The conversation below is an effort to blur the boundaries of my online course to expose my students to the world “outside” the walls of our online course, and to invite the world “in” to our course to enhance our current discussion on how to engage online learners. This activity also serves as an example and model of an activity i am using to “engage” my own online students in this course.

This is a presentation on my online course ETAP687 using a tool called prezi. You can also view it from here.

To activate the presentation, just click on the arrow in the center of the screen (you may need to wait a little while it loads). To advance through the presentation, use the forward arrow that appears on the lower right corner of the screen.

The ability to embed the prezi in a blog is new – just announced yesterday. So i am testing it here.

(If you are looking at this from facebook, you will have to click here: http://etap687.edublogs.org/2009/07/21/teaching-outside-the-box/)

from prezi.com

One of my current students uses her dog, Bishop, as her profile image. I love that she does that. It gives me a warm feeling about her. She mentioned in one of our discussions that she chose him because she was concerned about her privacy and security.

She said:

I think it is funny that you mention my use of my Bishop for an image. I had a reason. In a class we had on cyber security, it said to never use a real image of yourself unless you want it broadcasted. We learned how to build an Avatar. I do not like my Avatar because when I made it, the selections did not include large or handicapped people as a choice. Everything was “beautiful people” and personally, I think that is very wrong. I have never gone out there to look further to see if there are other places (I used Yahoo) to see if you can build a real person. So I chose Bishop as he is my familiar.

As soon as i read her post i did a google search and started playing with 2D avatar generators to see what i could come up with. Below are links to the ones i found an played with. The resulting images i have inserted in to this post.

Avatar Generators:

1. http://www.zwinky.com/
2. http://www.faceyourmanga.it/faceyourmanga.php?lang=eng
3. http://unique.rasterboy.com/
4. http://www.tektek.org/dream/
5. http://illustmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml
6. http://www.doppelme.com/
7. http://en.gravatar.com/
8. http://www.gamedition.com/31/Avatar_Creator

Articles:

• http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/nowak.html
• http://sophtopia.blogspot.com/2008/08/realistic-avatar-shapes-mmm-no.html
• http://maqtanim.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/cool-avatar-generator/

These last 2 are my SecondLife 3D avatars. I lived in my newbie SL skin (left) for almost a year before changing her to a more “realistic” me (right) : ) Not sure why, but i never messed with her looks much till i saw someone walk by that looked just like me, and then i started thinking about it and wanted her to look more like the real me, so i plumped her up and got some “good” hair to look more like mine. Then i didn’t touch her looks again till i had to do a presentation in SL (http://etap687.edublogs.org/secondlife-if-my-avatar-could-talk/) and wanted to represent myself more realistically and less like a newbie. Have not really touched her since… i had a hard time finding appropriate clothes. I think about the online representation of self often. Colleagues and i have talked about, especially in the hyper-sexualized world of secondlife. I note it everytime i log into some place on the social web and see how friends and colleagues choose to represent themselves, or when i am required to upload yet another image to another profile somewhere… I am charmed by those who choose animals or some image that whispers insight into the person. I like that invention and creativity very much. None of the new little avatars i generated “really” look like me. There is a suggestion of me, i suppose. Brown skin, hair, and eyes. long curly hair… i really like the little one with the black skirt and shirt, but i will not be running around the web changing my profile images to any of these anytime soon.

I understand and respect the need for privacy, and for some, not wanting one’s “real” image floating about the net. For some there may be a sense of loss of control. I guess i feel “in charge” of what i put out there.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/13/research.privacy
http://news.research.ohiou.edu/notebook/index.php?item=467
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/technology/internet/13iht-cache13.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-social-networks-bring
http://technology.findlaw.com/articles/00006/011161.htmlhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/
http://internet.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_we_represent_ourselves_on_the_internet
http://savageminds.org/2008/06/16/the-presentation-of-self-in-virtual-life/
http://internet.suite101.com/article.cfm/online_image_is_representation_of_our_real_self

i am using gcast (the widget below) to give you access to your podcasted audio feedback  to your module 3 written assignment. (You can also access your feedback here: http://www.gcast.com/u/alexandrapickett/main). I have done a separate individualized podcast for each of you labeled with your name. Feel free to listen to each other’s podcasts.

You may only see one post listed in the widget below. If so, to see the whole playlist from which you can select your individualized podcast click on the word “posts” in the lower center of the widget. This will bring up the entire playlist from which you can choose the one that belongs to you.

Please let me know if you have any problems accessing this feedback.

