Sorry it took me so long to get this edited and uploaded … and by edited I mean an introduction and some music. I didn’t touch any of the content, so if you said it you will hear it. I’ve added it to our iTunes U space … One thing you might want to consider doing is clicking the “Subscribe” button in iTunes U. If you do that all future podcasts will be downloaded automatically as they are uploaded.
2008
Technology in Teaching and Learning Presentations
The other type of presentation you will be asked to do during the semester relates to a particular technology and how you envision it being used in a teaching and learning context. This will be done in your teams, with each person participating at an equal level. The desired outcome is a presentation in class that you will provide the class an introduction to the technology and will specifically answer the following 7 questions:
- What it is?
- Who’s doing it?
- How it works?
- Why is it significant?
- What are the downsides?
- Where it is going?
- Why it matter to teaching and learning?
- Podcasting – Team Heather (Heather, Mihn-Dan, Betsy) (Feb 28, 2008)
- Wikis – Team Jackalopes (Steve, John, Pooh) (March 20, 2008)
- Twitter – Team Tweets (Liz, Mike, Brandon, Donna) (April 10, 2008)
- FaceBook – Team PC (Tim, Bennet, Janmarie) (April 17, 2008)
- YouTube – Team We’re Thinking About It (Jason, Becci, Doug, Keith) (April 3, 2008)
- Blogs
- Flickr
- Del.icio.us and Social Bookmarking
- Select your technology.
- Schedule your presentation date.
Default on MT4
Just a quick note to let people know to beware that the default when creating a blog post on MT4 is published (pull down menu in “Publishing” section. So, if you are typing something as a draft or for yourself that you don’t want published make sure and select unpublished in the status menu.
Stealing from Cole (Again)
For those of you that don’t know, Cole was recently in San Antonio, TX for the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI 2008). Sounds like an amazing conference, maybe I will be able to go someday. Anyway, one of the speakers was Michael Wesch, the creator of the Web 2.0 video you watched the first week. I thought you might be interested in seeing him talk about his ideas and what he sees as the implications of a Web 2.0 world for his teaching. Here is the link. There are other good talks for you to take a peek at, in particular, Henry Jenkins is a well known media scholar from MIT, and there is a talk about the Horizon Report.
I have to admit as a person that was a classroom teacher K-12 and then spends a lot of time thinking about teaching and learning I am always a little frustrated by folks from other disciplines (i.e not education) that come to the “revelation” that lecture halls filled with students is not a good model. It also makes me sad that faculty without prior teaching experience end up reinventing the wheel in the name of innovative practice without ever considering that they are likely on the same campus with people that can help them think about what they are doing in interesting new ways.
Pligg Issues
Can you please leave a comment on this post (at the course blog site, not at Pligg) if you are still having problems with Pligg. The one issue I am most interested in fixing is the problem we’ve seen wit ha couple people’s posts coming in being attributed to someone else. If this is still happening let me know in the comments. Thanks!
Thoughts on Improving Pligg
As we work to make the Pligg space more powerful and flexible, we’ll be looking for your feedback. The first one we have is to create a tag / category that will allow for sorting via week. Leave comments to this post with your ideas for making this space work better for how the class is using it. It will only get better if you participate.
Readings for 02.07.08
There are two readings for next week.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice : learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.
and
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York, NY. Touchstone.
These are the introductions to these two books, so not too heavy weight. Please remember that responses are due by 5 pm on Monday 02.04.08 and you need to read and vote by Tuesday 02.05.08 at 5 pm.
Social Ratings in Teaching and Learning
A while back we completed another Hot Team white paper related to social rating sites — think of digg.com as the big example. Essentially a space where content is either aggregated in or submitted by users and then voted on by the community to raise the opportunity for exposure to all readers. Lots […]
Comments are Active
I just wanted to let you all know that the Blogs at Penn State toolset is now working with visitor comments. If you want to turn on commenting, you can follow the directions here:
Facilitating Discussion
At least one week this semester your group will be asked to take the top vote getters on the Pligg site and facilitate an in-class discussion. To the degree it is possible, you should focus the in-class discussion around the themes of the course (community, identity, and design). How you run the discussion is up to you. You can be as creative as you like, and draw upon technologies (either ones we have discussed in class or not) to help you. You will need to check the Pligg site after 5 pm on Tuesday and then organize your discussion in time for Thursday’s class. If you need things (materials, etc.) from Cole and I make sure to request them ASAP. We will do what we can to accommodate you. You should anticipate approximately one to one and a half hours of discussion, so plan accordingly.