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TravelinEdMan tours upstate New York...Next up Ohio and Oz |
| Saturday, June 26, 2010 |
Speaking Updates (the past 2 weeks and the next few weeks):
My time at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York (Albany area) was great (June 16-17). Apparently, President Obama spoke there in September 2009. Susan Gallagher, the Director of Distance & Online Learning took really good care of me during their disance learning day. She got me a lovely suite at a nearby hotel. After my keynote, I got to hear from some of their faculty members. There were many impressive presentations related to the use of wikis, open educational resources, free software, shared online video, online discussion, etc. It was fun to kick back and listen after I was done, rather than present another talk.
That afternoon I drove to Syracuse, NY and stayed with my brother Tom and his family for a couple of nights. On Friday, he and I drove over to Syracuse University where Dr. Jing Lei, Associate Professor of Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation organized for me to do a symposium on my World is Open book. It was my first time on that campus and so after the talk, Jing took us for a tour of the campus and to a local pub for a beer or 2 or ??? Always good to finally meet someone for whom you wrote a letter of recommendation/review for tenure as I had done for Jing the previous year.
This coming week (Tuesday afternoon), I will present 2 talks at the newly remodeled library at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. These talks at OSU are free and open to the public. The last time I spoke on the OSU campus it was 1998 and it was for a job interview to direct the student success center that they were building at the time. Needless to say, I did not move to OSU and it was likely a good decision to stay in Bloomington.
The day after the OSU talks (Wednesday June 30th), I will present 4 times at Franklin University which is also in Columbus. These talks are open for any of my friends so let me know if you want to attend. Color PDFs for all six of the talks are already posted to my archived talks at TrainingShare as are the talks from Hudson Valley CC and Syracuse U. I will see a few old friends and new friends when in Columbus. Should be fun.
It is always great to travel somewhere for two (or more) events rather than just one. Speaking of which, I will travel to Melbourne on July 6th (arrive the 8th). I immediately will get picked up for a visit to the Melbourne Concention Center as people there want to host the Global Learn conference sometime (not sure when) so I am having a look. That day I will also present on blended and mobile learning at Deakin University in the Melbourne area. That night I will also attend the conference dinner of the HERDSA 2010 higher education conference. This will be held at Etihad Stadium. What a first day in Melbourne! Greg Barton (from Monash U) and Siew-Mee Barton (from Deakin U) will take good care of me during my week in Melbourne. Joe Luca from Edith Cowan U will also be in town the first day.
The next day I will present at the EINet Informal E-Learning Congress. The program is posted as well. My old friend Clint Smith, formerly of TAFE Frontiers (Technical and Further Education), found out I am coming and is bringing me in. He will also take me to a footie game the next day and coastal trip the following Tuesday.
I am mainly going for the MoodleMoot conference in July. I will be helping with a huge Masterclass workshop on July 11th and my keynote is July 12th. I will also debate Martin Dougiamas who developed Moodle later that day (Monday the 12th). And on the night of the 13th, they want me to give a funny dinner talk on 100 ways to identify someone teaching ineffectively online. Suggestions welcome. I told them that many Australians think I am funny since when I was there last time (8 years ago), I perhaps was. Lately, I have been trying to give more serious talks...but it will be a good challenge to throw in some good old fashion humor again. (A smile and a wink to those who know me.)
After than it is on to Melbourne where I am speaking at a K-12 event held at the Novotel at Brighton Beach. It looks very nice! The conference is the 2010 NSW Department of Education and Training Office of the Schools Conference--Engaging learners through innovative practice. I arrive on Wednesday July 14th and my keynote and workshop are on Thursday the 15th. I might present at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) on the 16th. Old friends like Dr. Christine Dennis from Australian Catholic University and her husband might take me to dinner. Ditto friends like Rick Bennett from the College of Fine Arts at UNSW. Rick is the brains behind the very cool Omnium project for online photomedia and design.
I will also see my photomedia friend Gary David (a former ed tech guru turned "artographer") on Saturday who now runs Gary David Images. I hope to spend Saturday catching up with him. And then I will see Max Gallo from Navitas on Sunday morning before I come back. Navitas provides English training to young people seeking to attend universities in the USA, UK, Canada, etc. I gave a couple of talks for them a few months ago from the USA that were taped talks. Max had recommended me since he saw me speak in Dubai 6-7 years ago back when I used to be funny. True story...Max said he would cancel the invitation to speak if I was not funny (I think he was joking)...so I came up with something new for them that I am still using.
As you can see, the Australia trip is jam packed from departure on July 6th to return on the 18th. Should make for interesting times or so I hope. When I return, however, I need to work on other things like my free e-book extension of my World is Open book.
I think that is enough for now...whatcha all think? Hope to see some of you at my OSU talks in Columbus! Perhaps I will update my blog when in Oz. Not sure. |
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On the Road Again...Oh my, TravelinEdMan's been traveling |
| Wednesday, June 02, 2010 |
Ok, no blog posts for nearly 2 months. No, I am not terminally ill or stuck grading papers (though there was some of that). Instead, TravelinEdMan has been traveling. Six trips resulted in nine stops and many talks in five countries. As detailed below, each stop was quite eventful. This included the past couple of days in Lubbock, Texas to present to 220 or so K-12 teachers about online learning. Some might consider West Texas a sixth country to add to the list but I had fun there…it was a wonderful experience for me. True America.
Stop #1. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: This latest string of travel stops started with an event at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for an e-learning conference keynote. I left for that conference on Saturday April 10th and returned on Thursday the 15th. I arrived at the same time as perhaps 400 Filipinos and so the line going through customs was especially long. Patience? What patience after logging all those hours in the air. There was a lot I did not know about the conference before I went…for instance, I did not know my hotel or the time of my talk until I was in route in Paris. But I had fun there with a visit to a Saudi Museum as well as a look at an old city near Riyadh being excavated and rebuilt. An authentic Saudi dinner and much tea were also included.
My keynote at Kind Saud U on my World is Open book was well received. Fortunately, the Indiana Jones costume and jokes went over well. Many great pics were taken with my new Saudi friends. It was my 4th trip in a little over three years to Saudi Arabia but the first time I got an official tour of some kind. What was perhaps most interesting was the fact that the women attending the conference did so from another university some 45 minutes away. This included the female keynotes from the USA and Australia. We could hear their voices and see their slides but not see them; in contrast, they could see us via videoconferencing.
The other keynote presenters came from Australia (Jan Herrington from Murdock University) and the USA (Brent Wilson from the University of Colorado at Denver and Colleen Carmean from Arizona State University). It was great to finally meet Colleen (I cited her articles on course management systems in my R2D2 book) and have long discussions with Brent (I have used his constructivist learning environments book for a long time); Jan I met at the University of Wollongong over a decade ago. Other conference presenters came from places like Syria, Oman, and Egypt, in addition to Saudi Arabia.
My talk was on the first day. There was also a panel that day on the future of e-learning in which I participated. Then I listened to others. Fortunately, I was able to say a few closing remarks at the end of the conference. The day before those remarks I met a young man whose nickname was “Triple S.” It stood for the fact that his name was Saud and he was from King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. So in his honor my remarks were about the 5 S’s I observed during the conference. But instead of Triple S, it was a Quintuple S. Here they are:
1. Struggles: Many participants noted their Struggles in establishing or conducting online learning in their organizations or institutions. Getting into e-learning is not as easy of some think.
2. Successes: While many noted their struggles, problems, and challenges, there were an equal number of SUCCESSES noted during the three days of the conference. It seemed that the conference participants were interested in innovative learning applications and success stories with Web technology. Emerging technology covered in the talks included virtual worlds, course management systems (CMSs), collaborative writing tools, language learning, and laptops.
3. Smart: Some people talked about technology becoming SMART enough to interpret different languages and translate online content better as well as to make people using them smarter. Smart was definitely a theme.
4. Studies: It was refreshing that many of the presenters discussed research STUDIES that backed up what they were saying. Or they discussed their own research findings and future directions. In effect, they were not just there to hear from the keynotes. Seems online learning research was accelerating in the Middle East. Consequently, they wanted to know the impact of e-learning or get involved in the assessment of it.
5. Standards: Throughout the 3 days of the conference, I heard words like comparison, accreditation, quality, and benchmarks. All these words were in reference to creating STANDARDS of success. While this is not my main area, I was intrigued by the constant focus on it.
So that was my recap (if there was a 6th S, it was systems). The e-learning systems included Moodle and Blackboard as well as some homegrown ones. The systems in place seemed to be evolving.
