This is really neat to see for a couple of reasons.

First of all it’s an example of sharing and reuse in action.  I release all of my contributions to this blog as Creative Commons Attribution licenses, meaning anyone can copy the work, adapt it and republish it so long as they attribute the source, which Watching the Watchers has clearly done.

The fact someone thought enough of the post to reproduce it is quite a compliment, and it’s great to see the practical application of openness in publishing.

The second significant aspect of this is the replication of the Wave itself.  The whole idea was to explore the idea that Wave could be used to distribute centralised discussions in decentralised spaces – namely, many people engaging in a shared discussion in different locations.

The fact Watching the Watchers has included the original Wave in their version of my post lets us examine how this idea would work in actual practice.  All of the comments in the wave have been reproduced, as will any future contributions to the discussion.

Effectively it doesn’t matter if someone looks at the wave on this blog, on Watching the Watchers, or in Google Wave itself – the contents of the discussion are one and the same regardless.

So thank you to Watching the Watchers for not only helping demonstrate re-use, but also establish a proof of concept in use of Wave to distribute discussions.

Now that the hysteria has died down I’m finding it a bit easier to look at the tool in a more objective sort of way, and this morning I in fact had an idea about a real use for it in an educational context.

The significance of embedded content

One of the glaring voids in the tool historically has been there was no embed option. So you had to go into Wave in order to edit anything, or contribute to any discussions. For me the fact there are so many other communication tools out there meant that Wave was largely forgotten and overlooked.

However this morning I’ve just noticed they’ve added in an embed option, which means you can include a real-time view of the wave discussion in any website or blog that allows use of the embed code. The fact it contains JavaScript is a bit unfortunate though, since many websites are likely to lock down use of these sorts of code snippets (I suspect WordPress.com is one of them).

Decentralising Centralised Discussion

Nonetheless, it seems to me that Wave would facilitate centralised discussions in a decentralised fashion.

One of the corner stones of many online courses is use of a discussion forum. The centralised nature of this tool is such that people can engage with one another to discuss and debate concepts and topics in a shared space.

Historically this has required use of a centralised tool like a group or learning management system, which effectively makes the online element course-centric as opposed to learner-centric. My thought was that Wave could mitigate this reality by allowing centralised discussions to be situated in many different locations all at the same time – including student blogs, learning management systems, groups, etcetera.

Students would then have the power to engage in the discussions in their own chosen contexts, while not losing out on valuable interaction with their peers and instructors.

An Example

For instance, below is a publicly visible wave I’ve created. Why not try entering a comment, and see if you can embed the snippet in your own context – if only temporarily. Largely this idea is untested, so I’d appreciate any collaboration or feedback people have on how well this idea works in practice.

Note, in order to make this Wave publicly visible and editably I’ve had to add public@a.gwave.com to the list of Wave participants. More on this here.

Update: After experimenting with this a bit it appears that the embed code snippet is only available from within Wave, rather than via the embedded instance. So students would theoretically need to visit Wave in the first to grab the snippet, and thereafter could enter comments through instances. It also appears that many of the options in the tool bar within Wave are unavailable outside of it.

According to the header, Tomorrow’s Professor is:

“A partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University to create a forum for comments and discussion about articles from the Tomorrow’s Professor Mailing List and about general issues concerning higher education”

This blog is significant for a few key reasons.

First, it is a collaborative effort between two recognised and highly respected institutions covering emerging issues that affect countless other institutions, teachers and students around the world.

Second, it is formatted like a scholarly journal – and indeed features long-form papers that are published in peer-reviewed publications elsewhere – and yet does so using an open format, which solicits open comments and discussion. Its intent is not simply to distribute and disseminate, but to discuss as well. Most scholarly journals don’t do that – in fact I’m hard pressed to think of a single one that does.

Finally, in incorporating a simple, open format – using a bare-bones WordPress installation and default theme – Tomorrow’s Professor demonstrates the ease and speed with which collaborative efforts can be pulled together using social media tools, and yet offer significant benefits to the academic community – not just in terms to access to information and emerging research topics, but access to each other as well.

To me it’s an important symbol of the potential in educational use of social media, and what can happen when you start focusing on the possibilities rather than the politics.

Tomorrow’s Professor is located at: http://tomprofblog.mit.edu/

Dean Groom is currently streaming the SICTAS Symposium in Sydney via Ustream.TV (or at least he was – the feed seems to have gone down) via http://www.ustream.tv/channel/edtechshedtech

This is a very interesting use case of how a collection of different technologies can be combined to present a fairly cohesive view of a live event. We are (or at least were) able to watch the even live via Ustream, read up on the background and planning via the wiki, hold discussions via Twitter with both local participants (such as Dean) as well as others no present, aggregate and syndicate the Twitter conversations using an RSS feed for the hashtag #sictassy, collaborate on a live document via an EtherPad document and ultimately reflect on what was discussed on blogs, tying them together via a common tag.

