If you’re heading to Ft. Worth for the ITC conference on Feb. 20-23; join the Twub for eLearning 2010 Twitter Twub: #itc10. A Twub is an aggregator of Twitter content about the conference plus a place to view photos, videos, and the like.
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I was a Catalyst CAMP Ranger at the recently concluded WCET09 conference in Denver. Catalyst CAMP is a wrap-around leadership academy that was started by WCET this year. By “wrap-around” I mean that the camp started the day before the annual conference began and concluded with the end of the conference on Saturday.
The CAMP was led by Hae Okimoto of Univ. of Hawaii System and Myk Garn of Southern Regional Education Board. That’s Myk in the Ranger hat when he was welcoming the campers on Day 1. Fellow CAMP Rangers included Maggi Murdock, Muriel Oaks, Mollie McGill, Karen Paulson, Russ Poulin, Philip Cameron, and David Phillips.
I had the pleasure of working directly with three of the fifteen campers; Judith Steed, Reed Scull, and James Russom. Their testimonials are shown below.
“There were three main high points of the camp: 1) meeting others learning their way into the WCET advantage, 2) getting to talk with the keynote speakers in smaller group discussions and 3) connecting with the great rangers who had experience, ideas and encouragement to share so very generously. I especially enjoyed the campers’ willingness to share and explore together with humor and productive intention. I look forward to meeting my camping cohort next time.”
Judith L. Steed, M.S.
Director of Assessment: Promoting Student Learning
University of the Rockies
———–
“There were several very helpful aspects to Catalyst CAMP. One was the opportunity to discuss issues of common concern with experienced campus distance education leaders. Secondly, the canoe speech was helpful in seeing how others process and explain challenging distance education topics. The time constraint of three minutes for this speech was very important in encouraging us to reflect on what elements of our “pitches” were the most salient. Lastly, the opportunity to interact in small groups with the plenary speakers was very helpful. Overall, I learned more from the camp than I expected, and I made some nice friendships to boot.”
W. Reed Scull, Ed.D.
Director, Outreach Credit Programs and Associate Dean,
The Outreach School, University of Wyoming
———-
“The Catalyst Camp experience was extremely beneficial.”
“Benefits included:
“The format, food, fellowship with the other campers and the face-to-face with the keynote speakers was invaluable. I cannot imagine not taking part in future camps.”
Dr. James R. Russom
Associate Director of Online Education
Nazarene Bible College
———-
It was my pleasure to meet these fine leaders and work with them over the four days of CAMP.
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This video helps answer two burning questions:
Brian is one of my favorite EdTech speakers and thought leaders. He was the closing keynote speaker at the recently concluded WCET conference in Denver. My flight was scheduled to leave at about the same time that Brian’s address was scheduled to begin. I even tried to pay extra to get a seat on a later flight, but alas, none were available so I was destined to miss this event.
As luck (and good planning) would have it, Brian agreed to spend an hour with the Catalyst CAMP attendees on the day prior to his keynote. I was one of the CAMP Rangers (my cabin group was known as the Tweetarondaks) and so was able to be part of the group that spent an hour with Brian in a more informal session. He agreed to let me shoot some video during the chat and this is the first one that I’d like to share.
In this 10 minute video you’ll learn about how Brian got started working in education, and how his first job at UBC was essentially to help them build a closed-system Learning Object Repository with all the SCORM and IMS guidelines and requirements, and all that jazz. Not surprisingly, Brian tells the tale of how open-ness and simple technologies can be used much more effectively for those who truly want to share.
BTW, Brian started this session by asking the question in the title of this post, and wondered why we should care what he had to say. We cared.
(Post edited 3/20/13)
Filed under: Conference, Read/WriteWeb | Tagged: #WCET09, brlamb | 6 Comments »
I will be serving as a camp ranger for the WCET higher education leadership academy called CatalystCAMP (Changing Academic Methods & Practices) from Oct. 21-24 in Denver.
The leadership academy is wrapped around the WCET annual conference that starts Oct. 22. Myk Garn of the SREB and I will be leading the group through their paces as we talk about the Articulation step in the process. The five A’s are as follows:
One of the first things we provided to the campers was a suggested reading list. Here are my contributions to the list.