I promised them a 2 minute closing but I guess I took a few more. Smile. Other topics and terms mentioned included infrastructure issues, financial or administrative aspects of e-learning, cultural change in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, definitions of e-learning and blended learning, acceptability and approval for e-learning initiatives, government approval as well as colleague views about e-learning, and trends toward the understanding and use of e-learning. Suffice to say, the conference covered the gamut of e-learning. Much has happened in Saudi Arabia related to e-learning since my first visit there in February 2007. Yes, new brick and mortar is going up all around Riyadh and the entire country, but, so too, is much thinking about the role of online learning in education there. It is great to see that opening up of the country to virtual learning possibilities.
Departing from Riyadh is never easy; the airport entrance always reminds me of cattle going through gates at feeding time. I wish I could close my eyes and just walk to the gate but that is not possible. But after 2-3 security clearance checks, I made it through. On the way home from Riyadh, I flew through Paris where I had a 4 hour or so layover. My plane departed Paris and 6-7 or so hours later and had to make an emergency landing in St. John’s, Newfoundland for a lady who was pretty ill on our plane. I think she was ok, but it was interesting to see the snow falling there in mid April. I was never in Newfoundland in my life but will be twice in 2010—I go there again in October to keynote an e-learning conference. Cool.
What the guy next to me found out when we briefly stopped there, however, was that the volcano eruption in Iceland closed down Charles de Gaulle and many other European airports 2 hours after we left. Had we left just a little later, I would likely have been stuck in Paris for more than a week. Wow…that was close! I missed my connecting flight in Minneapolis but it did not matter since I got the next plane and made it home. Thank goodness!
Stop #2. Monterrey, Mexico (San Pedro actually): After the trip to Riyadh, I had 2 nights (1 day) at home before flying to Monterrey, Mexico to speak at the Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM) in San Pedro (an adjacent city). UDEM is one of the top private universities in Mexico. My hotel was stunning with lovely paintings throughout (even in my room). There were also some exquisite statues, wood floors, and so on. The Universidad de Monterrey is a picturesque campus snuggled between two mountain ranges. On Saturday, my host, Arnaud Chevallier, took me to dinner and a brief tour of the city. On Sunday, he took me hiking up a mountain. It was a good 5-6 hour workout and 10-15k of walking. After the hike, I had dinner with UDEM administrators including UDEM's president—Antonio Dieck. Antonio had seen me present at a conference in Beijing 5 years earlier and was the reason I was in Monterrey. He is great! And so is Arnaud.
My invited talk there was in a beautiful room with a balcony where many of the UDEM undergraduate students sat. The administrators sat in the first few rows. It was quite an awesome place to present in. After a short lunch, I was on my way home. I really enjoyed my stay there.
Stop #3-5. San Francisco, San Jose, and Palo Alto, California (ISPI): Two more nights at home (and one day) and I was on my way to San Francisco at like 4 am for the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) conference at the downtown Marriott there. A huge audience for my talk at ISPI included my good friends Thiagi and Chuck Ferguson as well as several former students of mine who are in the Coast Guard. Other former students of mine, Dr. Yun Jeong Park from St. Cloud State University as well as Dr. Brian Beatty from San Francisco State University were there. Before the talk, Subude (now at Cal State Monterrey Bay) and Rodney Tom (from Genetech) (both former students) joined Brian and I for lunch. Dr. Wen Hao Chuang and Dr. Siat Moy Chong came to dinner (they studied with me at IU in the 1990s). So many former students with me each day…it was quite fun.
The following day, I took the train down to San Jose State University (SJSU) for a talk that my long-time friend Mark Adams arranged. Dr. Mei-Yan Lu from SJSU, who I have been giving e-learning advice to, was also there. Mark’s e-learning colleagues are very smart, caring, and committed individuals. They make a great team in these tough budgetary times at SJSU. Keep in mind that SJSU generates 10’s of thousands of credit hours online. This has likely saved the campus. A very nice campus too. Many great pics there.
After the talk, YaTing Teng picked me up and took me to the headquarters of Adobe. YaTing, a newly minted Ph.D. from the U of Illinois showed Mei-Yan and I around. A few years ago, YaTing was part of my blended learning team and I have been giving her advice on your dissertation since then. YaTing then took me to Stanford for a talk on my World is Open book. It was cool to finally present at Stanford (I have done Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard now…all that is left on my personal to-do list is Cambridge and MIT…someday, someday, someday!). Not bad for a dumb kid from Milwaukee who got a 19 on his ACT.
After the talk, my good friend Paul Kim from Stanford took us out to eat on downtown Palo Alto. After that, he had a friend of his pick us up and take me back to the Marriott. The following day I went jogging downtown in San Fran before heading to the airport. Caught some wondrous views of the Bay area when on that run. Oh, there are days that one does not want to depart a city and that was one of them. I love San Francisco. Always have…always will.
Stop #6. Denver, Colorado (AERA Conference): When I got home, I finally had 7 nights in my own bed before heading to Denver for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) meeting in Denver. The Denver trip started with a new talk on shared online video at Jones International University. My former student, Dr. Michael Thomas from the University of Wisconsin joined me and gave a talk on games, mobile learning, and international education. Glenn Jones, the Chancellor of Jones International University, was so appreciative, he brought Michael and I to his personal office for a catered lunch. The following night (Saturday April 30), Glenn took me and 9 of my former students, friends, and spouses (including Michael and his wife) to the Denver Symphony Orchestra rock performance of the Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. What fun! Glenn also took Michael and I as well as Scott Warren (another former student) to dinner 2 nights later. During the AERA conference, I had a presentation on wikibooks with Nari Kim (yet another former student). On Monday morning, I was co-discussant with Dr. Mimi Lee (yes, a former student) on a symposium on research related to the Web 2.0.
After that, I went jogging down a river walk area in downtown Colorado. I saw Mile High Stadium and many other landmarks. At the beginning of the run, I decide to call my former student, Dr. Frank Sanchez. He returned my call and I got in touch with him at the end of the run. His office was 1-2 minutes from where I ended up. Frank is a high level administrator at the University of Colorado at Denver. It was so great to meet up. Frank has not changed a bit. I miss him. The next morning, I had breakfast with my one of my two advisors at the University of Wisconsin from 20 years prior. His name is Dr. Steven Yussen. He was my human development advisor at the UW. Gary Davis was my human learning advisor….I was a double major. Steve is now at the University of Minnesota. Since leaving Wisconsin, Steve has been dean at the University of Iowa as well as Minnesota. It was so fun to catch up.
Stop #7. Singapore: After flying back to Indiana that day, I had another 7 nights at home before heading to Singapore and Penang, Malaysia for the Global Learn 2010 conference premiere (Global Conference on Learning and Technology). In Singapore, I saw 4 former students of mine at the National Institute of Education-—Timothy Hew, Joyce Koh, Ashley Tan, and Hyo-Jeong So. The only former student I did not see was Judy Lee whom I saw the week before in Denver, Colorado when at AERA. Hyo-Jeong took me around to the new casino (Sentosa Island) as well as the Night Safari and other things. Just 8 hours after getting off the plane in Singapore, I gave a 3 hour workshop on shared online video at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). My friend Dr. Daniel Tan invited me to give that workshop. I also saw my old friend Paul Gagnon before departing for Penang, Malaysia for Global Learn.
Stop #8. Penang, Malaysia (Global Learn): I was picked up at the Penang airport by April Tan and her husband. I had been giving advice to April (as well as her friend Chiew-Lan Teh) on their respective dissertations for a number of years, so it was good to meet. Global Learn, which is the newest conference of the Association for the Advancement for Computing in Education (AACE), was a huge success. I do not have space or time to go through all the details here but there were more than 520 registered participants from at least 48 countries. How cool is that for a premier conference? Having worked to develop this conference for 2 years, it was great to see this happen.
A boat ride around the island made it even more enjoyable as did many late nights at beachside pubs.
Global Learn will take place in Asia or the Pacific Rim each year. Are you interested in hosting the next one? Well, bids for Global Learn 2011 and 2012 are due June 15th (see http://www.aace.org/conf/glearn/). Want to see some of the 2010 events? You can see many pics taken at Global Learn 2010 at the conference Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/glearn/
The conference grew so big, we had 2 hotels side-by-side (the Park Royal and the Holiday Inn). In fact, the conference ended 1-2 hours later than originally planned. The Global Learn conference director, Dr. Gary Marks from AACE, had booked his flight out on Thursday evening (just before mine) so I got to say a few words at the closing ceremony since Gary had left. In contrast to my five S’s in Saudi Arabia, I asked the group to toast to 5 P's of the Penang event:
1. Fantastic keynote and invited Presentations--the invited talks were fabulous (Jan Herrington, Paul Kim, Jon Baggeley, Colin Latchem, Merry Merryfield, etc., all were top notch!). It was geat to meet them all. Much global in their message. I hope we can find as good of invited speakers in the future.