For a semi-live feed of the Twitter discussion you can also go to the Tweetchat room (Twitter account required). Tweetchat aggregates all tweets based on a designated hashtag, and filters out everything that isn’t tagged with the same term – much like the Twitter Search Results. It also, however updates and refreshes every few seconds so you are shown the most recent tweets automatically. The room’s hashtag is also added automatically to anything you post from within the room.

Events still going though, so I’d better get back to the action.

UStream.TV feed

Flickr Set by Education.au

Screencast of Interactivity
I just recorded a quick and dirty screencast of the different elements/tools currently being used to engage in the discussion. The video is available on YouTube, Blip.TV (embedded below), or as a download.

If you would like to download it please see the podcast feed.

The topic of “communication” arose, and with it an exploration of the different technologies that might support interaction, discussion, open reflection, and sharing of information. Some people offered their experiences on what they use to connect and engage with others – with the particularly plugged-in portion of the group (including myself) rattling off a fairly comprehensive list of tools.

At this point some people started to fidget, and my esteemed colleague Gus spoke to express a critical: “Oi! Don’t you ever get any work done!”

To me Gus represents an important perspective in the equation that shouldn’t be discounted. Time is at a premium for many people these days – both staff and students alike – and many people just don’t have opportunity or inclination to sit in front of a computer or hand-held device all day long, digesting and synthesizing every piece of information or discussion that comes down the pipe.

Learning as process or outcome

More than that though, it made me realise that there are (at least) two schools of thought regarding how information is dealt with, and what purpose it serves in the wider scheme of things.

For some, the significance is in the journey, or the process through which an outcome is achieved; and the learning occurs during the discussion, the reflection, questioning, and reading.  Essentially, learning occurs by engaging in the ongoing evolution of the idea. Each outcome then represents just one stage in an ongoing process of leaping from one node to another in a stream of endless connections.

For others, outcome is key, and information becomes valuable through its capacity to achieve a desired objective – and essentially to enable you to do something. Just give them the information and be done with it. They don’t want an in-depth explanation of how you reached your conclusion, the supporting arguments or logic that lead to its realisation – they just want the result.

Both of these are sensible positions to take I think, but it’s critical to recognise the differences in how they approach interaction and the seeking of information.

Implications

When looking at the implications of classroom or workplace use of social media (blogs, wikis, Twitter, etcetera), this is especially important to consider. In all likelihood we’re going to see a wide range of diverse preferences and opinions on how students and teachers would like to engage in the processes of learning and sharing. Equally likely, these views may not align with one another.

So how do you accommodate and empower both perspectives? This is an evolving conversation in which I currently have more questions than opinions or answers. So I’m quite interested in hearing the thoughts or experiences of others.

Complicating this discussion is the notion that new, social media is individually empowering. Conversations can occur anywhere, at any time, and pursuant to the conditions and locations desired and established by the participants. Blogs can be set up, forums created, Twitter or Facebook conversations occurring, YouTube videos posted, and Flickr images shared – all unbeknownst to the rest of the class or community of colleagues and indeed even in spite of policy to the contrary.

The issue then, can be summarised by two questions – a) how to become aware of the existence of these conversations, and then having done so b) how to organise and structure the information in a way that’s easily navigated, synthesised, useable – and indeed reusable.

Aggregation and Syndication

While they won’t immediately resolve the differences in viewpoint in the “learning/information as a process vs. outcome” discussion, aggregation and syndication have become critical, invaluable ways to deal with the flow of online information – and can therefore go a long way towards accommodating the needs of both perspectives.

Terms Defined

• Aggregation – the process of collecting or bringing together disparate, unrelated content sources into a single location, either for the purposes of consumption or syndication; most commonly incorporates the use of RSS feeds.
• Syndication – the process of taking content from one source and reusing it in another location; may (but does not necessarily) involve editing or remixing the structure of the information to suit a different purpose.

How it works

Both of these activities are most commonly fueled by the use of RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. As invisible and perhaps misunderstood as RSS is, it’s an absolutely critical component in how information is acquired, consumed and distributed in the web today.

In the past, each page in a website had to be coded and maintained by hand. This meant that the content was static, and not easily reused. To view the information, or check for updates, you had to visit the page itself in order to see whether there was anything new there. This made the process of sharing and acquiring information very time consuming.

RSS has made such a difference because it makes information easily shared and reused in different locations and under different conditions and contexts. Significantly, RSS is becoming a standard component of webpages. Frequently, as is the case with blogs, it’s not something that has to be “set up” – RSS tends to already exist by default.