1) The Cluetrain Manifesto by Locke, Searles, Weinberger, Levine
“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.” http://www.cluetrain.com/book.html
Barry says: this book is still as informative and relevant as it was 10 years ago when it was first published. Every leader in higher ed should be familiar with the manifesto and how it represents a fundmental change in how we must communicate with the world by speaking with a human voice. BTW, this book can be read in its entirety for free, online.
2) Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen
“According to recent studies in neuroscience, the way we learn doesn’t always match up with the way we are taught. If we hope to stay competitive-academically, economically, and technologically-we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need ‘disruptive innovation.'” http://disruptingclass.mhprofessional.com/apps/ab/about-the-book/
Barry says: There’s lots of books out there about how we need to reform education or “fix” schools. This book takes a reasoned approach of how we can use technology effectively to create truly individualized instruction that can help students learn at many different levels – where they are and when they need it. Based on the idea of “disruptive innovation.”
3) The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein
“50 Million Minds Diverted, Distracted, Devoured. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their minds had the opposite effect.” http://www.dumbestgeneration.com/home.html
Barry says: Don’t believe the hype about the “tech-savvy” (quote marks intentional) Millennial generation and most definitely don’t make big strategic plans to change the way you provide education based upon that same hype and drivel. If anything, this generation (and presumably the next one, etc.) will need more of our help to make sense of and productive uses of technology in their educational pursuits.
4) 33,000,000 people in the room – by Juliette Powell
“33 Million People in the Room offers practical tools and advice for optimizing every stage of your own social networking initiative, from planning through measurement. The techniques can help you build your company, introduce new products and services, and strengthen your brands, whatever they are: business or personal.” http://www.juliettepowell.com/book.php
Barry says: We’ll talk about this idea during the camp; you probably won’t need to read the book after that discussion. It’s an important idea about creating your own network of connections. This book is not specific to education, but the examples allow you to make your own connections to higher education.
Filed under: Conference | Tagged: #WCET09 | 1 Comment »
I leave tomorrow for the League for Innovation Conference on Information Technology (CIT) in Detroit City. Here is a Wordle made from all the sessions titles for Track II – Teaching and Learning.
I will be involved with four different presentations during the conference: (full schedule here)
1/2 Day Learning Center Course:
Ensuring Quality in Online Learning: A Primer for Administrators
1:00 PM to 4:00 PM Sunday, October 11, 2009
Barry Dahl & Hanna Erpestad, Lake Superior College
Myths and Realities of Teaching With Technology
8:00 AM to 9:00 AM Tuesday, October 13, 2009
How to Be a Digital Community College Winner
11:00 AM to 12:00 PM Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Lani Cauthen, Vice President Of Sales, Center for Digital Education
(I will talk briefly about how we made it on the list.)
Special Session:
Users and Uses of Web 2.0 in Higher Education
12:30 PM to 1:30 PM Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Twitter tag for the conference is #CIT09. I have also created a Twub (Twitter Hub) at http://twubs.com/CIT09
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EAT-IT 09 (Emerging Academic Technologies and Instructional Techniques) starts tomorrow at Inver Hills Community College. During the keynote presentations (there are now five of them over two days) I’m going to try out a new game that I hope will be 
fun for the attendees. I always think it’s pretty funny to play Buzzword Bingo at conference sessions, but that is just a little too low tech for a tech conference. Enter BuzzTweet Bingo (copyright, trademark, patent, DRM, and all licenses and royalties belong to me – Barry Dahl). (You can Google it (I did) and you’ll find no reference to the term except probably this one and all future derivatives from this one.)
Here’s how it works. Prior to the start of the keynote presentation or breakout session, you send a Twitter direct message to the game administrator. In the message, you identify who the speaker is and then you list five buzzwords that you predict the speaker will use during the session. Here’s the catch. One word must start with a B, one word with an I, one with an N, a G, and an O.
During the presentation, you send a tweet immediately after you hear each one of your words, for example:
First person to post their five words and Tweet “BINGO!!!” is the grand prize winner (a prize to be named later). NOTE: most of those sample words above are not good tech buzzwords, but were chosen based solely on their first letter for purposes of this demonstration.