2. Thoughtful Papers. I learned a lot both from the brief papers as well as the full papers!
3. Great Place--The Park Royal in Penang. Lots of P's!
4. The Premiere Global Learn conference. Again more than 520 registered people from at least 48 countries. Wow! Keep in mind that AACE is a non-profit organization--it took a huge risk in extending itself to Asia after many requests to go there.
5. The wonderful People. The last toast ended with a thank you to Tom Reynolds from National University (whom I have known since grad school days) and Mimi Lee (from the University of Houston). Tom and Mimi, in addition to Gary Marks and myself, were heavily involved in many teleconferences and Web conferences in Adobe Connect Pro for nearly 2 years planning the GL conference (before it had a name) and putting together the special issue. They helped with Global Learn mission statement, logistics, topics and subtopics, conference venue selection, exec board nominations, and many other things which are too numerous to mention here. The important thing is that Tom recently was promoted to full professor (in addition to being a Fulbright scholar in Columbia this year) and Mimi found out she got tenure and promotion to associate professor just before Global Learn. Congrads to both of them on their wonderful accomplishments. The final GL toast was to celebrate that fantastic news.
This past year, Tom, Mimi, and I edited a special journal issue of the International Journal of E-Learning on E-Learning in Asia which is now a print-on-demand book. The book is called "A Special Path Through Asia E-Learning." This evolved from a special symposium we ran at the E-Learn conference in Las Vegas in November 2008. People from the symposium and then the special issue who were in Penang for the conference included Zoraini Wati Abas (the Open University of Malaysia), Okhwa Lee (Chungbuk National University in Korea), Ke Zhang (Wayne State University), Siew-Mee Barton (Deakin University in Melbourne), Thanomporn (Toh) Laohajaratsang (Chiang-Mai University in Thailand), Katsuaki Suzuki (Kumamoto University in Japan), Yayoi Anzai (Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan), Tom Reynolds, Daniel Tan (Nanyang Technological University), and myself. That is 10 of the 15 people from the symposium and special issue on e-learning in Asia. It was so great to see everyone! Perhaps next year a few of the others will come to Global Learn.
I must point out that Zoraini (mentioned above) was the most instrumental person in making this conference happen. She did a ton of work! She got us the venue at the Park Royal and arranged a good price for everything. But there were many others. Joe Luca from Edith Cowan University in Perth, Siew-Mee Barton from Deakin University, Insung Jung from International Christian University in Japan, Sanjaya Mishra, Indira Gandhi National Open University in India, and so on.
Here are a few conference highlights involving the people above. First of all, Katsuaki Suzuki was on a special invited panel (Research Trends of Learning and Technology in Japan: A Critical Review of Two Journals by Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education). He also brought a few of his students. There was a huge contingent from Japan. Katsuaki also announced that his organization (Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education …JSiCE) will be giving away monetary awards at Global Learn to best grad student papers in the future. Katsuaki is great!
Second, Yayoi Anzai bravely put together a mobile learning panel that was quite special (Opening Up Learning With Mobile Technologies). This was an extremely engaging panel. After Paul Kim wowed everyone with his projects and Elliot Soloway and his colleague Cathie Norris dazzled people with their ideas and persuasive powers, it was Ke Zhang who highly impressed the entire panel with her data on mobile learning. Ke was, in a word, PHENOMENAL. I do not say that just because we have a book together (Empowering Online Learning: 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing). It is true! Fortunately, her son Arthur was in the audience next to me and got to witness his mother in action. She identified all the current trends and gaps mobile learning, thereby giving people a sense of where the research in this field has been and where it is going. Congrads to Ke and Yayoi for this session. I hope others can propose similar sessions next year.
In addition to that, Tom Reynolds had a poster on the open educational resource movement in South America and Thanomporn (Toh) Laohajaratsang had a couple of excellent papers. And it seemed each day Siew-Mee and her husband Greg had 1 or 2 wonderful papers and presentations. We also heard proposals from people planning to put in bids for Global Learn for next year but I cannot say from where just yet. Stay tuned.
Finally, it was great to see Elaine Khoo from the University of Waikato in New Zealand win an outstanding paper award. I have been sending Elaine stuff of mine (and others) to read and corresponding about her dissertation research since 2002 when I visited Hamilton, New Zealand and her campus. And now 8 years later, she has passed her dissertation (all 550 pages of it) and is winning awards. She has also become a mommy 2 times in that span. It was great to see Elaine (now Dr. Khoo) and her entire family in Penang. Suffice to say that Global Learn was a blast! I miss everyone already.
Stop #9. Lubbock, Texas: So after all these visits to places in the United States as well as Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Singapore, and Malaysia during April and May, I was off to Lubbock, Texas on May 31st. I had to take an early (6:25 am) flight from Indianapolis due to the fact that the Indy 500 race was the day before and all other flights were booked. But I am glad I did. I got to see more of Lubbock and Texas Tech as a result. It was my first appearance in west Texas; a truly unique and enjoyable place. I stayed in a hotel across from Texas Tech University. It was a brand new hotel and convention center called the Overton Hotel. Running on campus late afternoon on Memorial Day was quite a treat.
Fortunately, my talks in Lubbock went well. But I am happy to be home…home at least until June 7-9 when I go to Las Vegas for the EduComm Conference. Then comes Syracuse University and a community college in Troy, New York, followed by Ohio State University and Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio…all in June. MoodleMoot in Melbourne awaits in July as does a K-12 conference in Sydney. I can’t wait. TravelinEdMan will be back on the road soon…real soon. Till then. |
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Announcing a Breeze Session with Stephen Downes...Thursday April 8, 2010 |
| Wednesday, April 07, 2010 |
Thursday night (tonight) April 8, 2010 at 7 pm EST, the one and only Stephen Downes will speak in my Web 2.0 seminar class which I am teaching online this semester. Stephen was gracious to accept my late request to speak in my class. We decided to make this session open for others to sit in on. The details are below.
Time and Date: Thursday April 8th at 7 pm EST, 6 pm Central
Your Time (per the World Clock):
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=4&day=8&year=2010&hour=19&min=0&sec=0&p1=105
Course: R685 on the Web 2.0 (The World Is Open With Web Technology); see syllabus:
Department and Instructor: Instructional Systems Technology, Curt Bonk, Indiana University
Guest: Stephen Downes, National Research Council. Institute for Information Technology, in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. He specializes in online learning, content syndication, and new media.
Location: Adobe/Breeze link (date now passed).
Audience: My Web 2.0 class though anyone is welcome—students, faculty, brothers, sisters, grandparents, friends, etc.
Quote from Stephen's Homepage: “I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumberance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle. Where they are able to form networks of meaningful and rewarding relationships with their peers, with people who share the same interests or hobbies, the same political or religious affiliations - or different interests or affiliations, as the case may be. This to me is a society where knowledge and learning are public goods, freely created and shared, not hoarded or withheld in order to extract wealth or influence. This is what I aspire toward, this is what I work toward.”
Topics to Perhaps be Discussed: Stephen will cover Open Educational Resources (OER), OER models, Edupunks, DIYU (Do It Yourself Universities), and perhaps educational blogging and Personalized Learning Environments (PLEs), among other things.
My Personal Praise for Stephen: I met Stephen nearly 10 years ago on a very bad day (November 8, 2000). That was the day George Bush was elected president over Al Gore (though technically that did not come for another 40-50 days). I was in downtown Toronto and had to absentee ballot. Expensive to do but important. I remember telling some people during break time that the election would all come down to Florida. So when I got home later that evening and found out that Gore had (supposedly) won Florida, I was relieved. I did not anticipate the shenanigans of the next few weeks and of course was unaware of what had already transpired that day.
Anyway, Stephen was on a panel with me that was addressing adoption of Web-based learning (or lack thereof) at the TeleLearning Centres of Excellence conference. It was supposed to be a Everett Rogers link--diffusion of innovation. It was a wonderful group to be on a panel with. I think Ron Owston from York University was also on it as were people from the University of Waterloo. Stephen does not likely remember my talk (nor does anyone else) but I fondly remember his. Stephen has an highly unique persona when presenting and it definitely showed that day. Perhaps he was mindful of the election since he was not in a particularly happy mood if I recall.
Since that time, I have realized that Stephen Downes reads pretty much every article written around the world on educational technology and e-learning and attends nearly every ed tech conference humanly possible. He is a man on a mission. Later tonight you can listen in on his talk find out what that mission actually is.
You can read more about him at his Website.
His Old Daily blog where he summarizes events in the field is read by millions of people each year (if not each month). Hec, that might be per day. Suffice to say, his writings and reflections are highly thought of and sought after. His ability to distill the mammoth amount of daily news related to learning technology is a skill few have and one that is highly prized this century. His consumption capacity is at a ridiculously high level. He should perhaps be studied by Carnegie Mellon memory researchers. The Canadians should be proud to have him. Of course, after the election of 2000, they were not worrried...there was little doubt he was there to stay.