Commonly use of RSS this takes the form of subscriptions, in which readers/users of a blog or website “subscribe” to the site’s feed (in other words, they elect to receive its content) and receive updates automatically via their RSS reader – also known as an aggregator. This enables people to collect the feeds from many different, unrelated locations and have the updates appear in a single space. As a result, dozens of feeds (or more) can be quickly browsed from a single location.

Importantly, RSS feeds frequently exist for many different types of information – including videos, podcasts, blog posts, wiki updates, search results, and Twitter posts.

This enables people to set up customised spaces which feature all the content sources they want, formatted in the way they want. This serves to save a tremendous amount of time and yet does not involve degradation of the original content in any way, since the information is not being replicated, it’s being aggregated and syndicated.

Syndication

Syndication comes into play when you want to reuse a content source elsewhere. This post for example has been automatically submitted to two different blogs. The post was originally posted to the TechTicker, which is my main blog. However the information is equally relevant to the UNSW TELT blog, and I have included the post in a feed that is automatically syndicated there.

When using blogs in the classroom, the implications of syndication are significant. Through syndication a course instructor would be able to establish a single course blog or portal that was “fed” by the feeds of a collection of student blogs elsewhere. This would enable the students to maintain their own space – and therefore begin to amass a portfolio of their work – while reducing the number of disparate locations that had to be browsed to view the collection of student contributions.

Likewise the RSS feed of the search results for a certain term or phrase can be syndicated as well. For example I have subscribed to the search results of the term “UNSW” on Twitter in my feed reader. Anytime ANYONE mentions the term UNSW in a tweet (a tweet is a post to Twitter), their contribution shows up in my feed reader.

This sort of filtering would be literally impossible for me to do by hand and yet happens automatically through the combination of search indexing, RSS, and a feed reader.  As a result I’m automatically informed when relevant content becomes available – I don’t have to go searching for it.

Taking this one step further we could then syndicate these search results on a blog or portal along side the aggregated blog contributions of a cohort of students, and perhaps even a similar search result in YouTube and Flickr – thus creating a customised filter to act as a single port-of-call for the course’s disparate activities.

Renegotiating the concept of literacy

One might be tempted to ask what the relevance of this type of technical knowledge is to the wider community.  I would argue – as have others before me – that fundamentally this is an issue of information literacy, not just digital literacy or network literacy.  The concept of information acquisition and construction of knowledge is core to the way we develop as individuals and as a society – and how we interact with one another.  Increasingly this interaction is taking place in virtual spaces.  It stands to reason then that what is considered a core literacy should be re-negotiated and reassessed to reflect common practice – and importantly examine ways to interact with this information in effective and efficient ways.  If we fail to acknowledge these sorts of changes, we risk missing out on valuable conversations or their resulting outcomes.

Someone I follow on Facebook posted a pair of extremely insightful statements in which she confessed to being:

“…totally on facebook during class right now. hey, anything to stay awake and survive this pharm lecture.”

Shortly thereafter she received several comments of affirmation and agreement from people who have obviously had similar experiences.  To these she responded “Dude this guy is painful!”

I was immediately struck by the question: “Is this use of Facebook and laptops during a lecture the cause of the students distraction and their apparent lack of interest, or it is it instead a symptom or effect of a much larger issue.”

An Escape

It seems clear in this instance that the student resorted to Facebook as a means of passing the time during a lecture that was completely uninteresting to her.  And based on her final statement – “Dude this guy is painful” – the source of her disengagement can be clearly attributed to one element: the instructor.

Now I won’t go so far as saying that all student disengagement and browsing of websites during class time can be blamed on “painful” instructors, however I would argue that the presence of an engaging instructor is an extraordinary motivators for participation.

Richard Buckland

Moreover as the example of UNSW Computer Science Lecture Richard Buckland illustrates, the combination of an engaging instructor and empowering technology can have incredible results for student participation.

In the following YouTube video (55 minutes), Buckland discusses the motives and logic behind his decision to implement wikis in the classroom, their nature and use, and the results that have been realised as a result.

The most accurate description of his work and apparent philosophies is featured in the video’s synopsis, which reads:

“Depending on your courage and how much faith you are prepared to have in your students, wonderful things can happen when you empower them.”

Beginning around 12:40 in the recording, Buckland starts discussing his experiences, saying (13:00 – 13:57):

“The first time I did the wiki, I said ‘students, there are no notes in this course I’m afraid. I’ve just got terrible bullet points that I’m lecturing off. But you yourself will have to have notes to survive in this course, so I’m letting you edit my notes.’ And I just threw open all my lecture notes.

