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For a name, how about: UMOnline Diablogue
First, I think this is a great idea.
One thought for the title might be to call it an “Interactive Journal” or “Participant Journal” to invite more active involvement by faculty and students.
I am also curious about the “Categories” heading on the page. I tried selecting the “operational” link, but nothing appeared to change onscreen. I am guessing this is just an inactive header, but when new articles are posted we will then see new categories appear (like topics), so we can select and respond to specific topics more easily.
I look forward to exploring this forum and sharing with you as the semester unfolds!
Thanks for the name suggestions. When we get some more, we’ll put up a poll of the three or four suggestions we like best and request people to vote.
The categories aren’t too useful yet as we only have two posts.
Thanks for your interest.
Well said!
As a proponent of discursive teaching and learning, I have been sceptical of online learning in the past. Now that I’m instructing an online course, I find myself rethinking many of my previous assumptions about what can or cannot be done in this format. It’s really very exciting to have this opportunity to explore new methods of teaching and learning.
It sounds like Gawande’s concepts are related to Peter Senge’s idea of a “learning organization” (The Fifth Discipline, 1990). For example, constant evaluation & improvement, correcting problems by looking at the bigger picture, groups of people working together on common goals(what a concept!), constantly re-creating ourselves. I don’t know whether anyone has applied these business concepts and to a public/education entity, but it makes perfect sense. If we are an organization that’s all about learning, shouldn’t we be a “learning organization?”
Candi–
Absolutely! Thank you for making this salient point.
Through this public Journal and elsewhere, I’d love to explore further how being a “learning organization” manifests itself (or could) in our work. I’d love to hear from others.
Keith
I like these notions of “continuous improvement” and “continuous learning.” Absolutely! In fact, they describe my life perfectly. I also read alot (nonfiction). I feel as though I am always moving in the direction of self-improvement. Most of us don’t like aging, but each year as my birthday looms on the horizon, I can honestly look back over the previous year and see that I am NOT the same person I was a year ago. Or to look back 5 or 10 years! Getting older isn’t fun, but there is no way I would ever want to go back! And I think if we feel this way, it means we have definitely been dedicating ourselves to “continuous improvement” and “continuous learning.” With each passing year, we are a new and improved version of ourselves!
The technology, let’s see: there’s the stainless steel canteen, now new again, after various plastic types were found unhealthful. But, I would also guess the student is listening to a particularly moving podcast. Or grooving to some required music listening from Jeff Brandt’s History of Rock and Roll Class.
Location is in the UC foodcourt eating area, looking south.
If you click the picture, you will also find the mystery tool—Some related resources coming tomorrow
Everyone,
This is my first time to your “blog” and I just wanted to say how useful it is! I look forward to having some time to check out the “emerging technologies”.
Thanks for you work on this.
Jim
Robert,
Thank you for this helpful, time-saving introduction to Netvibes. As speakers at national and regional conferences move away from static Powerpoint presentations and paper handouts into the more fluid environment of blogs and Web 2.0 tools as the foundation for their presentations, Netvibes offers some interesting opportunities for engaging audiences and inviting participation. I look forward to further work with this tool and trust we will see its potential explored with attendees at the next XLi gathering in 2010.
Thanks again!
Marlene
Marlene,
I hadn’t thought of using Netvibes for XLi 2010, but that is a great idea and certainly a possibility. We are looking at organizing the networking aspect of the conference through a Ning: http://xli2010.ning.com/ The nice thing about Nings is administrators can add events that others can add directly to their Outlook or ICal calendars.
Thanks,
Robert
A quick note before my response to the article: R3 is wonderful! It gives us a chance to step outside our day-to-day work lives, learn something new, and engage with the information and each other. We don’t all respond every time, but just because we don’t type out a response doesn’t mean we’re not engaged in the learning and conversation between others.
Now on to the “Respond” portion of this week’s R3:
When I worked in alumni relations, we lived by the word “engage.” So when I hear or see that word, I automatically think about how we defined engagement and our efforts to engage alumni. We defined alumni engagement in two ways: a relationship (or at least some involvement) with 1) each other, 2) the university (its events, programs, faculty, students, etc.). Our efforts to engage them were varied, with the idea that if we offered a broad range of opportunities, everyone could find some way to be engaged.
I think that same idea of various relationships and opportunities for engagement should be the role of universities, as put forth in this article. Students, faculty members, staff, community members, organizations, other institutions: all should have opportunities to be engaged with each other in a variety of ways, and the university should develop and foster those opportunities.
One addition I would make is that the engaged learning, research, and networks should extend beyond the public world into the private one. After all, most graduates will enter the private world at some point, and doesn’t the private world heavily influence and affect the public one?
