention we’ve been lax when it comes to physical learning space. Sure we want to know if the classroom is technology enhanced, if it gets hot on a sunny day (hey, is there AC in the building?) and the number of footsteps it takes to reach our office. The problem with this focus is that our classroom blueprints are still being designed for teaching delivery of the last century. What we need are spaces that are flexible and can be configured to meet the needs of students and 21^st century curriculum.

A room that can be configured for yoga class, lectures, collaboration, movement, and community use would be a first step in revolutionizing classroom space. An empty room with adaptable furniture, flexible and responsive technology that can meet a variety of needs, walls that can be written on for mind-mapping and brainstormng exercises. The classroom wouldn’t have to dictate how curriculum is taught - instead it would be responsive and adapt to the multitude of ways learners learn and teachers teach.

This isn’t a new idea but it is however, becoming a topic of local conversation. Franklin Pierce University’s new arts and humanities building will house an experimental classroom wired for technology and ‘arranged to foster collaborative learning and close engagement between students and faculty’. On our campus we’re having conversations about the 21st century student, teaching and innovative learning space and how the three intersect.

So what is it that quality learning space is trying to address? “Rethinking the Classroom: Spaces designed for active and engaged learning and teaching” does a good job of summarizing why we need to include facilities and architects in our plans. Read the paper and then visit the Wallenberg Hall web site. You’ll see that’s it’s not such a radical idea after all.

I have an exercise for you: do a search on the word mashup and note the number of results returned. I got 660,000! 660,000!

I’ve been focusing a lot on learning, teaching and how the two can intersect with smart use of technology and am curious about how the idea of remixing content can drive student learning. My experience has shown me that students view information as raw data that can be sculpted into something brand new and something unique where ownership is not questioned; it’s theirs. This isn’t a new phenomena - one could hold a discussion on idea that Shakespeare borrowed stories from playwrights or that Handel ripped off music from other artists. In fact much has been written about creativity and how most truly creative work comes from extending existing ideas.

So what happens when education and web 2.0 technology intersect?

#1 - you get talk of plagiarism and copyright violation
Henry Jenkins of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program talks about the missed opportunity when schools focus to strongly on the idea of original work:

“<schools> often remain hostile to overt signs of repurposed content, emphasizing the ideal of the autonomous artist. Yet, in emphasizing totally “original work”, schools sacrifice the opportunity to help kids think more deeply about the ethical and legal implications of repurposing existing media content; they often do not provide them with the conceptual tools students need to analyze and interpret works produced in this appropriative process; and they don’t teach them the relationship between analysis and production.

This hostility that Jenkins sees is due to the fact that digital content makes repurposing simple thus making the authenticity of material difficult to see. But could it also be that we, (who graduated from college almost 2 decades ago or more) understand that remixing content without proper citation is plagiarism. Or copyright violation! Is our understanding part of the problem?

#2 the flip side of remixing content is that you get focused student engagement

“Remixing also helps illustrate the plasticity of meaning and how it can so easily be altered. This works because remixing allows us to see and appreciate the functions and structure as they are expressed in the content.” <Renee Hobbs interview>

Students are no longer the passive consumers of content but instead they are content producers who can easily create their own understanding. A fundamental shift has occurred but if we really want to see the learning potential we’ll need to ask some basic questions: how can we incorporate the practice of remixing/mashing of content into our pedagogical practices AND how do we value and assess the newly remixed content?

I stumbled across an interesting post and consequent interview with a high school student on Infinite Thinking. The reason I found it so interesting has to do with my focus over the past few weeks: I, along with 2 compatriots, have been drafting an academic technology plan for the college. The first iteration weighs heavily in favor of student engagement and authentic learning which may shake a few conceptions about technology and its place in education.

As we wrote and re-wrote the plan we referred to research by Stephen Downes, Dee Fink, Alma Clayton-Pedersen, and others who all had great stuff to say about education, change, teaching, and oh yeah, students. I wish I had come across this post earlier. It just confirms a lot of what we wrote. Did I mention that this kid is 14?

“The current learning system–one task, one person teaching–will just not be relevant in the future. And it’s not reflective of what college or work life are like. The education system owes it to students to prepare them for that world. We shouldn’t necessarily be teaching the tools, but teaching the thought processes that go into them. The teachers owe it to themselves and their students to be learning these new Web technologies.”

And did I mention that this very articulate kid got a wrist-slapping-comment from a teacher who tagged him with the name ’smart-ass’? Wow. Is this what change feels like?

I was so drawn in by the YouTube video that Mike Caulfield posted that I did a little digging only to find this gem produced by Kansas State students. It certainly caught my attention, (yes, the same K-State that is home to Michael Wesch and the subject of 2/07 “A Lesson in Viral Video“.