Why a direct message? That keeps your predictions private so your cheating neighbors won’t copy your great buzzword ideas. The admin (me) will be able to keep you honest by checking your predictions in the dm, and compare them to your regular tweets during the session.
Rules:
If you’re ready to play – here’s the steps to get started.
Finally, if this idea falls flat on its face, then I clearly stole the idea from someone who is far less entertaining (see previous post) than I am.
CC Flickr photo by Annie Mole
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People are Cruel. Don’t be Cruel. Each year I am saddened by the nasty things that people are willing to say in an anonymous evaluation that they would not be willing to say to your face or even in a written evaluation with their name attached to it. I have posted previously about this with regard to my performance evaluation at the college. I have also written about how you can have 19 positive (even glowing) comments but it sticks with you and overrides the other comments when that 20th person says something nasty – at least it does for me.
This came up again last week when we (the ITC Board of Directors) received the conference evaluation results from eLearning 2009. Overall the evals are very, very positive. The conference committee and the Board should take great pride in the overall nature of the comments and ratings.
I participated in the Grand Debate at the conference. The Grand Debate is a conference tradition that occurs after lunch is served on the first full day of the conference, which happens to be a Sunday. Bryan Alexander and Brian Lamb delivered our top two keynote speeches; which is a calculation based on the evaluation scores received. On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the highest, they were rated on the basis of 1) Topic, 2) Content, and 3) Presentation. Both of those keynotes had outstanding scores from the attendees filling out the evaluations. I was surprised to see that the Grand Debate also had a rating that was right in line with these two great keynotes.
136 people rated this session in the conference evaluation. Many positive comments were made and there were many 5’s on the numerical ratings. However, amidst all the glowing comments and ratings, there were a couple of comments that stood out, in particular, this one:
I don’t care how you slice it, that’s just mean. But for the record, I also think I’m better looking than I really am.
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Last week I experienced one of those keynote speakers that makes me shake my head in disgust – both at what she had to say and at the probable fact that she gets paid a handsome sum of money to say it. I don’t want to call her out personally for a few different reasons, so I won’t mention her name or company – but some people will probably figure out who I’m talking about.
A major part of the presentation was subtitled: “Generational Overview.” She starts out by identifying five different generational groups. Out of those five groups, she felt compelled to make up her own names for four of them. Even Baby Boomers were not called Baby Boomers. To not give further credence to much of her baloney, I will not use her made-up generational names. I will refer to the target generation as Generation Y, although I prefer my own made-up name of Digital Net-Gennials (it is tongue-in-cheek, rest assured).
She starts out by talking about the youngest generation (some (not her) would call them the unimaginative name of Generation Z) and detailing several traits for the group that she identifies as being from 0-13 years old. These traits include:
She then shows about 5 or 6 examples of new kinds of schools (some specific such as Benjamin Franklin Elementary in Kirkland, Washington and the Microsoft School of the Future in Philadelphia) as well as how schools are teaching with Web 2.0 tools, SMART board and SMART tables. What an incredible overstatement. Sure this is happening, but at an incredibly low rate of adoption. However, many people in the audience left with the opinion that this whole generation is being immersed in new learning technologies in the elementary and middle schools.
Next she moves on to Gen Y. This section begins with Michael Wesch’s video: “A Vision of Students Today.” Then her slides (fully copyright protected, you won’t find them on the net) go into great detail (err, baloney) about this generation.
I could go on, but those are the highlights gleaned from my 8.5 pages of handwritten notes. The biggest problem that I have with presentations like this is not all the baloney – it’s that this person stands up there as an “expert” and most of the audience members seem to be believing everything she has to say. OMG – this is so wrong on so many levels.
I gave the keynote on the first day and gave just a couple of snippets from my one person debate about Gen Y. I was asked (in advance) to not talk very much about the generations since the day two keynote was all about generations. I obliged, but did have to slip in a few pieces of point-counterpoint about some of the generational drivel that has been driving me crazy. On the long drive home I speculated about what I would have done differently if she had been the first speaker and then I was the second. My guess is that I would have felt compelled to debunk much of the baloney that she was sharing during her talk. I wonder how that would have gone over with the conference organizers – probably not very well.
Am I wrong? Is she right? Can I get a refill on my prescription of crazy pills?