Here is the link for the session on Thursday:
Reminder of Adobe/Breeze link: (anyone is welcome).
Hope to see you online with us. Please share the link with your friends and colleagues.
I head to Saudi Arabia Saturday for a few days followed by 2 day trips to Monterrey. Mexico and San Francisco. I will present at the ISPI (International Society of Performance Improvement conference at the downtown Marriott in San Fran at 4 pm on April 21st followed by a presentation at San Jose State University from 10:30 to 12 noon on Thursday the 22nd and Stanford University from 3:15 to 4:30 (in CERAS 100B, Center for Educational Research at Stanford) that same day. Perhaps I will see some of you there. |
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Verbal-Visual...Take Your Pick: 30 Academic Writing Tips or 40 Shared Online Video Sites |
| Friday, April 02, 2010 |
This is a two-part blog post. It was much longer but I am getting an error message from Blogger and lost half of this blog post. I do not have time to repost it. Sorry about that. I am not happy.
The first resource below came out 3 years back and is being republished. It relates to writing and building a successful academic career. The second one on shared online video I just came out with. There are many ideas for teaching and learning from shared online video in it.
1. 30 Writing Tips for Jump-Starting an Academic Career Revisited:Scott Jaschik from Inside Higher Ed wrote me last week asking to republish a blog post of mine from 3 years ago with 30 writing tips for young academics. I reread much of it...there are actually some solid writing tips in there (in retrospect). Perhaps you can use a couple of them or might want to share with one of your students or colleagues. If so, here is the citation and link:
Bonk, C. J. (2010, April 2). 30 Writing Tips. Inside Higher Ed. Available: http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/04/02/bonk
Keep in mind that these were written off-the-cuff. The original blog post, A Quick 30 Writing Tips for the Start of an Academic Career, had pictures with it. I wrote it with recently graduates of my program here at IU in mind. Some of the ideas might be a tad controversial. Not sure. Some might sound a bit egotistical...but I was trying to point out that one can go from a state of having trouble publishing to a state of enjoyment with writing and publishing if you live a life rich with writing opportunities. Perhaps you can now too.
2. 40 Shared Online Video Sites: Some Formal, Some Highly Informal, Some Mixed:
Last night and this morning I created a list of 40 shared online video sites. These range from Academic Earth, Big Think, Link TV (one of my favorites), TV Lesson, Fora TV (another Bonk favorite), and YouTube EDU.
You can find these linked from the Resource list I have created at TrainingShare.com
Shared Online Video 6a: http://www.trainingshare.com/resources/
Or you can go directly to the list: http://www.trainingshare.com/resources/Summary_of_Ways_to_Use_Shared_Online_Video.htm
Below the list of 40 shared online video sites, you will find 2 more lists: one on 10 ways instructors, trainers, or teachers (or even administrators) might use shared online video in their courses or training experiences and 10 more ways you can get learners to use or create them.
These lists did not come from thin air. I started reflecting on the use of shared online video in an article I wrote 2 years ago for the AERA (American Education Research Association) conference in New York City. I have yet to publish it but I have posted this online. See below.
Reference: Bonk, C. J. (2008, March). YouTube anchors and enders: The use of shared online video content as a macrocontext for learning. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2008 Annual Meeting, New York, NY.
Why create such lists of video resources? Well, there are hundreds of such sites. Many people think most of the video on the Web is junk. Perhaps that was true 5 or 10 years back but not today. Today, as the Gates Foundation has noted, higher education can significantly benefit (financially as well as pedagogically) from thinking creative and imaginative uses of all the shared online videos. We must ask how we plan to use such free online content from the world's foremost experts. Never before was it possible to call up a presentation on nearly any topic conceivable and listen the one of the best known experts on the topic discuss it. Cool! As I mention in my World is Open book, this is a learning revolution in learning. This is the learning century and shared online video is a key reason why that will be the case.
Elliot Masie from the Masie Center has published a number of his Learning Trends reports recently on the use of shared online video (report #608, #601, and #584. In the most recent of these three he argues that:
"The introduction of video into almost every aspect of our learning and work tasks is profound and “disrupting”. As designers, we must experiment with these formats, looking for evidence and appropriate use cases and examples of when not to use video. Rising bandwidth, lowered equipment costs, ease of editing and growing expectations of learners will make video a profound component of our learning efforts going forward."
I would agree with Masie. Video is disrupting the state of things in every educational sector. As he notes, so much is possible with video chatting, Skype, telepresence videoconferencing (from Cisco, HP, etc.), video podcasts, video coaching, and synchronous conferencing like Breeze/Adobe Connect Pro. We can stream 5 hour lectures (no questions asked), bring in guests from around the planet online, assign students to summarize their learning in a YouTube-like video, require students to watch 3-5 short videos each week in addition to reading the book and other materials, etc. Video is transforming education and training. Enjoy it...it is not going away anytime soon.
Recap:
If you are a verbal learner, you will perhaps appreciate list #1 above of writing tips; and if you prefer visuals to text, the second list might be more appealing.
Enjoy this brave, new learning century filled with writing opportunities as well as those related to the visual side of our minds. And enjoy the coming weekend. Go Butler Bulldogs!!! Many great videos to be produced there... |
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Want an E-Ph.D. in Ed Tech?: An E-nlightening interview with Punya Mishra from Michigan State University |
| Friday, March 05, 2010 |
An E-Ph.D.? Anyone? Anyone?:
Do you offer an online doctorate in educational technology? If not, can you recommend a program? Just who offers online Ed.D.’s and Ph.D.’s? I typically get this question a couple of times on each trip I go on. I get tired answering this question over and over and over. There are several universities that I mention with an online doctorate in the field. However, none of them have the brand name of an Indiana University or some other Big 10 school.
Move Over Bob Dylan...Punya Mishra is Here:
Good news. As Bob Dylan can testify, “The times they are a-changing.” I recently received an email from my friend (no, not Bob Dylan but someone equally creative). The email was from Punya Mishra over at Michigan State University (MSU) about their newly designed online/hybrid doctoral program (see his note below; see his MSU homepage for more information on Punya Mishra). His fantabulous new program will focus on the evolving role of technology in learning. Sounds intriguing to me...especially with the potential for large enrollments from practitioners.
After opening Punya’s email and exploring the associated websites that he pointed me to, I quickly remembered that, like here in Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University, they already have an online certificate and master’s program. So, it seems, they are pushing ahead with the times and getting into the race to be among the first branded universities to offer an online doctorate in educational technology. Here at IU, we are also entering the fray with the design of a new online Ed.D. which a couple of students are already being enrolled in. I know since I am on the entrance committee (more on our programs here). Enough about IU…let’s turn to what is going on at MSU.
Here is that note from Punya Mishra:
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Michigan State University is now offering its doctoral program in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology online with a new hybrid option focused on the evolving role of technology in learning. The blended four- to five-year program, which combines online coursework with summer classes on campus, is designed to meet a growing demand from experienced education professionals who want to earn a Ph.D. while continuing in their current positions. This substantially online program is designed for the bright, established professionals currently serving in K-12 schools, universities, policy centers, and research institutions, who understand how new technologies, including online learning, continue to transform education.
We see this as an exciting initiative by a nationally ranked program (MSU's College of Ed graduate programs are ranked #6 in the nation, by US News and World Report). This program is targeted at talented people in the field who have finished their masters, established themselves as effective educational leaders, and who would like to earn a Ph.D. but cannot consider giving up an influential job for four or five years to go back to school full time. Clearly there is a need for a high quality Ph.D. program designed for education professionals who are seriously interested in research, evaluation, and assessment of effectiveness of technology in school.
Students will have the opportunity to work with world renowned faculty in the College of Education at Michigan State University. These include, Dr. Punya Mishra and Dr. Matthew J. Koehler (developers of the TPACK framework for technology integration; more on Matt); Dr. Yong Zhao (author of Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization; more on Yong Zhao and even more), and Dr. Rand Spiro (developer of Cognitive Flexibility Theory).
Please feel free to contact Punya Mishra (punya@msu.edu) or Dr. Robin Dickson (rdickson@msu.edu) if you want any more information or visit the following websites:
MSU Hybrid PhD website: http://edtechphd.com/
Postings on Punya Mishra's blog these Exciting New Opportunities:
http://tinyurl.com/yk467my
http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf
sincerely
~punya mishra
http://punyamishra.com
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I provide details of the program below. But before that Punya and I had a little chat about this new hybrid program. My ten questions and his insightful responses are below.
Interview with Punya Mishra, Michigan State University, New Blended Ph.D. in Educational Technology
Curt Question #1: What has you most excited about this new program and why?