Subscribe Free Add to my Page

I posted these links to feedback on your course built it activities in the gradebook, but i don’t know/ am not sure that you can see them there/have seen them there, so here they are.

I encourage you to have a look at each other’s feedback. At this stage in your course development most of my feedback is applicable to any course, some is repetative, and you may find excellent suggestions to apply to your own course that may not have come up in my review of your course at this time. They are jing screencasts and each are only 5 minutes long at most.

Jane’s course info feedback – http://www.screencast.com/t/Cun7NPGRWtV

Jenn’s course info feedback – http://www.screencast.com/t/WfrfnmxRJeQ

Jess B.’s course info feedback – http://www.screencast.com/t/ZyjNSw1pKE

Anne’s course info feedback – http://www.screencast.com/t/LxosVrYojU

Jim’s course info feedback – http://www.screencast.com/t/Ix77xcSS

Kristina’s course info feedback – http://www.screencast.com/t/MlJOYBp8eF

Jess M.’s course info feedback – http://www.screencast.com/t/dv0K2UCene

Barbara’s course info feedback – http://www.screencast.com/t/LPnmdN5cL

Bill’s course info feedback -  http://www.screencast.com/t/UEqR9IVZyH Re-review or your CI docs – http://screencast.com/t/6ultr68to

Last year i was invited to participate in a planning meeting for the 2009 annual conference of the National University Telecommunications Network (NUTN)  by Joanne Humbert from RIT from the planning committee. The 27th annual NUTN 2009: Quality In Motion conference, was held on June 21-23, 3009 in Saratoga Springs, NY. The conference started on Sunday, but we didn’t get home till 2am due to flight delays so i slept all of Sunday. I am sorry I missed Ed Bowen’s keynote address Sunday night. I heard that it was great and that he looked very dapper in his tux. : ) I know Ed becuase he was a participant in my workshop last year at the Sloan-C ALN conference and we have become social web “friends” since. The conference started on Monday with Elliott Maisie’s plenary address. He only had one slide. Elliot uses his smart phone as a cognitive prosthetic – i particularly liked the restroom finder app. that he recommends.He is an excellent speaker.

---

Presentation

My presentation was one of two concurrent sessions after Elliott. There were under 100 participants total at this conference and i think most of them were at my session, “twitterpated by twitter and other web2.0 technologies for instructional purposes.“  I gave the classic version of this presentation:

The presentation was fantastic! I felt like a rock star. I LOVE doing this presentation!! Ed Bowen introduced me and did a wonderful job. He was very kind!

I spent the next hour and a half after my presentation being interviewed by Ed. We had a great conversation and i really enjoyed our time, even if i missed the Edupunk presentation.

---

Conference

Highlights from some of the sessions i attended:

It was wonderful to see Frank Mayadas and to listen to his keynote address.

Here is a link to the conference presentation materials.

I really enjoyed listening Kelly Hermann, Statewide Coord Disability Services, Office of Academic Affairs. Empire State College presenting- accessible courses: going beyond technology meets the needs of students w/disabilities.

Teaching on RIT’s SecondLife Island Katie McDonald, Instructional Technologist, Rochester Institute of Technology – http://slurl.com/secondlife/RIT/128/128/28

A dialogue on faculty: teaching online in 21st Century Institutions by Dana Offerman, Provost and Chief Academic Officer, Excelsior College and Connie Grega, Assistant Director for Academic Outreach Program Services, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The presidents’ panel: change as opportunity with Dr. Susan Aldridge President University of Maryland University College, Dr. Alan Davis President Empire State College, and Dr. Wright Lassiter, Chancellor, Dallas County Community College District.

---

Innovation Award

The highlight of the conference for me had to be the honor of receiving the NUTN Distance Education Innovation Award 2009 for the SLN online teaching survey for experienced online instructors: http://sln.suny.edu/teachingsurvey.

The National University Telecommunications Network (NUTN) Distance Education Innovation Award for 2009 was presented to Alexandra M. Pickett and the SUNY Learning Network on June 23, 2009 in Saratoga Springs, NY at the NUTN annual conference(

http://www.uensd.org/NUTN2009/) for the SLN Online Teaching Survey: http://sln.suny.edu/teachingsurvey for experienced online instructors.

This award recognizes an individual or group that has developed an innovative program or practice that contributes to the field of distance education, in the context of a new or ongoing program, student or support services, pedagogy, faculty development and support or technology.