The essence of the strategic plan proposed for academic IT is just this. A move toward an integrated approach to the technologies used in the classroom (campus or online) which will give the students a common experience as they move from college to college. Beyond the advantages the studet might realize from this experience, I believe that the unveristy could optimize faculty development, training, support and advances if we were to identify The Path of course support. Along with this we should look for opportunities of innovation and advancement.
Why don’t we do this? Is our current method so great? Does the change come at such a cost in time that we can’t make it happen? Is there resistance or just a difficulty in getting past the first step and moving forward.
It would seem that
to complete my thought….
It would seem that the barrier in rooted in our institutional history –our culture of scarce resources has brought us to survival of the fittest or “every college for itself” mentality. To innovate is to move forward alone, the group would hold us back. Integration is seen as centralization, which is to be avoided.
The institutional culture in part explains the way we have evolved in the area of instructional technology. Our growth wasn’t guided by plan as much as opportunity, especially where the LMS is concerned. It happened almost accidentally. In my opinion, our organizational development has been somewhat stunted by this as we did not learn the methods of management of work that cuts across the campus.
Bonnie–
Thank you for that comment. Your additional institutional memory adds important context to that which I’ve observed from just two years here. I think there’s an additionally apt point you make: that there seems to be a perception that integration necessarily means ‘centralization’. This will not in fact always be the case. When it makes sense to centralize, then we should implement that without prejudice. Where it makes sense not to, then we shouldn’t.
I’m hoping that past need not be prologue. Can we be that purposeful? I think we can.
Provocative article and so is the linked one on Twitter (the new size of a thought): http://www.wired.com/dualperspectives/article/news/2009/06/dp_social_wired.
I would definitely be more likely to interact, and I think many others would as well. If people march to Google Wave in droves (which is definitely likely), I imagine other social websites will attempt to recreate that success as well.
And I believe tools like Google Wave can contribute to operational efficiency, but only if the team involved is willing to utilize it. A fantastic tool is only as fantastic as its users allow it to be – communication, knowledge sharing, and engagement aren’t created by the tool; they still have to be created by the people themselves.
It seems the Wave program will invite growth because it puts control in the hands of the user – while still protecting privacy by only allowing access to those individuals the user gives permission to join. I ran into the problem last week of joining a site and trying to invite others to join who belong to a different site. It didn’t work well which is frustrating! I think tools such as these have their place and can be useful but not if it is difficult to use or creates more work rather than less.
Additional thoughts on all this truly mass media, whether requiring a login or not: it’s all still enabling a mind-blowing volume of ‘crowd-sourced’ content. But does it all have value? Leo Laporte is quoted in the WIRED article: “People are pouring all this content and value into these individual sites.” Are we sure about that second part? Google Wave is a clever looking tool–one that I’ll certainly try out when it’s ready–but the fundamental questions remain for me.
I’m not questioning the transformative nature of what’s happening, but I’m still trying to grapple with how valuable it all really is. I suspect that it isn’t *all* of value. I’m no Ned Lud, but I also think that holding in balance both informed skepticism and intellectual curiosity (thus experimenting with all of these tools)is critical.
To hearken to yesterday’s post here: again, the development of new syntheses of social engagement, of work practices, of knowledge creation will likely emerge on their own, but a little purposefulness wouldn’t hurt either.
I think all of these social networking tools are incredible when you consider how quickly they have developed and the miscellany out there. I also think they are remarkable tools, used in the appropriate manner. I keep asking myself though, what happened to face to face interaction? I think we are losing something of the personal relationship and really knowing people when these tools are over-used.
[...] Extended Learning Services is contemplating our next learning management system. His blog post Synthesis lays out a vision for an integrated approach to academic technology. He foolishly asked for my [...]
Something I think gets lost when talking about digital natives is their level of interaction with tools – they’re pretty straight-forward and surface level. We expect that growing up with computers, iPods, and Facebook pages means they’re comfortable with technology. And that’s true in some ways. But I think what they’re comfortable (and familiar) with is the ease of technology. Once asked to interact with technology in a more robust, dynamic, deeper-level way, they’re just as unfamiliar as anyone else.
My knee jerk reaction to the professors who posed as students to “spy” on the students is that it’s definitely unethical. Did they cross a line? I would say unequivocally yes! ‘ As for snooping with fake students, Ms. Melton says, “If you are an effective teacher, that should never enter your mind.” ‘ I completely agree with this statement. An effective instructor should be able to come up with legitimate and transparent means of engaging students without resorting to deception. This kind of ruse would cause me to think twice about taking an online course.
The marketers definitely crossed a line. They violated the rules of facebook. And they were lazy! There are plenty of people who would be thrilled to be on a “reality tv show” so they could have found a real person. They could have done so much, but they took the lazy way out. It is a turn-off to someone like me who is not really willing to put my private life out on facebook anyway to see that now there are fake people on facebook. It’s too bad. The professors violated the cardinal rule of human experimentation, which is full disclosure to the subjects. And this was definitely a sociological experiment to see if they could influence student participation and change the drop out rate. This was a true violation of trust between instructor and student. In both situations, the line was crossed, the professors crossing a much more serious line. Thanks for the great articles, Jessica – got my blood boiling nice and early in the day!
