the new media consortium summer conference 2009

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:

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!

Kathy Sierra – creating passionate learners – NMC 2009 opening keynote

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 Jaffeand 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 resourcesby 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!