The SLN online teaching self-assessment is a simple survey (

http://sln.suny.edu/teachingsurvey), the innovation lies in the report that it generates to the faculty that aids the experienced online instructor to identify areas in his/her course that they themselves feel might need improvement . The results can then be used independently by the instructor to complete the review and revision cycle of the course design process to update the online course in preparation for the next delivery, or it can be used as a component of a faculty development event, or one on one with an instructional designer to pinpoint areas in a course that could be improved, thereby giving the instructor, the trainer, or the instructional designer specific areas on which to focus recommendations, suggestions, examples, tips for improvement.

This survey for experienced online faculty turns theory into practice by assisting the experienced online instructor’s to self-assess on specific indicators of teaching presence from the COI model and on the development of online class community in the design of his/her own online course and how they teach it. Faculty are asked to self-assess on 20 specific indicators, the survey generates a report giving the instructor a numerical score for each indicator that corresponds to a key of range of scores. The instructor can then see, based on his/her own self-evaluation, what specific areas in the online course need (1) redesign, (2) need some improvement, or (3) effectively demonstrate class community and teaching presence and need no improvement. A companion piece to the survey are the handouts (

http://www.slideshare.net/alexandrapickett/sln-teaching-online-survey-course-review-materials) that provide examples of the indicators, and suggestions that faculty can use to make improvements in those areas where their self-assessment indicates they need some improvement.

(I created the this video (with jing, and prezi, and audacity, and other tools) for the acceptance ceremony and it was one of the most time consuming and funnest projects i have ever worked on. I got to learn and do stuff i had never done before. It was a blast creating it.)

I was very nice to see Frank Mayadas at the conference. And to see Karen Vignare, Joeann Humbert, Kim Scalzo, Connie Grega, Rob Steiner, Richard Hezel, and John Sener. And to meet  Anna Cholewinska, Alan Davis, David Caso, LuAnn Phillips, George Timmons, and Dana Offerman – and Ann Marie Vaughan & Shari Costello who taught me how to pronounce Newfoundland, “Say understand then Newfoundland.”

Thanks Patti Jennings for all your help!

Award Acceptance Notes

One conference down, 2 to go! The drive from Monterey to San Francisco along the coast on US Rt 1 is amazing! It is not a long drive. We took our time. explored. stopped. took pictures. it was great. Getting to the conference hotel was easy, everything went smoothly. I love San Francisco. I was really looking forward to doing my presentation at the Sloan-C emerging technologies conference, June 17-19, 2009, and to the conference itself. Because it is a Sloan event, i knew i will see a lot of people i know. Because it is a new conference, i anticipated that i would meet a lot of people i don’t know. I have been eager to plug into some new communities, and the symposium did not disappoint. One of the very cool things they did was to partner the symposium with a MoodleMoot. A very smart business decision in this economic climate and a very cool way to infuse new blood/energy/enthusiasm into an organization. This is only the second year of the #sloancsym and when i heard they went from 200 participants last year (i did not attend) to over 600 this year, i was astounded and very glad for the organization. I was also thrilled that my presentation “twitterpated with twitter and other web 2.0 technologies for instructional purposes” was selected as the “best in track” session for the Pedagogy and New Learning Environments track. This was one of the motivations i had to rename, revise, and redesign my presentation in a new zooming prezentation tool called prezi that i have been playing with for sometime. So, i delivered a session-length version of my teaching outside the “box” presentation, which i had just delivered as a 3.5 hour workshop to a small audience at the NMC summer conference, in Monterey. The presentation was recorded. Here is the link complete with screen shots – a very high quality video recording – nicely done! I LOVED doing the presentation. There were at least 150 people in the room, maybe more. it was packed! I love an audience and i love sharing and talking about my passion: teaching and learning online. It was also nice to see several friends in the audience including Karen Vignare in the front row, and Burks Oakley. My friend Phil Ice was my facilitator. It was wonderful!

Preconference Workshop Notes

---

I wanted to do a preconference workshop and couldn’t decide which. In the end, I opted for the Learning How to Use Google Apps workshop (which i was way interested in) instead of the Moodle 1.9 gradebook workshop (which i way needed). The workshop facilitated by Susan Cline, and Matt Albert from PressPlaySolutions turned out to be a great choice for a good overview of google apps. my takeaways from the workshop:

Google Apps in plain English

• Susan show us some of her video-based trainings in http://www.lynda.com – interesting.
• Benfits of google sites are they are free & u can edit from anywhere for quick website building – works w/moodle rooms – signle sign on
• examples of google innovation in education http://sites.google.com/site/339dottodot/presentations
• look at what is possible in a browser!! Google Wave!!!!!!! – communication and collaboration tool and the google-wave-guide