Punya: The most exciting part about this, for me, is the fact that this program will allow us to work with the smartest and most energetic practitioners in the field. This is a chance to break out of the ivory tower. This is also an opportunity for us to think of new paradigms of research—research that is more closely connected to things happening on the ground, research that is informed both by the deeper abstractions of theory and the grounded pragmatics of practice. I have written about this on my blog – check out http://tinyurl.com/yk467my
Curt Question #2: What prior experience does your department have in offering such a program? I know you had mentioned some certificate and master’s programs (similar to what we have here at IU)?
Punya: We have been offering a variety of programs for practicing educators in the area of Educational Technology for years now. These include a nine-credit certificate program, a thirty-credit Master’s degree as well as the regular on-campus Ph.D. What is interesting is that, except for the Ph.D. (at least prior to this new hybrid version) all our programs could be taken in a variety of formats: online, face-to-face (on campus, off campus, and abroad) as well as hybrid combinations thereof. For instance, we have students who have taken some certificate courses over weekends, at sites near their schools, followed by some coursework on campus and online (over summer and regular semester). These students received their master’s by completing their courses with one final summer, abroad.
Another exciting initiative we have started recently (apart from the Ph.D.) is what we are calling an “EduPunk Refresher” course. This can be taken for credit or no-credit and is aimed at people who already have a master’s degree but realize that the rapid pace of technology change means that they have some catching up to do. The emphasis is on what we call DIY Ed Tech, an intense hands-on week long workshop dealing with the latest technologies and how they can be integrated in teaching. We are offering this program this summer in the beautiful Rouen in France. Details of all this can be found http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf
Anyway, the overall point I am trying to make is that, here at MSU, we have over 7 years of experience offering courses and programs in online and blended formats and have been quite successful at it. In that sense, developing the new Ph.D. was not that much of a stretch.
Curt Question #3: How does a blended or online educational technology doctoral program change the ballgame for ed tech programs around the country? How prevalent might online and blended educational technology program be in 5 years? How about in 10 or 20 years?
Punya: Well, we think that the trend is moving in that direction. I hate to make predictions but I do think that this is the wave of the future, for a range of reasons (many of which you speak of in your recent “The World is Open” book).
I think this is particularly true of practitioner-oriented fields like education. Think of the model that exists now. We ask people to leave their areas of practice, come to campus for 4-5 years, at which point they have lost that very intimate connection between what they are learning and what they do. This model is highly understandable for some disciplines (say engineering or physics) where doctoral research is about getting into a lab – and a lab can be expensive to maintain—so it makes sense to come to campus.
But in a field like ours, the labs ARE the classrooms. What this new program does, in my opinion, is to allow people to maintain a strong connection to their practice, even while engaging in the deeper engagement with ideas, theory, and research that doctoral programs do so well.
Combine this with how powerful and easy to use collaborative and communication technologies have become, and I think we have a win-win situation here.
Curt Question #4: What types of new students do you expect to attract to your new program? What niche market are you going after? Any enrollment projections, hopes, or dreams?
Punya: We are hoping for a cohort of 20 students – every other year. We came to these projections by extrapolating from number of the core faculty that we have who will teach these courses. One of the biggest challenges we faced was that we did not want to dilute in any shape or form the quality of our doctoral program. So, all our courses will be taught by tenure stream faculty...and as you know we have some really good people here at Michigan State. I feel fortunate to be able to work with all of them.
As for the kinds of students we would like to have, I think I said it best in my blog post (so if you will allow the self-plagiarism):
“This new program explicitly aimed at practitioners hopefully will change that. Moreover it seeks to bring together people who care strongly about education and learning and those who understand that newer technologies are fundamentally changing everything. We are looking for people who see the problems we face today and are interested in finding research driven solutions.
We are looking for the adventurous ones, the risk-takers, the ones who want to make a difference. And we want to bring them together, using the powerful tools we now have, to create, explore and share, to engage in dialogue and dissent, to critique research and to conduct research, to experiment with new technologies, new pedagogies and new content.”
Curt Question #5: What is the most unique element of this program?
Punya: The college of education at Michigan State has a long history of being at the forefront of teacher education and scholarship around teaching and learning. Think back to a few decades ago and the work done by Lee Shulman and others around the idea of Pedagogical Content Knowledge. More recently, Matt Koehler and I have taken that idea a step further to the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (also known as TPACK). This idea of TPACK structures almost every program we offer in my department (details at http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf). So I think this unique coming together or bridging of educational psychology and educational technology within the TPACK framework really puts our program at a different level than most others. Combine this with the unique structure of our new program--the emphasis on theory AND practice—and I think we have a really good thing going here at MSU.
I think the other strength of this program is the faculty members who are part of the initative. I don’t want to start listing names here (check out the website for that) but, as I stated earlier, we have some really highly accomplished, creative, and connected minds here.
Curt Question #6: Why are your colleagues at MSU excited about it? At the same time, what might they be cautious about or be monitoring carefully?
Punya: I think there is a great deal of excitement around the new kinds of students we will see in this program. Already inquiries from potential students have indicated that we are seeing a very different profile from the ones we typically attract. So I think this means that there is a great potential for us (as faculty) to grow and learn, to develop new areas for research, etc. So that is the cool part.
There are a couple of things we are cautious about. The first area is how we support virtual students. Doctoral programs have typically not done a good job of supporting doctoral students. However in an on-campus program the students have one big advantage, they can come and knock on our doors. That will be harder for these students – who are also busier, because of their jobs. So we are spending a great deal of effort to design and build in institutional mechanisms to offer this support. We are particularly looking at leveraging social media in this, but also trying to employ key people whose sole task will be to support and nurture these students as they move through the program.
The other point of caution is in regards to maintaining the quality of our doctoral program. We are proud of the program as it exists and want to make sure that these changes in delivery of the program do not in any way compromise its quality. We will be monitoring this quite closely as we move forward.
Curt Question #7: What programs will be the top competitors to it?
Punya: The design and need for this program did not emerge from a market analysis as much as it did from what we (as faculty members) were hearing from practitioners. So in that sense it is difficult for me to point to competitors. We do know that there are some EdD programs out there, as well as some Ph.D. programs from for-profit institutions. But we are a Ph.D. (which means a strong emphasis on research) and, of course, we are a land grant university (which means a strong emphasis on outreach and making a positive difference in the state and beyond). That combined with our strong reputation I think puts us ahead of most possible competitors.
Curt Question #8: Do you see any partnerships or joint offerings on the horizon? How about an emphasis or a strand in your program on global education with technology?
Punya: We see great potentials in collaborations and joint offerings. Global education is an important piece for a couple of reasons. One of the strongest advocates of global education, Yong Zhao, is right here in our department (and he has a new book on this out too). Also, a large percentage of our online and hybrid master’s students come from around the world, many who are already working in international schools.
Another series of conversations we have just started has been with people in our Ed Admin department. We are looking at developing emphasis areas that would attract administrators to our program as well.
Hopefully other collaborations will emerge as well. But right now our focus is on getting this program up and running successfully.
Curt Question #9: What was the most difficult thing to put in place to get this program started? Stated another way, what key challenges will others face?
Punya: I think the biggest challenge we faced was the faculty concern with quality. Can we deliver a quality doctoral program in a hybrid format? Most faculty members have “grown up” in the old model and it is often difficult for them to see new ways as being good enough. There will be a lot of convincing to do – and some people you may never convince. In that case, I recommend that people attempting something like this find the right team and just move ahead. One aspect of all this that that has been encouraging though is how supportive administration has been. You know the stereotype that higher education is slow to move and so on – but that has not been our experience. Hooray!
Curt Question #10: Will you be conducting research on it?
Punya: Absolutely. Research is something we do and in fact we are currently engaged in an evaluation of our master’s program – so that is something we would do with the new Ph.D. program as well. Of course this could be a great opportunity for doctoral students to do some really ground-breaking work.
Curt Question #11: Is there anything important I did not ask that you would like to add here?
Punya: No, I think we pretty much covered everything. I would recommend that people visit our websites (and my blog) to learn more about this exciting initiative. Here are some links that people may want to follow: Ph.D. Website: http://edtechphd.com/
A couple of blog posts that speak to my personal take on all this (more informal than official web-site language, and hence more accurate in some ways):
Punya Mishra’s Web: http://tinyurl.com/yk467my
More info from Punya: http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf
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Here are some program details:
1. Program Length: Intended as a 4-year cohort-based program.
2. Summer is Blended: Students take 7 week course in summer; 2 weeks of which are FTF and 5 weeks online. The first 2 summers are like this. Year 3 summer residency may be shorter and Year 4 depends on need.
3. Number of Courses in Summer: There are 3 courses in the summer over the 7 weeks. As with their traditional students completing 9 credits during a regular semester while working half-time, students will be fulltime students during the 7 weeks and complete 3 classes. This Punya says will be "intense and invigorating." These courses will not be separate sessions over the summer. Instead, they will be taught in an integrated fashion and students will meet each day in a FTF format from 8:30 am to 4 pm with, of course, a lunch break.