And as each lecture was going, I would find my lecture notes started to get fleshed out with what I was saying at that instant because people were in the lecture with their laptops. Spelling mistakes would suddenly mysteriously get corrected even before I got to the point. Sometimes people would put humorous flippant points in, in front of what I was going to say – so this is the fear, that people will muck up my notes.

But in general because I trusted the students and gave them great respect…they rose to that respect. I had complete faith in them; and they did amazing things. …the notes were no longer my notes, they were theirs.”

Philosophy

It’s important to bear in mind here, that the successes that Richard Buckland has experienced with wikis has as much to do – if not more – with the way he facilitates the course and engages with students – as well as his teaching philosophy – as it does with the model for wiki use he has implemented.

Central to this is the notion of Wiki Nature, which he describes as (15:39):

“…this notion of trusting each other, having respect in each other, having pride in our workmanship…and trying to be objective.”

This ethos is clearly visible in any of the 55 full-length lectures Buckland has released on YouTube of his Higher Computing course – all of which carry 5-star ratings, and in the case of his first lecture, uploaded one year ago, has been viewed nearly 50,000 times.

Conclusion

Both of these examples featured students using portable web-based technologies in a lecture environment. This is the extent of their similarity; the remainder is stark in contrast. In the first example, students embrace technology as a means of escaping boredom and disinterest. In the second, as a means of engaging in a participatory activity that brought students and teacher closer together and undoubtedly fueled a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

Presented by: Eric Hackathorn, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Session Description: http://www.nmc.org/2009-nml-symposium/hackathorn-keynote

Recording:

http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/hackathorn-keynote.mov

Goverati web site: http://www.goverati.com/

‘Twittometer’ for determining crowd opinion

Open with Video:

Above clip is an older version is an older one. One used during the session is:

http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/goverati.mov

[podcast format="video"]http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/goverati.mov[/podcast]

Goverai is connected with citizens

Admiral Grace “The most damaging phrase in the language is ‘we’ve always done it this way”

Govloop

Obama is the first wired president. May be the first president to use email. Calling for transparency, collaboration.

[Common Craft video - Networks in Plain English] Network only as valuable as teh connections you can see

Speaker known more by his SL avatar name than his own name.

Video took approx a week and a half to produce.

Questions/Discussion

Who will lead the Goverati, or is it a group effort?
Imagine voting on steroids. Everyone can and should participate.

Accountability can be crowd sourced and discussed out in the open.

Which 3 Twitter feeds would you follow?

Don’t have a really good answer for that one. Twitter is like drinking from a firehose. I rely on my network to determine who/what I should be following.

What about problems with factions in the goverati?

In wikipedia that’s one of the good things of factions. It’s ok to have diversity of opinion. What that means in terms of future governance models, I think those factions will help better represent public opinion and help influence a solution that is most representative.

What are the advantages/benefit of Virtual Worlds

1. 1) Better fostering of crowd conditions – decentralization
2. 2) Increased collaboration
3. 3) Increased sense of ownership
4. 4) Bringing raw data to life / visualisation

Session Two: Going GaGa for Google: Using Google in Virtual Worlds

Presented By: Beth Ritter-Guth, The Hotchkiss School
Session Description: http://www.nmc.org/conference-session-proposal/going-gaga-google-using-google-virtual-worlds

Recording:

http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/ritter-guth.mov

NB: This is a break-out session

YouTube clip from Session Description:

Click box to receive a number.

Google is mainly a search company. Their main interest is in gathering as much data as possible. So when we talk about Google, we’ll talk about Google the Search Company; and then the Google Suite of Tools.

Won’t find tools authored by Google in SL because they had Lively, though they did have some land in SL at one point.

Wiki: http://sites.google.com/site/nmcgoo/

Presentation Slides:

Everything Literature Alive does is free and open access. Free to modify, share, and change.

Google Tools that were easiest/best for students in Secondlife:

1. Google Docs
2. YouTube
3. Google Maps – works well with HTML on a prim. With Dantes Inferno, they plotted locations from the work on a Google Map, which is now available in the Prim.

Google for Educators – Overview of Google Tools and Education (Google for Education and Google Tools for Education)

Very competitive program to get into. Teaches you to use every tool in Google Suite.

Google Tools weren’t built for use in a Virtual World; best way to do this is via a Mashup.

Google Maps Mashup

1. Enter Data
2. Remove Empty Lines
3. Map Created
4. Enter URL into a PRIM in Secondlife so it’s visible in world

YouTube clips another good tool for use in SecondLife; but feels that it’s better to view both on native location.

Google has been most productive as joint authoring program. Students work in Docs to write biographies of different characters from Literature and fill in the details. Students went in Google Docs while in SL, then would return to SL and chat in world.