These are some of the symposium sessions i attended:

---

Will web 3.0 make us change the way we educate? a call for a new learning management program by Matt Crosslin and Harriet Watkins, University of Texas at Arlington.

my takeaways from this session:

• They have some SPLJ (http://www.edugeekjournal.com/newvision) ideas that rock
  
• http://www.edugeekjournal.com/?p=414 reminded me of some former colleagues and the idea that might have been (@massonpj and @mfeldstein67)
• They did a cool demo with playdoh and sticking a phone, a pen, a marker, a notepad into the playdoh ball and then switching the tools out quickly/easily.
• it was a very effective illustration of Small Pieces Loosely Joined.
• http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=ddrnkh6w_10cmfj3fcf

---

Implementing an Online Learning Model in a Social Media World by Thomas Glover and Stacey Ludwig from WGU and Sarah Robbins.

• Unfortunately Intellagirl wuz not there : ( but i got a good overview of WGU and their use of social media from Stacey.
• Highlight was seeing an @micala tweet in my steam and realizing she was in the room with me and finding her actually sitting in my row !
• @hollyrae was also in the room, but did not actually meet her f2f till later.

---

Into the Third Dimension with SLOODLE by Jeremy Kemp, from San José State University I wanted to see Jeremy and hear what was going on with SLOODLE. He spoke of SLOODLE providing opportunities for engagement, immersion, and scaffolded learning. He showed cool moodle blocks in SL that you can walk around in in secondlife and interact with. He also showed how it interacted in the same way with ANGEL. Still not sure i understand how it all works. VERY COOL! my takeaways from the session:

• http://www.slideshare.net/jeremykemp/sloodle-for-moodlemoot-sf-09
• He showed cool moodle blocks in SL that you can walk around in in secondlife and interact with.
• He also showed how it interacted in the same way with ANGEL.

Still not sure i understand how it all works. But it was VERY COOL!

---

Using the COI framework to Assess the Efficacy of New Technologies by Phil Ice and Jason Dom from the American Public University System. I was really looking forward to meeting Phil Ice for the first time in person, though we have known each other for a long time. We may have met before, not sure. His presentation was fantastic! It was nice to hear about the COI research that Peter is contributing SLN data to from someone else and to learn about Phil’s particular contribution and findings/results with audio feedback. I immediately started using more audio/video in my live summer course. : ) You must view this slide show now! This was a fantastic presentation with lots stuff information.

---

Social Networking to Build Community with Ning by Michelle Macfarlane from Sierra College. my takeaways from the session:

• http://education.ning.com/

---

“Higher Education Meets the S Curve” – expert plenary panel

Julie Clow, Ph.D. – Learning Technologies Manager, Google S

tewart Mader – founder of Future Changes, a specialist consultancy that teaches people at Fortune 500 companies, universities, non-profits, and small businesses how to improve productivity using wikis (i.e., Confluence) http://futurechanges.org/

Adrian Wilson – Director of Educational Outreach and Chair of the Microsoft Higher Ed Consortium, chair of the Microsoft Higher Ed Consortium

Guess which two were the coolest?

---

Virtual Classrooms by John Schuman – education solutions architect, adobe systems. According to John, cloud computing isstyle of computing in which dynamically scalable & often virtualized resource are provided as a service on the net. Things are moving to the clouds, and devices are shrinking as a result. Enter software as a service. . . my takeaways from this session:

• https://buzzword.acrobat.com/#o - tentative qualitative data explains that younger students likened document editor to a wiki – a collaborative tool.
• Adobe Air – http://mashable.com/2009/02/23/adobe-air-productivity-apps/
• http://tweetdeck.com/beta/ – is an example of an air app
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Paivio
• https://labs1.acrobat.com/#l
• http://www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow/ – Adobe Connect Now…free, video conferencing.