4. Regular/Residential/Tenured Faculty Teaching in Summer: The summer courses will be taught by fulltime tenure stream faculty with graduate assistant support.
5. Pooled/Integrated Summer Course Experience: The design of the summer experiences is critical. In a nutshell, the faculty at MSU are developing a curriculum pools together with content and ideas from these three courses to create a highly powerful integrated summer experience. Apparently, they have been doing something similar for their master's program for over three years (2 weeks face-to-face followed by an online option), so they have a track record that it works really well. By integrating or pooling across these three courses, they can strip out the redundancy among what were more isolated experiences.
6. One Course in Fall and One Course in Spring: In addition to completing 3 classes during the summer, students are expected to take 1 online course per semester--fall and spring 1 each.
7. Additional Residency Requirements: There is a flexible residency requirement in the fall semester of Year 3 – the specific details of which will be negotiated between the student and the adviser.
8. Dissertation Year: The fourth year is pretty open and focused on dissertation research.
9. Program Starts in Summer 2010: This program begins this summer. The final date of application for the first cohort is May 1.
10. Biannual Cohorts: This program will run every other year - so the next enrollment will be in 2012.
11. Entry Requirements: A Master's degree is not required for entrance. What IS required is that you are working full time currently as an educator (in the K12, community college, higher education levels, or in industry) and have extensive experience in your field. Having a master’s degree does not hurt your application, however.
12. GRE: Taking the GRE is required. However, there is no minimum score. Your score is one of many factors that are considered for admission. These include your transcripts, letter of intent, etc.
13. Building a Cohort and a Community: The establishment and support of this cohort of students is something they are paying particular attention to. Social media tools will play an important role in this community building as will a strong commitment to meeting students’ needs and requirements.
14. Some Relevant Links:
1. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education: http://www.educ.msu.edu/cepse/EPET/
2. Overview of New Program:
3. Course Sequence:
4. Program Milestones:
5. MSU Hybrid Ph.D. Website:
If you want more information, you can always write to Punya at punya@msu.edu. Hope you enjoyed this interview. The times are definitely a changing for the field of educational technology. Those who adapt will survive. Those who do not…may not. Which category is your program in? Where are you today? Where will you be tomorrow? Perhaps at Michigan State...or perhaps at Indiana or Minnesota or Florida State or UT-Austin or Pepperdine or Nova Southeastern or Old Dominion University or Hanyang Cyber University or Jones International University or Walden or the Open University of Malaysia or ??? Time will tell. Right now it seems Michigan State is the one to catch. Or is it dear ol' IU? |
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Announcing the 2010 Virtual Symposium - Education for All: Enabling Access through Technology |
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Are you bored? Needing something to do? You are in luck. There is a free conference happening this month that is related to virtual learning. Drexel University with help from Wainhouse Research and the World Bank's Global Development Learning Network in Beijing are putting on such a conference for the 2nd straight year. I know a bit about it since I am the conference keynote. The conference organizers send me some updated information on the conference in hopes that I might mention it in my blog and so I am.
My keynote will be March 23rd at 8 pm EST for 30 minutes (originally, it was to be at 7:30 pm but daylight savings time is earlier than they expected and so they are trying to be sure that the partners in China will be awake; hence, the 30 minute delay). The conference is called the 2010 Virtual Symposium - Education for All: Enabling Access through Technology. My talk will be on my recent book, “The World is Open.” It will be followed by a short response and Q&A session. The talk will be streamed live and also available online after the event free to the world. I will be coming in via videoconferencing from our Radio and TV Building.
In addition to the keynote, I will also give an invited talk on March 25th: “Best Practices for Online Learning: R2D2 and TEC-Variety.” This will be a shorter talk of like 23 minutes.
Note that the conference registration is totally FREE. Also note that there are already several on-demand presentations posted for this month long virtual symposium. Check out the conference information online.
There are some great speakers coming throughout the month. Among them are Dr. Rebecca Clothey from Drexel, Dr. Baiyun Chen from the University of Central Florida, and Alan D. Greenberg leads the Wainhouse Research Education and e-Learning Strategic Advisory Service. You will also find Dr. Qin Jiang Higley who is the Asian Projects Manager at WIDE World, a professional development program for educators developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Dr. Craig Bach who is Drexel University’s Associate Vice Provost for Curriculum and Assessment, Philip Karp who is Regional Coordinator for East Asia and the Pacific at the World Bank Institute (WBI), the unit of the World Bank, and many others. Sounds interesting? It sure is! More information on the conference speakers and participants can also be found online.
My invited “Best Practices” talk is scheduled for March 25th can already be downloaded in 3 different formats from my videostreamed talks page.
1. Small size screen: 41.3 MB MP4 iPod Video Download Link: http://trainingshare.com/video/Bonk_Best_Practices_iPodVideo.mp4
2. Medium size: 70.7 MB Medium MP4 QuickTime Video Download Link: http://trainingshare.com/video/Bonk_Best_practices_QuickTimeMedium.mp4
3. Large size: 153.1 MB Large MP4 QuickTime Video Download Link: http://trainingshare.com/video/Bonk_Best_Practices_Drexel_QuickTimeLarge.mp4
I hope you can parttake in the conference and, if you do, that it is enjoyable. Remember, nothing is as enjoyable as "free!" |
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Is Life Truly "Up in the Air"?: TravelinEdMan's take on George Clooney's masterful role. |
| Wednesday, March 03, 2010 |
Have you seen the movie "Up in the Air" which came our around Christmas Eve? If so, what do you think? I saw it on opening night when everyone else was going to Avatar or Sherlock Holmes. They missed out on what I think was one of the best movies of all time. A summary of the movie in Wikipedia is available.
On February 20, 2010, Lisa Neal Gualtieri from eLearn Magazine posted to the eLearn Magazine blog review of it. She argued that it is George Clooney's best performance. She also commented that much of what is covered in there relates to training problems. She commented on training performance issues, mentoring, training delivery formats (FTF or videoconferencing), and coping with the difference between academically taught theory and real world practices. Lisa is spot on in so many ways. Yes, this movie has much to tell corporate training folks. However, the connections I made were more related to one's life path. With some gentle nudging from Lisa, I commented on her blog post tonight (thanks Lisa!). Much of my response is below (though I expanded on it a bit here and reworked some parts).
This movie is filled with life questions that we all face. Some that we rarely, if ever, are willing to admit to. My son, Alex, and I discussed them on the way home after watching the movie. It has been 2 months since I saw the movie so remembering these issues may be difficult for me. Below are some that we discussed as well as some new ones I just thought of.
Themes or Paths in "Up in the Air":
1. "Major Career Goal(s)." He had a chance to hit the bigtime as a keynote speaker but at the last minute gave it up for love. It was his life dream and chance for a new career outside of firing people. That was, in fact, the pinnacle moment of the movie. We all have such life choices we face at some pt in our lives (some more often than others). Do we go for fame and money or love? Are career goals more important than family, personal, and emotional ones? What will you decide? What if you make the wrong decision? I mean to work and work and work for something and then to give it up for something or someone seemingly special that truly is not there. Totally blindsided by love or something new. Could something more worse ever happen to anyone? Can it? But if so, what would result to that person and his or her inner soul? What would happen to the passion and striving for something more meaningful or different in one's life? Would career types of goals forever vanish? Would the marrow really be sucked out of one's life? Where does Ryan Bingham go from here? Back on a plane I guess. Picking up another backpack of experiences. Oh that backback of his..that backpack we each carry around with us. Multicolored. Sturdy. Handy. Portable. Inclusive. Unbrakeable. Compact. Touching. It holds our identity. And our identity holds it...yes it holds it together at times by a final twisting little piece of string. Hang on "Ryan"...hang on.
2. "Family Connections." What about the reconnection with family? Being from Wisconsin originally, the VFW posts, beer pubs, wintry roads, former high schools, and little hotels in faraway places had me thinking. I remember those days ice fishing with my father on Lake Mendota in Madison as well as Lake Pewaukee nearer to home in Milwaukee and those much further to the north (and colder). I remember the dirty snow. I remember the endless beer and brandy poured out. I remember the accents (no, not Fargo-like, but close). And I remember moving away and now not wanting to live there again. It is just too cold. But will we all someday return home to celebrate who we are and find our identity in our family? What will draw us back? Will it be something accidental or purposeful? Is it destiny to return? And what happens to those who never do...who never come to grips with the fact that their current occupation is not or can never be the whole of who they are?