Always asks “what makes a tool better by using it in SecondLife.” In this case one group of students were day students, the other students were night students. SL established space to combine classes and therefore work together. So it’s a collaborative tool for use locally or internationally.

Always talks about ethics, fair use, copyright (etc) when teaching students how to create their own spaces so they are aware of proper uses.

Finding images via Google Images does not necessarily imply ability to reuse. Everything appears in the search results. Teaches students how to look for images that permit reuse.

SESSION THREE: Your Video Projects Suck, but That’s OK ’cause So Do Your Papers: Moderating Student Expectations When Teaching New Media

Presenter: Jared Bendis, Case Western Reserve University
Session Description: http://www.nmc.org/conference-session-proposal/your-video-projects-suck-thats-ok-cause-so-do-your-papers-moderating-stu

Recording:

http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/bendis.mov

URL: http://fc.case.edu/newmedia/video

Points to consider

1. You need to know you’re medium
2. You need to know your audience
3. You need to know yourself

Title refers to assigned projects, not self-nominated students.

Most students do not turn in papers that are ready for prime time. Finds it amusing that we assume students will immediately be good at video work. Introduces notion of “writing” versus “authoring.” E.g. writing for submission versus writing for a public audience.

Critics have disagreed, saying “yes, but everything we do [in art] is for show.”

Everything doesn’t have to be good, but enough that we are able to recognise that they were a participant in the process.

FALSE ASSUMPTIONS:

Students know what they’re doing – Can’t say that students are video natives. Adults have seen more videos, should be better/more skilled in video production. So students have minimal creative vision.

Students want to be doing this – “I did not sign up to do a video project. How is this relevant to/for my education?” Professors forget that students come in with assumptions. Movies require far more people to produce than writing. Can’t pretend that we’re doing it like the pro’s. Need to establish what the pedagogical goal is – e.g. I want my students to be proud in what they do.

Spending a lot of time on analysis.

Let’s make students do a short film, but students didn’t have anything in their memory that exemplifies what they want to produce. Talked about the experiences they already have. Student Exercise – find a common film: Who has seen this?

EXPERIENCES:

Failures:

Used mentors, but were not trained in advance so were ultimately not helpful.

Students violated rule number one: It’s not about you. – Need to inspire me, but don’t say “I was inspired.” Make it a video that someone other than your mother would like to see. Not referring to digital story telling initiatives, but ability to convey feeling without resorting to saying “I feel.”

As soon as you remove the ego it becomes less competitive internally and aim becomes making things clear.

Successes:

Propaganda Class: First session devoted to watching videos and discussing what they’re seeing. It’s about them doing things, not what the other/previous classes did.

Premier Elements: Spends a great deal of time covering the application. Wants them to gain standardised skills, so even if they move to a different program they have a base level of knowledge they can take with them. In 2 to 3 hours they can cover everything they need. First hour how things work (wind them up), with the next hour letting them go.

Podcasting: Students went to local radio station. Learned students were told completely conflicting information to what instructor had covered. Importance on focusing on what is possible, not perfect.

Importance in developing something that is theirs.

Importance in awareness of technical requirements or constraints. Different Professor on campus indicated students could make a video in lieu of a term paper. Didn’t speak with media center, didn’t consider training or resourcing (cameras). Media centre has rules not to overstep their bounds – especially when project is assessable student work.

How-To Video

Students must produce individual project; though it is also group project. Students need to cooperate with partners to help produce their videos.

Doesn’t like group projects. Was burned several years ago. Co-teaching with instructor who wanted to make groups self-selecting. Slackers formed one group; Type-A’s in another group. Outcome was unexpected. Type A’s delivered over-ambitious failure. Slackers were aware of abilities and delivered polished, reasonable project.

Constraints:

• Have to use a topic they already know.
• Topic can’t be conceptual

Critiques and reflection enable students to learn from each other.

You can’t cram video. Students write 2 pages every week rather than 8 pages every four weeks. So it’s writing on a regular basis. Can’t cram video, if you try you’re screwed.

With writing students, force students to consider things in advance according to deadlines.

No Defense Rule – Any defense must be part of the video. Can’t preempt the video prior to the clip.

What to include or remove:

• No Timing – No Ken Burns Effect. Don’t pan zoom around the subject
• No rolling or crawling text.
• Watch and analyse lots of video – e.g. Law and Order (simple cuts, no special effects.)

Most videos use cuts and not transitions. If they don’t understand something how will they be able to produce it.

Ethics, Morals, Copyright and Privacy

You must assume that students today WILL post the video to YouTube. Because of this, everyone must sign a release form before they do anything.