Baloney (or bologna, if you prefer) sandwich photo (CC-3.0) courtesy of UNC – Chapel Hill
Filed under: Conference, Generations | Tagged: GenY | 8 Comments »
I spent an enjoyable two days in Billings, Montana (May 6-7, 2009) for a series of faculty development workshops at Montana State University Billings. Tim Tirrell, Director of e-Learning at MSUB brought in Corinne Hoisington (books authored) and myself to work with about 40 faculty members and instructional designers over the two full days. Corinne and I started things off with a shared plenary session that was intended to set the stage for the breakout sessions that we would lead over the next day and a half. The theme for the workshop was using free or low-cost technologies to create content for use within Desire2Learn. MSUB switched to D2L only recently and many faculty were looking for new ways that they could add content and create engaging assignments and projects for their students using Web 2.0 tools and similar technologies. (CC Photo: “Breakfast at Stella’s” in Billings byMike Willis)
Corinne and I work well together because we have complimentary but very different presentation styles and because we each are evangelists for complementary but different tools that can be used effectively in education. Corinne is a proponent of many Microsoft tools as well as several other very useful free tools that primarily fall into the Web 2.0 category – if there is such a thing. I definitely concentrate on how Web 2.0 tools can be used (and are being used) effectively in education settings. After the morning plenary session on day one, we spent that afternoon in two separate three-hour breakout sessions. Corinne led a group through a hands-on demo of several “hot technologies” including Poll Everywhere, Cuil, ChaCha, Slideshare, Google Translate/Latitude/Maps, Newseum, LinkedIn, OneNote screenshots, and more. At the same time I was leading a group through their paces using several tools from my PLE that can be useful for faculty members to provide engaging course content for their online classes, including mindmaps with Mindomo, customized feeds shared through Google Reader and adding RSS feeds into D2L widgets, Delicious and Diigo bookmarking tools, videos and digital photos including several Flickr tools and add-ons. screen capture videos using Screencastle and similar services, and finished with Netvibes as a way to bring all sorts of content together in a single place for student access.
On day two, there were again two separate hands-on, three-hour breakout sessions for participants to choose from. Corrine concentrated on using multimedia to engage students such as OneNote 2007, UStream, Screencast-o-matic, Flip cams, Media Converter and much more audio and video goodness. During the same three-hour time slot I spent most of my time on collaboration and communications tools such as blogs and wikis, Zoho suite of collaborative tools for web office functions, as well as Zoho Creator and Zoho Notebook (both crowd favorites) and Toondoo which is always an eye opener. After lunch, we finished off with a final three-hour tour and allowed the participants to select which session Corrine should repeat and which session I should repeat. That allowed people who missed one of the breakouts (because they were attending the other) to catch up on some of what they missed earlier. That worked out pretty well.
This workshop was coordinated through Innovations in e-Education, a new service from my employer, Lake Superior College. It was basically our first experience of the concept we are calling “Conference Comes to You.” The main difference is that normally the Innovations group does most of the event planning and handles registrations and similar tasks. In this case Tim Tirrell and his MSUB staff took on those tasks since he already knew what he wanted to see happen and had made most of the needed plans.
For the same cost as this two day mini-conference, MSUB could have sent three people to a national technology conference where they could have had a similar experience. Instead this is what occurred:
Next time maybe the conference will come to you. Whaddya think?
Filed under: Conference, Web2.0 | Tagged: Billings, D2L, Web2.0 | 2 Comments »
Many thanks to Billie Barnett, Tim Moore, and Leticia Starkov for inviting me to speak at their “Enriching Learning Environments Through Technology” one-day conference for instructors and others who are involved or interested in instructional technology and distance learning . Those three were the hosts at Elgin Community College for this very fun event that attracted about 100 registrants from 7 or 8 schools in the surrounding area.
I had the privilege of opening the day with a keynote address titled “Teaching with Technology: Myths and Realities.” A link to the slides is posted on my Resources page. I was experiencing a great deal of facilities envy as they held this keynote in the very beautiful auditorium shown below.
There were then two rounds of breakout sessions followed by lunch and two more rounds of breakouts to close the day. Xeturah Woodley from Central New Mexico Community College was the luncheon keynote speaker and she shared some excellent retention strategies for online instructors and staff.
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Barry Dahl dot com 