3. "On the Run" which some might call the theme of "Flight." Then there is the theme of leaving and being always on the run or on the go. We are flying here or there and just where "there" really is does not matter. What matters is the departure...getting on that plane. What are we departing from? Where are we arriving at? A new life for a day or 2 or a week? Some space? What happens to one's soul when there is no permanancy or place to call home except for 15 or so days of the year? Can home be up in the air? Can it be in plane? Can flying provide a sense of home? Can home be in the airport ala that movie Tom Hanks was in a few years back (The Terminal, 2004)? Can it be going through endless security checks? Just where is home for those road warriors? Is there a need for home that we all feel? Or are a select few excluded from it?
4. "Commitment." St. Louis one day. Omaha, Detroit, Las Vegas, Chicago, or Miami the next. What are people who travel so much running from? Commitment? Death? Stability? A sedentary lifestyle? Or are they trying to remain young or keep their future options open by not commiting to anything or anyone? Alternatively, might they be commiting to the world at large and trying to provide service to people spanning the far reaches of the globe instead of just those in a particular company, organization, region, community, neighborhood, or city.
5. "Love" and "Spontaneity." Love is certainly a theme. What happens when one shuts out love or emotion for years or decades and then finds it, only to have it quickly and without much warning shut on him or her? What happens next time? And can love just spring up spontaneously when on the road when one is avoiding commitments? In some ways, that word--"spontaneity"--is a theme as well. Much is preset in "Up in the Air" but so much more is happening on the "fly" or in a highly spontaneous and uncontrollable fashion. Do these two words--"love" and "spontaneity"--dance with each other throughout one's life? Do each serve in their own way to make one more creative and complete? Do they coalesce at some point to help one find his or her true volition...or, in this case, to potentially take a huge detour from it. As noted above, the paths we seek for years can come to halt when we meet what we think is our destiny in the form of a future soulmate or ideal project or new initiative. What new projects arise each month or week or day that take us away from our focus, goals, and life quests to make a difference in the world...or our slice of it anyway?
6. "Apprenticeship." Apprenticeship is a theme. One is coached and mentored by those with more experience and insights on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Such timely apprenticeship can take place face-to-face or via an assortment of technologies today (phone, text messaging, MSN, Skype, videoconferencing, etc.). Apprenticeship is all around us. A solid mentor can pull one through some rough times and send one on an accelerating trajectory. Sometimes, however, it is quite confusing to know just who is doing the mentoring and who is being mentored. The newbie at work just might have some creative insights into solutions to problems that have been perplexing management or a team leader for years. We each learn from the "green" people around us as well as those who are black and blue from all the bruising battles they have been in. Personally, I learn most lessons from people decades older and younger than me. Ryan Bingham is learning from a rich array of people around him in this movie. The more he mentors and apprentices others, the more they mentor him.
7. "Life Purpose." What is life is a theme. What is our purpose. In the movie, George Clooney (Ryan Bingham) thought it was to get up and go and never put down roots. At some point, he questions it. He thinks about that grand life choice. Seeing someone younger than him go through the emotions of a relationship definitely has him thinking. Life purpose is the big question eating away at each of us each day of our lives, and it happens whether we know it or not. This movie is one of many that put such inner life questions on display and they tug at the soul of the audience. That tugging is what raises films like this above most others.
8. "Reaching More Modest, Mid-Term, and Momentary Goals." Then there is the goal of having flown nearly 10 million miles and counting down to the ultimate day and flight. And when it happens, you are too distracted to really remember it or to focus on it. We are humans. As such, we are goal driven creatures. Goals sometimes dictate who we are and what we do...too often in fact. But after having flown so many miles each year, Ryan Bingham reaches his goal, and in a strange way, he does not care. The potential relationship and commitment overrides it. Love here once again has trumped those little goals that consume us all endlessly each day, each month, each year, without end. Teeny, tiny, little goals and narrow focuses get us through all those flights to Omaha and Las Vegas (though a few shows at night might help as well). But when one finds someone or something to finally commit to, those more modest, smaller, or mid-term goals are quickly forgotten or flow to the background of one's life. They are momentary goals and that is really all that they are. Why do we spend so many hours fretting about them? Well, perhaps we do this to give us the expression, "such is life."
9. "Change." Change is a theme. Change is a constant in the lives of everyone in the movie. Change, like the grim reaper, will creep up on you. You get fired. Move to a new address or city. Find a new job. Head to a new location. Get a different boss. Find a new lover. Learn to like a new song or dance move. Fly a different airline. Use a different rental car service. Some people cope with change better than others. Some cannot take change of any shape or form. How can such people be helped? Does firing them via videoconferencing soften the blow of losing a job? Does having a patented or preset answer to each question that may come up along the way really help someone cope such change? And what happens when several such predicaments or life stressors come in succession or waves? Do you want to simply ignore or, worse, strike out, at those with their forms, formats, and canned talk?
10. "Control." Parallel to change is the tenth theme of control. You think you control your life. But it is really the company, the economy, the pilot, the agent, the flight attendant, the neighbor, the sister, the niece, the co-worker, etc. They all have a piece of you and your life. So what do you really, ultimately control? Can you really control anything? Do you control any aspect of your life when you shut out most or all others from it? That is one way to view this film anyway. In actuality, I believe in some personal sense of control in one's life path--i.e., you can fly American (which I rarely do) or Delta/NW. Well let's hope for more personal control than that. What do you think? Do you control each step you take...each decision you seemingly make...each accomplishment you might list? Yes, personal control is a theme here all right.
These are 10 or 12 themes that I see in Up in the Air. I am sure that you will have your own themes or issues; this movie is full of them. As someone who gives 80-100 or more talks per year all over the globe, I can relate to much of it. However, I do not have any goal to reach 10 million miles anytime soon.
And for me? I go up in the air in 4 days to Oklahoma City and 4 days later to Atlanta and then Auburn, Alabama the following day. During the past few weeks, I have been to Fargo, Minneapolis, Frankfort (Kentucky), Indianapolis, Houston, Austin, etc. You can find those talks posted as color PDF documents at my TrainingShare.com site in the achived talks section. You can also find some video snippets I did for STARLINK in Dallas on their recent program on the Web 2.0 in Higher Education (which they filmed in Bloomington back in early January). They will produce another show later on this month related to motivation with technology (wherein I will make an appearance or 2 or 3 perhaps) using footage from the January filming.
For now, TravelinEdMan, is enjoying this 2 week reprieve from flying. How about you? Up in the air are you? See ya there then...see you there. And do bring along your backpack and show me a few things that you have in it. I am forever curious. I will bring my famed fishbag to show you...bought in 1994 during the AERA Conference in New Orleans, there are just a few threads holding it together. |
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From iSMART to ELI to Fargo to the Gates Foundation to Sloan-C to EdNews to to AARP to Cisco Telepresence to the eLearning Guild |
| Thursday, January 28, 2010 |
Travel:
Houston and Austin for iSMART and ELI: What a week or two. Last week, I was in Houston to hear about the iSMART project and then jumped on a plane to Austin for the Educause Learning Initiatives conference where I was a featured speaker. On the way back, I had a long walk across the concourse in Houston. A very long walk. And then I ended up at the wrong gate. Oh well...let's walk some mre.
Fargo: This week I was in Fargo to present at North Dakota State University. As with the movie Fargo, Monday was a nightmare flying to get there. De-iced my plane 3 times in Indy and then sat on the runway only to get to Minneapolis and first have no groundcrew to bring us to the gate and then an inoperable jetbridge. Once inside, I found out that my flight was canceled going to Fargo so I had to take a United flight to Denver and Frontier flight to Fargo. Yikes! So please do not be jealous of my traveledman ways and days. Sometimes flying sucks. This week was a case in point. But I made it. Many people from NDSU were in Minneapolis still trying the next day. I think it was 10 below without windchill Wednesday morning (yesterday) when I left.
You might ask about iSMART which I mentioned above. The “Integration of Science, Mathematics, and Reflective Teaching (iSMART) is a 2-year online graduate program for middle school science and mathematics teachers in Texas.” And it is a FREE master's degree paid for with a $3 million grant from the Texas Education Foundation. There are some press releases on this from last spring. My colleague Mimi Lee at the University of Houston is helping design some of the courses and conduct research on the program. Mimi and her colleague Dr. Jennifer Chauvot and several others are heading this up.
I had heard about iSMART some time ago and was immediately energized about the purpose and scope. So it was great to chat and consult a bit with the iSMART team last week over lunch at the Zaza Hotel in Houston near Rice University. You can read more about iSMART at the iSMART project homepage. Cool stuff! Combine the open educational resources (OER), OpenCourseWare (OCW), and online learning movement.
The first iSMART cohort begins in the fall of 2010. They are about to begin recruiting 25 teachers for the first cohort.
Ok, that is enough on my travels. My body is still recovering from the trip to Fargo (no woodchippers encountered fortunately). Next week I go the University of Minnesota for 4 talks.