---

Beyond Google: easy to use innovative resource and alternative search engines you can use today by Ray Schroeder, university of illinois at Springfield and Maureen Yoder from Lesley University. Watch this pesentation now! it was fantastic!! i learned stuff i did not know! My takeaways from this session:

• http://www.bing.com/
• http://www88.wolframalpha.com/ – seriously cool. enter any date.
• http://www.chacha.com/ - questions answered by real nhumans not computers.
• http://kartoo.com/ – search for visual learners.
• http://www.goodsearch.com/ – philanthropic search engine!
• http://www.archive.org/ – ok this one i have used for free to use music.
• http://www.archive.org/web/web.php - time travel back through old versions of websites… go back as far as 1996.
• http://www.blinkx.com/ – search video with a phrase.
• http://www.gapminder.org/ – e.g., http://graphs.gapminder.org/world/ – you must check this out! visual display of incoome and life exectancy world wide from 1800 till today. TEDtalk Debunking myths about the “third world” using gapminder.
• http://www.searchme.com/ – Search4information, videos, music, images, new.
• Ray’s list

---

Fostering New Learning Communities, Nurturing Online Learning Ecosystems, by Holly Rae Bemis-Schurtz and Susan Bussmann, NMSU/RETA I had no internet access @hollyrae ’s prezo, but it was fantastic! my takeaway from this session:

---

Institutional and system barriers to improving student success through technology – is there any reason for hope? by Josh Jarret, senior program officer, special initiatives, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. my notes from this session: Began by listening to some shameful stats on how we are failing to educate low-income and students of color. He challenges us to stop what we are doing, be outraged and do something different becuase it is NOT working! He asks how do we address the challenge of completion? what are the solutions? – socialnetworks, limited choice, linked to real-world goal. Compresed classroom time and terms, soft skills development, and career matching, integrated supports and active case management. Blended learning is effective for nontraditional students, social networks, proam networks, adaptive software, intuitive media. Use of simulation roleplay, new assessments. Mentioned excelsior, wgu, kaplan, ria slado… wow! iron triangle: cost, quality, and access – affect one has negative impact on one of the others… according to college presidents. nothing can change if this is true. are we trapped in this iron triangle? Innovation that challenges the status quo dies. so what are the barriers to innovation? He proposes a revolution from within – says we are the soldiers – that evolution will take too long – love it : )

RT @m2sE: the revolution won’t be televised, it’s tweeted : )

This was a fantastically provocative session by a smart articulate man. Every one should watch it now!

Roughly half of students who attempt postsecondary fail to complete a degree or credential – and that number is even higher for low-income students and students of color. Learning technologies are creating dynamic, engaging, and personalized educational experiences with proven effectiveness – yet they rarely go to scale. This conversation will attempt to identify the combination of systemic factors that have consistently resisted transforming learning experiences for students to increase their success – and to ask what if anything can we do to change this reality?

---

highlights of the symposium for me were:

• Moodle not being down during my presentation. MoodleRooms was down for the morning and was thrilled that it came back up in time for my presentation!! that was quite a scare.
• Meeting @jjjohnson01, who was in my Sloan-C workshop several years ago! I LOVED meeting him.
• Meeting @rrusso and @hollyrae – I had sent out a tweet plea for someone to help me with my MOODLE gradebook (which was a mess after an unexpected upgrade) and two people i had never met that were at the conference tweeted back offering to help. One of them being the guy that led the gradebook preconf workshop! We connected and he helped me figure out how to have moodle add the scores of my discussion ratings. I can’t believe it works! I had been adding it all up manually taking hours and hours and hours. I am so greatful for their help.
• Saw several ESC friends – Evelyn Ting and Nicola Martinez. Jon Rubin from Purchase was also there.
• felt like @clarkshahnelson was with me at the conference. He also offered to help me with my gradebook and was participating virtually and twittering the session he viewed remotely. very cool.
• learning about http://moodleshare.com/
• I met a guy at lunch from New Zealand and asked if he new Terry Neale… AND HE DID!!
• I found out later that Claudia Linden was there – i did not see her. I would have loved to talk with her. I saw Gary Miller briefly and wish i had had time to catch up with him more.
• sloan-c symposium presentation voicethreads are pretty cool: http://voicethread.com/#u93102
• an interesting way to view stuff: http://spezify.com/#/sloancsym

Personal highlights were my daughter and brother being with me. We visited the aquarium, went to the Muir woods, had dinner in Sausalito, had a ferry ride across the bay and numerous trolley rides, toured SF in a horse-drawn carriage, had dinners at the Hard Rock Café and the Rain Forest Café – had a wonderful time. The only thing i did not like about this conference was the hotel – no pool, meeting rooms were hot, stuffy, small, and uncomfortable with laptops, not to mention lack of power to plugin. There was no wireless access in some of the meeting rooms, there were fake movable walls between session rooms – and you could hear everything in the other rooms – distracting, plus a number of other small irritations that added up.

Everything else about it was fantastic!