The article states that the faculty member who uses fake students would never condone being a fake student to montior faculty.
I personally have wondered, from time to time, if it wouldn’t be a good thing to have a “Secret Student” (like a Secret Shopper) to evaluate the quality of the faculty interactions in online courses – after hearing so many complaints from students.
Not being a faculty member, I honestly don’t understand why it isn’t fair game to evaluate teachers in their professional roles.
From a different angle, I think that it is naive to believe that any online interaction is private. As an online student, I actually would expect my instructor to view all my postings. Is that true in Bb? Can students send e-mails to the other students that the instructor can’t see or do they have to go outside of Bb to do that?
With so much global focus on transparency, honesty and accountability, I think both entities are crossing the line. One difference between using fake avatar’s for selling, versus educating, is that the marketing example is pull marketing and the education example is infiltration. Does that make either one acceptable? I don’t think so. However, someone has to make more of an effort to befriend, and listen to, Hailey. In contrast, the students were placed in a presumably safe environment and were intentionally and purposefully deceived. And, to Diana’s point, the teacher indicated that although she did it to her students, she saw the reverse as unacceptable. Hypocrisy? I think so. By the way, lacking integrity is a flaw, even if the intenton is good.
The best information i have found exactly here. Keep going Thank you
I think I will try to recommend this post to my friends and family, cuz it’s really helpful.
As we work to learn about these new tools ourselves, it occurs to me that many others would like to learn about them.
It might be great to offer a free or very low cost non-credit course to introduce students, staff, and faculty through an IT workshop, but also one open to the public.
We’d be happy to host one here at COT – anyone like to present it????
Diana
Yes, I would suggest participants bring their own water bottles. Most students are used to carrying these around anyway. (Doubtful those backpack carabiners are used for rock climbing!) We could certainly have catering provide “tanks” of tap water at the break stations, refreshed throughout, as well as set up water stations in the buildings where the presentations will take place.
I agree we don’t want a repeat of Salisbury . . . Coca-Cola (Dasani) donated the water . . . bins and bins of BOTTLED water!
There is certainly nothing wrong with fresh tap water. In fact, we should be thankful for it! Despite all the advances in medicine, the availablity of clean drinking water has had the single greatest impact on human longevity. So, let’s tell students to bring their water bottles!
[...] Original post by XLS Commons [...]
It’s a pity that people don’t realize the importance of this information. Thanks for posing it.
Where did you take from such kind of information? Can you give me the source?
[...] is the original: Elluminating Learn Central Tagged as: discuss-course, engine, highlights-paid, hold-virtual, live-virtual, office-hours, real, [...]
Robert:
I’ve used my Elluminate email here to make sure I’m being up front about my association with LearnCentral–I’ve been hired as the social learning consultant at Elluminate, in large part because of my http://www.classroom20.com network.
I think there are two ways to look at LearnCentral. One would be, as you state, that it’s a marketing strategy. There’s no question that a commercial company, like Elluminate, that depends on revenue from its core products looks carefully at every project as part of its design to grow use and market share.
At the same time, I think we’re seeing opportunities for new levels of transparency and authenticity in business because of Web 2.0 that allow for a second perspective. I’d like to suggest that LearnCentral represents the kind of project where a company feels that by doing something “good” and significant–and by being open about about motives–that this work will reflect well on the company and that those who purchase their product will feel even better about doing so.
In order for Elluminate to provide a quality service, it needs to charge for its services and to make money. At the same time, we stand on the precipice of an amazing new world for educators, where the ability to connect with each other both asynchronously and synchronously holds the promise of bringing incredible opportunity and engagement for them in their careers and for their classrooms. So what contribution can Elluminate make that still supports its business model but also helps to encourage this historic change in communication? LearnCentral, we hope, is part of the answer to that question.
We’re imagining all of the educators who have specialty curricular interests, many or most of whom will not be part of an institution that has an account with Elluminate–but who, if given the opportunity to use Elluminate to gather or meet with other educators with the same interest, will be able to have the kind of rich sharing and co-discovery that has typically happened only at conferences. This “long tail” of interests, and their ability to gather together and work on them, could potentially be “mined” by someone as a source of revenue, but even that might hinder the incredible potential that exists right now. So the distinction between public, recordable sessions and private, fee-paying uses allows (we hope) for an incredible flowering of opportunity for educators while still (openly) preserving the financial value of Elluminate to its paying customers.
We don’t think this will impact the high-quality instruction opportunities available for educational institutions, as currently we see LearnCentral as a professional development tool. However, the concern is well-noted and will, I’m sure, be the subject of some discussion for us.