Release form: http://fc.case.edu/newmedia/video/releaseform.pdf

Went to attorney’s office for a new release form.

Everyone must understand what they’re doing before they film something. You get permission before filming in a location (e.g. Walmart).

Commercial / Fair Use – Doesn’t want Fair Use to factor it. It’s about ownership and personal ownership and how much of film is original material.

When students are using these things it’s important to realise that they can only use stock materials as stock materials, so it’s clearly visible what is their work.

Likes parameters – e.g. film called “Ubiquitous shovel”

See also: Technical Rules of Film making

Giraffe Problem: as a photographer, if you go to photograph a giraffe and hold the camera in profile the image will be larger, but the giraffe will be the same size regardless of orientation. Understanding aspect orientation is important – black bars (on sides) in video are annoying

Funny is hard. Offensive is still offensive regardless of medium.

We all want our videos to go viral and win awards, but they probably won’t.

Know who you are as a presenter. Are you funny, are you serious?

QUESTIONS:

Shares videos that he demos to students, not the student work itself.

Is it wrong to use video from a cheap video camera?
Have had people do it, but it depends on the motivation for using the camera. Students give a copy of the film and if good enough they can continue.

FERPA Issues
One way to avoid FERPA issues is to have everyone sign everything. Tells instructors to archive all release forms.

SESSION FOUR: One System for Creative Interdisciplinary Collaboration: A Technical and Theoretical Approach

Presenter: Tom Benton, University of Texas, Austin
Session Description: http://www.nmc.org/conference-session-proposal/one-system-creative-interdisciplinary-collaboration-technical-and-theore

Recording:

http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/benton.mov

“Composing is improvising very slowly.”

How can this apply to performance. How can we use technology or systems to apply general principles for success.

Wii has been adapted to play midi music when moved. Video demonstrating dancer playing the Wii.

http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/benton1.mov

[podcast format="video"]http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/benton1.mov[/podcast]

Interactive Demonstration / Audience Participation

Had several platforms set up, each of which was tied into synthesizer on the speaker’s desktop. Any time someone interacted with the platform the synthesizer played a series of midi notes. So effectively jumping or moving on the platform enabled us to “play” the stage.

Process: Platforms use Linden scripting to capture actions of avatars. Then using HTTP Get sends Text file to his desktop every 5 seconds. Mac software reads this text file on regular interval and sends it to the synthesizer, which plays the midi notes. Notes are picked up by his microphone and sent back into SecondLife.

SESSION FIVE: I Can Read Your Mind…

Presenter: Joe Russo, Loyola Marymount University
Session Description: http://www.nmc.org/conference-session-proposal/i-can-read-your-mind

Recording:

http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/russo.mov
PPT Presentation: http://www.nmc.org/files/can-read-your-mind.ppt

Product site: http://livescribe.com

Live Scribe Pens provide insight into what students are thinking. Enables instructors to determine areas of confusion in subject matter.

Notebooks contain special paper needed for the pen to work. This is not a logitech product. There are other similar pens out there, but he has not used any of them.

Can record audio in stereo. Functionality includes calculator and several other options.

Can use just a regular pen and paper, but with increased usage you get used to the different tools and features. Can record and playback audio without the headphones. Under the ink-tip there is a camera that picks up the dots on the paper. Paper uses microdots, which are detected by the pen. This means the pen records everything you write as well as the surrounding audio (lecture and students).

To activate or deactivate a function, you click the tip on a button on the notebook. Can also scroll part of all of the way down the screen by ticking on the slider on the page. Can draw controls on the page and use them as well.

Demonstration of Live Scribe Pen

http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/pen-recording.mov

Once you’ve written your notes on the pad and recorded the audio it is all uploadable to your computer – including the handwriting.

Demonstration of Live Scribe Desktop Software

http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/livescribe-desktop.mov

Applications for Instruction

1. Assess student comprehension – Determine whether student understands material and concepts. Gave them pens and instructed them to record their attempts to work through problem sets, during which time they were to speak out loud about what they were doing – thus capturing what they were writing and thinking.
2. Rapid podcast creation – Previously instructor had to invest far more time in the process, which made the podcasts preventatively time consuming. Quickly produce podcasts of problem sets, with visuals demonstrating how to work through the questions and audio commentary discussing it in more detail.
3. Note-taking strategies – No longer have to frantically write down everything the instructor was saying. Could focus more on participation in class and just write down bullet points.

Audio is linked to the page on which the original note was taken. This enables you to go directly to the point in the recording where each note was annotated and review. From the desktop you can save as a PDF and an audio file, not synced. The synced playback is stored on Livescribe site.

Caveat – you’re writing in pen, so there’s no way to edit.