I love Monterey, California. AND i loved the New Media Consortium summer conference (#nmc2009), June 9, 2009 – June 13, 2009 in Monterey, California hosted by California State University, Monterey Bay. I was invited to present a 3.5 hour workshop, teaching outside the “box”, and was fortunate to have gotten approval to travel out of state to California to attend this conference and the Sloan-C emerging technologies conference in San Francisco back to back. My workshop was intimate (meaning small = 10 people : ) But being small and having 3.5 hours we got to know each other and i love this presentation where i get to show why, how, and what happened when i taught a course mostly outside the moodle “box using about 10 web2.0 tools. My prezentation was in prezi – you can browse my prezi here: teaching outside the “box” about a week prior to the conference and workshop i sent out some materials to the folks that had signed up for it so they would come prepared. I also asked participants to engage with me prior to the workshop, so that we could get to know each other, and so that i could get a sense of their expectations of me and the workshop… trying to be diligent and practice what i preach – i set up a voicethread for this.

Go ahead try it! I set it up so that anyone can contribute to it! Many of my prezentations often have the theme of the power of the social web, so prior to the workshop i tweeted asking my twitterpeeps for a shout out to the workshop participants as an illustration of the power of twitter and the social web as the most powerful professional development tool in the universe … this is a snapshot of some of what i got:

---

how cool is that!!!! @jimgroom @kathysierra @hrheingold are rock stars to me!!! at the time of this twitter stream i had never ever met any of them and yet they are in my “network” and willing to respond to me to help me illustrate the power of the social web!! Barbara and Carol are respected colleagues that i actually know. Suzanne and LillieJay are SUNY colleagues, JJ Johnson i had never met, but it turns out that he took an online course from me a couple of years ago, and the rest i have never met, but know from twitter. In addition to the twitter shout out i also posted a video in seesmic, a tool i don’t use in my online course, but a tool i feel has great potential to extend one’s learning community and can be used effectively to demonstrate the power of the social web. This is the response i got from that:

I loved my workshop. And i loved meeting the wonderful participants:

• Amee Godwing from OER Commons – i joined that night and am still trying to figure out how/what i can contribute to this. Kinda like MERLOT, only kinda cooler – in a california-kinda way.
• Patsy McGill From CSU, Monterey.
• Rich Oravetz from the University of Pittsburgh. : )
• Susan Walker from Boston University.
• Sarah Springer from the Monterey institute of international studies – who saved links from the workshop in delicious.
• Brett Cristie from Sonoma State University, CSU
• Keith Rand from Washoe County School District

I think i am missing some, let me know and i will add you : ) The conference highlight for me was definitely meeting Kathy Sierra and being there to see her live giving her opening plenary – creating passionate learners. If you don’t know who she is, it doesn’t matter – you must watch this video!

Download

I introduced myself to her after her presentation and stammered like a school girl meeting a Jonas brother… something like “hi kathy. blah blah blah (who i am). blah blah  . . . I loved your presentation. blah blah…thanks so much for twittering for my workshop blah blah blah . . .” to which she replied “oh, you wrote the i-teach-like-a-girl blog post (where i describe the day i “met” her and how . . .) “  She really knew who i wuz! <<blush>> that was seriously cool. seriously. I loved her presentation. u must watch it now!

---

These are some of the sessions i attended:

More than meets the eye: using google earth and geospatial apps for story telling, teaching, and finding your way by Keene Haywood, University of Texas, Austin.

My take aways from the session:

1. http://drop.io/nmc_google_earth
2. http://www.barnabu.co.uk/
3. http://www.cartographica.com/

I was completely lost in this presentation, but i know it was cool and awesome, i just didn’t understand what and how he was doing stuff.

---

Globally engaged, digitally enabled: harnessing web-based technologies for service learning and scholarly networking by Rick Jaffe and Noah Wittman, From the University of California, Berkeley. My take aways from the session:

1. They are using Elgg. http://gppminor.dreamhosters.com/hub/
2. they suggest it might be used as a student eportfolio.
3. they move quickly, take risks, and r not afraid to fail.
4. it is experimental, user-centered, live prototyping…
5. http://okapi.wordpress.com/
6. They suggest not using full names in blogs.
7. Morgan Reid, a participant in the session, said something like – this focus is on process and so the potential for student-generated content as ephemera is not bad - the profundity of that insight still has me thinking.

I was kinda lost in this presentation, it was not what i expected. Surprised to hear presenter reading their presentation, and not having links ready to poke around in.

---

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) – Rubric for Online Instruction (ROI) by Brett Christie, Sonoma State University, CSU,  and Peter DiFalco, CSU, Chico.