Hopefully, instead, the freedom to hold large public sessions will provide for the very “spontaneous” transformations you (and) we believe can be so powerful.
[...] more here: Elluminating Learn Central Tags: barron-green, content-and, discuss-course, elluminate, internet, koppelman, point, [...]
Thanks Steve for your thoughtful response. Elluminate has done a good deal of work in the past sponsoring events at Classroom 2.0 and Learning Times (to mention just two learning networks), and I am someone who has benefitted from these meetings. I also have to say that Elluminate is my preferred platform for hosting web-conferences, especially if it is available for free. And still, I can’t shake the feeling that forming a social network around Elluminate is aimed at exploiting the amazing new world that educators are starting to experience rather than being primarily altruistic. Let me add, though, that there are much more invasive ways to exploit Web 2.0, so Elluminate can be commended for developing a strategy that actually provides real value for those interested in professional development. If Elluminate’s sponsorship of LearnCentral ultimately produces powerful collaborations among colleagues worldwide, which it seems to be doing already, LearnCentral will not only become a powerful ancillary to the company’s business model, but from personal experience, a venue for making a difference in the lives of educators. I look forward to watching it grow.
Good post,This was exactly what I needed to read today! I am sure this has relevance to many of us out there.
tks for the effort you put in here I appreciate it!
Hi Robert,
Great post!
As you are looking at tools offering web conferencing for education – may I recommend Sclipo to you?
Sclipo is a web application that helps people teach, learn and share – through synchronous, asynchronous and social tools. Sclipo does not need installation – just open an account, and teachers can start immediately to:
* Publish, manage and teach face-to-face and online courses
* Schedule webinars and teach 100 or more students live via webcam, doc sharing and whiteboard
* Hold web meetings with students and colleagues via an interactive whiteboard, audio and chat
* Share content from their library (documents, videos, etc.)
* Connect with Facebook to promote their courses & webinars on their walls
University educators worldwide are using Sclipo. Yet, we built Sclipo primarily for those for which traditional eLearning solutions (Blackboard, Moodle, etc.) are too complex and costly, and not social enough: self-employed teachers, hobby-teachers and small schools.
Sclipo is free for free teaching. Premium members, who can receive payments from students directly through PayPal (no commission for Sclipo), pay USD $6.95 / month.
I hope you’ll consider using Sclipo and perhaps even share your feedback with me. The opinions of experts like you are essential for improving Sclipo.
Please contact me any time with feedback and questions.
Best,
Gregor
Sclipo demo video: http://sclipo.com/videos/view/sclipo-social-learning-network
Thanks for the tip. I’ll check it out, and also see what others say. This response makes me feel that Sclipo at least has a web 2.0 marketing plan at work. —Robert
Whatsup?
Hi Vance,
What were your thoughts on using the Ning for WiAOc 2009? I know that using a wiki was also key. Do you have any thoughts in hindsight on whether/if how/ the Ning helped with the conference?
Robert
I should add that we are in the planning stages of using the Ning for our conference and any feedback would be helpful.
I noticed that Jeff Utecht has multiple pages for each tab; they pop up when you scroll over–that’s a nice feature, but wasn’t used for the WiAOC Ning. I added a page and didn’t get the pop up.
I heard George Siemens describe Nings as ‘low hanging fruit’ once, the implication being that this type of ‘fruit’ isn’t always the best quality. What’s your take on things?
Sorry for the previous comment. I was invited to comment before realizing what this Ning was about. As you are looking into the possibilities of Ning for conferences, may I suggest you have a look at http://learning2cn.ning.com/. Jeff Utecht did an excellent job here, and yes, I feel that our Ning for WiAOC http://webheadsinaction.ning.com/ was an excellent portal for bringing people together. I might suggest only that it requires someone very proficient with Nings to maintain control, if that’s what you want, but if relinquishing control is not a problem, or if you can truly manage the ning, then it’s a great platform for letting users take control of a project, which might be what you want
That is a GREAT post on conferencing, which is really gaining speed in the market. I can recommend a great conferencing guide for newbees to use when figuring out how to get started. The “Quick Start Guide for Web Conferencing”, which I got on Amazon.com, got me up and running in about 25 minutes:
http://www.amazon.com/Web-Conferencing-Quick-Start-Guide/dp/1448649781/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250795732&sr=8-1
I read that the http://www.webconferencingcouncil.com had a non-technical relative of equipped with a a Dell E6400 with Windows XP, complete with built-in camera & microphone test this book to see if it was truly a quick start. This relative was able to start a multi-point meeting in 17 minutes, was able to share her desktop and present an online presentation (Microsoft PowerPoint) in under 25 minutes, and even started using the voting and whiteboarding features within 30 minutes – all of it witnessed but uncoached. I was a little bit faster but I am more technical than most.