Question: What media format?
Answer: Audio is recorded to AAC, so you can upload to iTunes. Pages are saved as PDF’s. The Live Scribe format from the video is a proprietary one.

Image / Audio Examples

The following examples made available by Alan Levine (CogDog). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License and was originally posted to:

http://cogdogblog.com/2009/02/22/livescribed-northern-voice

http://cogdogblog.com/wp-content/audio/nv09.mp3

Examples uploaded to Live Scribe site:

The following examples include audio commentary and visual representations of the notes in the way they were written.

• Bending wire
• Big Loop
• Prob 16-31P
• Wronskian Example

SESSION SIX: Dramatically Different: Strategies for Socially-Engaged Learning in Virtual Worlds

Presenter: Kim Flintoff, Curtain University of Technology
Session Description: http://www.nmc.org/conference-session-proposal/dramatically-different-strategies-socially-engaged-learning-virtual-worl

Recording:

http://media.nmc.org/2009/03/flintoff.mp3
Presentation Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/kimbowa/nmc2009-dramatically-different

Learning with drama – engaging as an audience member.
Learning through drama –
Learning in drama

Prefers improvisational Role Playing as opposed to structure Role Playing

‘Process Drama’ - complex form of improvisation. Clear strategies and line. Form of play. Participatory performance – learners inside the performance. “open work” without pre-ordained/established conclusions. Always Fiction – fictional past or future and not emotionally caught up in reality.

‘Generative Play’ – more of a mindset than a structured approach that focuses on the journey. Leading to unexpected insights and discoveries that are of great insight to the learner.

Importance is being involved and fictional and flexible enough to accommodate unexpected ideas and minimise or avoid arguing/debate over the event.

Develop fictional chants, traditions.

Building Process Drama – the stages of planning and implementation that establish the foundation for a drama. Then inject a conflict.

Reflection inside the action – reflect as that character in-role; then reflect outside-role.

Island is named GODOT: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Godot/128/128/2

Active, experiential learning – asked to stand up and get involved. Also use the structures of theature – start, middle, end, protagonist and antagonist, conflict, resolution (even unsatisfactory). Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Purpose of motivation is to create new meaning – engage students in critical thought – e.g. Analysis, synthesis – esp mapping across domains.

Drama Conventions / Drama in an Active Inquiry Process

Who’s involved, why, what’s preceded, where is the story taking place. Reveal elements of character, story, conflicts. Could have asked people to divide into groups and devise a chant that will be sang when marching down the street; could write poetry or design a dance routine.

Facilitating this could involve giving students sequences of movement – becomes meaningful based on context of activity.

Use of Location to emphasize role – In role – meet in Skybox. Out of role – on ground.

Building the space – could use collective drawing, where you lay out big sheet of paper and everyone adds to the drawing. In SL could put out an area where everyone adds to it. Purposeful game playing to establish the scene.

Activity: The Seal Wife

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been plagued by an irritating computer issue in which use of apostrophes and double quotes was producing foreign language characters like é, ý, ç and í. For the life of me I just could not determine how to resolve it.

In what felt like a desperate ploy for assistance I did a quick screen cast demonstrating the issue I was having, uploaded it to Seesmic as a new conversation, and had the post distributed via Twitter, thus circulating the message to two different communities.

In a matter of moments I received a reply from both @kittyburgers and @leogaggl, both of whom offered several suggestions I could investigate. Ultimately the entire process of reporting the issue, uploading screen casts, response, discussion and resolution took less than 45 minutes. Considering the fact this relied solely on volunteer participants, the speed with which the issue was dealt was just incredible.

This experience has re-inforced several factors for me – the enormous capacity of new media to connect people and span regions; the altruistic, giving nature of the culture and people; and the fundamentally disruptive implications both of these factors have for existing structures and systems.

When installed, a new option becomes available at the bottom of both the post and page creation forms.  Ticking this option turns the content from a standard WordPress post or page into one that is editable by the group.  You are also able to activate an option that converts any heading tag used in the page/post to a clickable item listed in a Table of Contents listed at the top of the content.

For users with sufficient access permissions (author or contributor), the edit history is displayed at the bottom of the published item.  Users then have the ability to browse back through previous instances, and track who has made the changes.

With the wiki option enabled you can continue to use other standard WordPress options, such as embedded media or the WYSIWYG editor; it just turns content typically created and controlled by one person into something that is open it up to collaboration.

Why not just use a wiki?

All this being said, I don’t mean to suggest that you abandon your wiki of choice and use WordPress instead, because this framework can only do so much.  I see the option as a valuable way to extend the functionality of a blog – particularly a group blog – to support relatively light or infrequent wiki collaboration.  If you’re likely to be heavy wiki users it might make more sense to use a proper wiki.