My take aways from the session: they had never heard of QM. This was a great presentation! Overview of UDL, their ROI (which i had never heard of), and accessibility. Their rubric of online instruction asks what does a high quality online course look like? it is lms agnostic, developed at CSU. Its use at CSU is voluntary. The way they connect UDL with their rubric and accessibility is very interesting. Their online resource of “suggested tools matrix” is fantastic! Would love to have Brett present at the SLN Summit. They help faculty learn about assistive technologies and the perspective of those that need them.

1. http://www.vark-learn.com/english/index.asp – learning style diagnostic
2. http://elixr.merlot.org/udl/
3. http://enact.sonoma.edu/
4. http://www.csuchico.edu/celt/roi/
5. http://calstate.edu/accessibility/

Very cool presentation.

---

After a long day of presentations i went looking for the 100s of baby seals that had been twittered about several times. After a very long walk (NB: Monterey is a penninsula. If you walk out to the ocean and turn right you won’t necessarily be walking in a northerly direction, as i found out the hard way : ) this is what i found:

---

Designing the Learning System: Building efficient Linkages between padagogy and institutional resources by Morgan Reid, University of British Columbia.

My take aways from the session: my favorite part of this presentation was learning about Etherpad and using http://etherpad.com/m5fkSNrpxK – very cool! Morgan was lovely to listen to not just because of how he pronounces “process” but because he is extremely articulate. According to Morgan:

• learning = critique this, create solutions
• engagement = value each job, enjoy one
• efficiency = from newbie to pro asap – the sequence is – novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, expert. Morgan says get past novice and beginner quickly
• collective knowledge of examples, capacity building, shared & efficient uses of resources, an articulation between pedagogy & resources
• how do new comers get started? how do experts bring newcomers in?

what he is talking about is building a community of practice ala Etienne Wenger.

---

Using open content and the Collaboratory Model for real-world science learning by Megan Simmons, ISKME, and Amee Godwin, ISKME and OER Commons. Amee, as i mentioned earlier in this post, attended my workshop and as a result overnight changed her powerpoint in to a prezi – http://prezi.com/101757/view/ -how cool is that!!

my take aways from the session:

1. OER connect people to people, not just people to content.
2. OER is a process – an OER collaboratory = community of educators, scientific process, real datasets, & educational resources.
3. Pollen Viewer
4. Pollen BOTS
5. http://wiki.oercommons.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page

---

Other highlights for me were chatting with Larry Johnson and Gardner Campbell, and meeting Alan Levine for the first time in person. I also saw Dan Eastmond, now of WGU, and I also met tons of new people with whom i had great conversations and have a stack of business cards to prove it.  Martos Hoffman, head of student research for the Globe program and Kathleen Heyworth from the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Bufalo State College, come to mind immediately and their possible interest in SecondLife : ) I also LOVED the pathable site, the conference organization (thanks Nancy!), the SecondLife streaming of the keynotes (watched Marco Torres’ plenary, it’s not about IT, it is about what we do with it! from SL http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandrapickett/tags/nmc2009/show/) and the five minutes of fame!! – especially Jackie Gerstein ! !

I was very disappointed not to have had the opportunity to meet Jim Groom, whom i think was there, and Bryan Alexander, whom i know for sure was there. Both whom i would really love to meet someday.

During the conference i also tried to keep up with my online course, reviewed the faculty development proposals as track chair for the next Sloan-C ALN conference, and created my first video for the NUTN award acceptance ceremony – i got very little sleep that week. Personal highlights included my daughter and brother joining me in Monterey after the conference for a visit to the aquarium, a whale watch, a drive to moss landing where we saw 50+ wild and care-free fuzzy cute sea otters, not to mention tons of piled up sea lions ! ! !

loved loved loved this community and this conference!

Today is the offical start date of my summer online course, etap687. It is a master’s level fully online course at UAlbany in the education department. If you are interested, here is a link to a tour of the course. I also have a cool prezi presentation that i am currently doing about my experiences teaching this course last semester, title teaching outside the “box.” I am excited and anxious and hope that i have set everything up right and that it will all work with no tech difficulties. I have about 8 students enrolled so far and am really looking forward to meeting them and learning more about them and the online courses they will develop as part of their course.

To prepare for this term, i copied the course from last term and updated it. I’ve had some challenges with this along the way. Links broke, i had to recreate several discussions, and any student-level documents that i had as part of the course i had to recreate as well. It has been interesting. i made a few modifications to the course based on feedback from the students from last semester. Mostly in the instructions to activities so that things would be clearer from the beginning. I also decided to keep the students from last term in the course diigo group instead of setting up a new one for the new course – to build community.

I am very concerned about the amount of work the course will be in terms of my own course management. Last term it nearly killed me. And my husband and family were not amused by the amount of time i spent on it. Part of the issue is manually having to tabulate all the discussion gradings. I have not made any modifications in my approach to discussion, and so expect that it will be a lot of work again. If only the course management system did this for me automatically, i could spend more time interacting in the course a less time trying to count and track all the discussion ratings. i have heard that a newer version of moodle does this… alas, i don’t believe that is the version we are in.

In any case, i am really looking forward to teaching this course and learning lots from my students. I still have to go check my rubric, and the sun is coming up  : )

You can follow our course announcements on twitter and have a look at our icebreaking activity.  I also really look forward to peering into my students reflections as they take their course through their own blogs. Links to their blogs are on this blog, http://etap687.edublogs.org.

here we go!

I have been using twitter since December 2007… so waaaay before Oprah and it going mainstream. In fact, i am not sure i like everyone and their brother talking about it and doing it…it kinda makes me cringe when the local news anchor mentions twitter to sound hip and with it, but it is in a way that you know he has no idea what he is talking about. it feels like it has become uncool in some way.

Anyway, in the beginning, i followed everyone that followed me. I guess i thought it was the polite thing to do, and i was just pretty much stunned that anyone that i didn’t already know would want to follow me.

I don’t do that any more. And i am much more selective about whom i will follow and let follow me. i now intentionally want to filter noise from signal. Some people will twitter about any/all random thoughts in their heads. i use twitter primarily professionally and to document my exploration of the social web and instructional technologies (this is my signal), but as i have said in a previous post, i have experienced a blurring with my professional self, and so you will find in my stream occasional personal tweets about my life/family (this is my noise). I look for a balance of noise and signal, and where there is more signal than noise.

So, how do i decide if i will follow you, or follow you back?

• I look at your twitter profile. do you seem interesting in some way? i followed a guy who said he likes  pudding @ryenyc. and i am following a cat @fluffythecat who diligently tweets meow every day.
• what is your name? are you a person or a business? are you a real person? i will block most businesses that are not edtech focused. i will block most vendors unless i use/like their product. it is astounding how fast some of these vendors will tweet/follow you when you mention their product. Sometimes i am impressed, sometimes it feels slimy.
• where are you located? not that it matters. i am just curious. and interested.
• where do you work? if you work for the ministry of education in Colombia, i am interested. If you are the Sr. Director of Tech Evangelism at BB, not so much.
  
• how do you define yourself in your bio? You can loose me here, if you say something stoopid.
• do you provide a web link to a blog or site with more info about you? i rarely follow someone with no web link. lately, i have been DMing (direct messaging) people without links that follow me asking them for a link to get to know them better before i decide if i want to follow them.
• how many people do you follow? if you follow 1,259,537 people, i will NOT be 1,259,538.
• how many follow you? if 1,259,537 people follow you, i might be curious about that, but i probably won’t follow you unless you are obama or brent spiner.
• what do you do? higher ed faculty, k12teachers, instructional technologists will likely get a follow, people shilling books or services will most likely be blocked.
• i look to see how many updates you have and when you joined. If you joined yesterday, have 2 updates, and 1,369 followers, it’s a pass.
• i look to see what your ratio of posts to @replies are. If you only post you are suspect. If you are @replying only you are suspect. I look for a balance.
• i look at whom you @reply to and what you are talking about. If your @reply conversations are too personal or i can’t figure them out…
• I look at how often you post. if you post too much, you are irritating. If you don’t post enough, you are not relevant.
• I also look at whom you are following and who follows you. I also look to see if we have people we follow or interact with in common.
• i then look through 2-3 full screens of your twitter stream. if i learn one thing from you, i will follow you. all it takes is one thing.   : )

My purpose for twittering is for professional development and community and to extend my PLN. i want to engage in interaction on things that are of interest to me with people that interest me or that know more than me about things that i am interested in -  namely instructional technology. I also love twittering conferences and documenting my web2.0 experiences. I also use twitter to update my facebook status feed.

Without a doubt or without any reservation i say that twitter has been the most powerful influential professional development experience in my life. It is a vibrant exciting living expression of my community of practice. It gives me access to experts all over the world that i might never have met otherwise. and it gives me a forum in which to document my work, express myself, interact with others, and establish my own professional presence, credibility, and level of expertise.

it not an overstatement for me to say that i heart twitter  :  )