The significance of using a combination WordPress/Wiki is that you gain collaborative opportunities for aggregation and synthesis of group input while retaining space to facilitate individuals’ reflections and subsequent group discussion.

Educational Use Case

As an educational use case for example, imagine the group work project.  Lets say 5 students are brought together and asked to work on a collaborative project throughout the session, with key milestones and deliverables expected (e.g. project components or short essays) and ongoing discussion and communication required.  Imagine as well that each individual student is expected to post weekly reflections (to track and assist their personal learning processes), as well as contribute to a series of group developed essays or presentations.

Each student could contribute their reflections in the form of standard blog posts, with group discussion taking place in the comments area – thus enabling an instructor to track participation and formatively evaluate how the group (and each group member) was progressing.

Plugin Recommendations

As a quick aside here, there are two key plugins I’d like to recommend here, each of which I believe have both technical and educational value.

• Threaded commenting – I’d strongly recommend using threaded commenting here, as it enables a quasi-bundling of conversations around topics rather than limiting them to the default chronological layout of blog comments.  This could help establish continuity of discussion for those engaged within it as well as facilitate a quick assessment of the outcomes of the conversation – including misunderstandings or areas of confusion.
• Syndication - I would also recommend incorporating a syndication plugin that could pull in content from other blogs using nominated tags.  This would enable encourage students to contribute their reflections to a personal space in the first instance and then have the posts related to the group project automatically reposted (syndicated) on the group blog.  The importance here is in establishing continuity in each individual’s learning journey by helping them track their growth and development over time.  As such it would facilitate reflection over a much larger scale in which they could review their experiences over the course of many posts, months or even years.

Enter the Wiki

Up to this point the individual reflections and group discussions could take place using the standard WordPress blog framework – now imagine what a wiki could facilitate in terms of project planning.

Blogs can do a lot, but they don’t lend themselves particularly well to frequent edits of single pieces of content by multiple people – though it is nonetheless possible.  Wikis on the other hand are designed to facilitate and track frequent edits by multiple people.

Each group could be asked to create a series of pages to document the planning, implementation and outcomes of a series of activities or key milestones.  Not only would the wiki plugin enable group editing, it would quickly show who had contributed each individual change and enable the group to revert to previous versions of the content if the need arose.

Diigo and Twitter

In addition to the blog/wiki framework outlined above there are a couple of additional activities that could be used to facilitate the group’s efforts, each of which could be tied back into the blog.  This would serve to both expand the collaborative opportunities, as well as provide even greater insight into the dynamic that was developing between group members, the content they were discussing and investigating.

Diigo - The creation of a Diigo group for tracking useful reference material would enable the group to amass and bookmark a collection of resources (websites, journal articles, blog posts, YouTube videos, etc) that could be used during the project planning, research and/or implementation.

Diigo also supports automated posting of bookmarked resources to the group blog.  This includes the annotations provided by the student adding the bookmark.  Effectively students could aggregate the links to these resources (and their notes about them) on the group blog, thereby retaining its status as a singular planning site.

Twitter - The use of Twitter as an open channel for discussion, sharing of links and networking with subject matter experts, other students or teachers around the world would provide an avenue for informal or brief discussions on topics that contribute to the progress of the project.

Additionally through use of hashtags (identifiers that categorise content using # followed by a descriptor – such as #learning or #unswphysics1001), students could quickly differentiate Twitter posts that relate to the project from those that don’t.

Hashtags are also searchable in Twitter, making it easy to view and even syndicate all posts that have been tagged with the same term. Using the same syndication plugin mentioned earlier, it is conceivable that the search results from the hashtag could be automatically posted on the group blog as well, thus documenting the group’s efforts even further.  This theory needs to be confirmed however.

The Result

In this use case, by the end of the session the group would have used the space for planning, reflection, discussion, review and evaluation in a manner that established a singular space for the group’s attention – as opposed to one site for a group blog (or even multiple individual blogs) and another for a group wiki. Additionally, through monitoring of blog reflections, comments, and wiki edits, the instructor could monitor each individual’s contributions for the purposes of clarification and instruction while the project was underway as well as summative assessment at session’s end.

Resources

Links to the sites or plugins mentioned in this post are included below:

• Diigo - http://diigo.com
• Twitter - http://twitter.com
• WordPress.org – http://wordpress.org
• WordPress Wiki Plugin – http://wp-wiki.org/
• Threaded Commenting – Threaded commenting comes native to WordPress version 2.7.  See the Discussion settings in the Dashboard area
• Syndication Plugin (“Feed WordPress”) – http://projects.radgeek.com/feedwordpress/