Lots of technology news this week. Yes, Apple released the iPad, but there is much other interesting news in the learning technology space this week. See below:
1. Bill Gates and Gates Foundation Committed to Online Learning: Bill Gates is blogging on the importance of online learning and going to fund more from the Gates Foundation. Mark Parry from the Chronicle of Higher Education has a short summary of this post in the Wired Campus today and tells higher ed folks to start writing grants! Some of the ideas he discusses are mentioned in my World is Open book.
In the Chronicle article, Parry highlights this quote from Bill Gates: "The foundation has made a few grants to drive online learning, but we are just at the start of this work," Gates writes. "So far, technology has hardly changed formal education at all. But a lot of people, including me, think this is the next place where the Internet will surprise people in how it can improve things—especially in combination with face-to-face learning." Ah, blended learning! Aha. Has he seen my Handbook of Blended Learning? Not likely.
2. Sloan-C: The Sloan Consortium just released a brand new report (January 2010) showing a 17 percent jump in online enrollments in the USA in 2009 (now up to 4.6 million college students taking at least one online class). Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2010). Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009 (Release Date: January 2010), Sloan Consortium. Interesting one. Read it! If you want the overview, the Chronicle did a nice job of that 1-2 days ago. Again, it was Marc Parry.
Some great charts and data in the Sloan-C report as always.
Here is some news where my work is recently featured or I am interviewed:
1. EducationNews: An interview on a recent print-on-demand book of mine and special journal issue came out.
January 27, 2010:
Interviewed for EdNews (http://ednews.org/), "An Interview with Curt Bonk from Indiana University, Mimi Miyoung Lee from the University of Houston, and Tom Reynolds from National University on E-Learning in Asia," by Michael Shaughnessy, January 27, 2010, EducationNews; Available: http://www.educationnews.org/michael-f-shaughnessy/34519.html
Bonk, C. J., Lee, M. M., & Reynolds, T. H. (Eds.) (2009). A Special Passage through Asia E-Learning. Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. (see http://www.editlib.org/ebooks/ or http://www.editlib.org/p/32264 and http://aace.org)
Note: this was also a special journal issue of the International Journal of E-Learning:
Bonk, C. J., Lee, M. M., & Reynolds, T. H. (Eds.) (2009). International Journal on E-Learning. 8(4). Special issue: A Special Passage through Asia E-Learning. http://www.editlib.org/j/IJEL/v/8/n/4
Note: EducationNews is a top online education site with millions of readers.
2. AARP Quote: I was also quoted in article for AARP Bulletin, January-February, 2010, January 1, 2010, “FreE-Learning.” by Bill Hogan, The New U: How to Learn Just About Anything Online…For Free. This is a really interesting article with many useful links in the free and open learning space (though it is somewhat basic as Stephen Downes recently pointed out).
Note: No one contacted me on this one…it just appeared.
3. GETideas.org Telepresence Interview: I was also interviewed via Cisco Telepresence for Education Thought Leaders from GETideas.org which is owned by Cisco . Apparently, it was also shown on Cisco Employee TV network; Interview with Jenny House, San Jose, CA, Topic: The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education, December 7, 2009 (posted January 2010, 32 minutes). There was a blog post in Curriki on this as well.
Note: I was in Indianapolis for this interview. The interviewer was in San Jose. This telepresence experience was cool.
4. eLearning Guild: Finally, on Monday February 15th, I will be presenting a free Webinar on my World is Open book. To attend for free, you must register. This will be for 1 hour from 1:30 to 2:30 pm EST or 10:30 to 11:30 am PST. They are using a tool called GoToWebinar.
Ok, enough news for now. My spring is loaded with such travel. |
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Sharing . . . the Journey: A Prequel to "The World Is Open" |
| Sunday, January 24, 2010 |
I couple of months ago, I rewrote the short prequel to my book, The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education.
Sharing . . . the Journey: A Prequel to The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education
Here is the Citation to the prequal:
Bonk, C. J. (2009). Sharing…the journey: A Prequel to “The World is Open: Now WE-ALL-LEARN with Web Technology.” Updated and available: http://worldisopen.com/misc/prequel.pdf
In the article, I detail the evolution of the sharing culture in education over the past few decades. I also discuss sharing from the perspetive of different generations of learning technology. A snippet from the end of that article is below. It includes 10 ways in which you can now share. Enjoy.
JOINING THE SHARING REVOLUTION
It does not matter where I travel or with whom I communicate now, the stories I hear are much different and, at times, exceedingly optimistic. The seeds of sharing have successfully grown and ripened into assorted educational fruits. No longer are there mass protest rallies against online learning or the sharing of such resources and learning. Visits to various cities in Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Korea, and Canada since the end of 2006 confirmed this for me. At each stop, people asked me if it was acceptable to videostream my talks. In response, I quickly told them to podcast, videostream, Webcast, pubcast, or do whatever they wanted with it. And feel free to post my slides, my talk abstract, picture, or bio as well. All education should be shared. The more we share educational resources, the more the knowledge of this planet is opened to its learners.
So what can you share to help education around the world?
1. Mentoring: You can sign up to be an online mentor, coach, or tutor in your area of expertise. Many professional organizations today include some type of mentoring services, including engineering, teaching, business, and nursing.
2. Course Content: If in postsecondary education, you can share instructional content you have created in places such as MERLOT.org or Connexions. If in K–12 education, perhaps contribute to or use Curriki or one of many online lesson plan sharing sites. Those in corporate, nonprofit, or government positions should talk to your training directors or chief learning officers about what sharing is possible within your organization. And informal learners and citizens of the world can create a course homepage or shell, podcast, or online instructional videos wherein they share educational ideas and experiences.
3. Join the OCW Movement: At an organizational or institu-tional level, you can share entire courses or programs in the OCW movement. Administrators need to consider putting forth proposals and strategic plans for such.
4. Guest Expert: You can be a guest expert in an online chat or Webinar. You might also podcast a lecture on a topic and place it on the Web for others to access for free, such as in iTunes. Along these same lines, you might videostream a lecture you give in a class, at a conference, or in a workshop for free distribution to the world community.
5. Collaboration: You can sign up at ePals or Keypals to engage in online collaboration with another school. You might also share cultural artifacts or lessons for such collaborative activities and events. At the corporate level, you can share software problems and solutions, new product training, and additional intellectual capital in wikis, blogs, podcasts, or other appropriate technological outlets.
6. Translator: You might volunteer to translate open educa-tional resources or OpenCourseWare in your native tongue.
7. Portals: You can create, index, or aggregate educational portals of online content. You can also market or showcase any new or consistently useful portals that you find.
8. Evaluator: You can help in the evaluation or rating of online content. You might also develop the methods and forms of evaluation to be employed.
9. Software Developer: Software developers can offer open source or introductory free versions of their software or special discounts for education.
10. Blogger: You can blog on current events in education, thereby sharing what is happening. At the same time, you can add hyperlinks within your blog, thereby stretching your post to other valuable educational resources, documents, trends, and events.
The list above is only a fraction of what is now possible. Clearly, opportunities for sharing our educational lives are exploding. This is a key part of the giving that Bill Clinton was talking about (in his book on "Giving"). Sharing education is among the most powerful acts of giving that human beings can engage in. And such educational sharing can take place in a wide variety of formats.
Sharing can be casual among friends who teach the same course and want to benefit from what each other has developed or accomplished. Such collegial sharing might involve a new instructional activity to test out, or a video you’ve just found in YouTube, CNN Video, or the BBC News and Videos. Each instance of sharing among these friends and colleagues, casual as it might be, allows for innovations, changes, and new ideas to be piloted and perhaps someday flourish in other disciplines not originally intended. Sure, instructors have always shared their resources with friends, but not at the speed or intensity possible today. Though some share educational ideas using e-mail, text messaging, and comments to online discussion forums or communities, many others now prefer their sharing to be conducted in social networking sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg, Facebook, and Twitter. Still others employ free online phone services such as Skype and Google Talk.
Such sharing is often creative, spontaneous, and somewhat haphazard. As a result, it is virtually untrackable. But as evidenced by the millions of visits to these sites each day, it is happening! Sharing can also be more formally designed and documented in popular news media as in the OCW sites, or in the translations into additional languages as in the OOPS project. What institutional leaders and politicians need to figure out is how to foster and encourage both formal and informal sharing pursuits. How can they perhaps nudge them along, embed recognition for them, and celebrate their successes?
The scope of online sharing certainly varies. It can occur among just a few individuals or perhaps benefit only a single person for it to have value. At the same time, it can be used by teams, schools, local communities, countries, regions, or the world community. Sharing can be sensed in a fleeting moment in time and then dissipate. It can also be much more lasting and even viral, thereby spreading to people far beyond the originally intended audience and recurring a million times over.
The fourth generation of educational technologies has not only made sharing possible, but also highly encouraged. For millions of people spread far and wide across this lovely planet, these technologies are indispensable; this is how countless individuals today spend the learning-related aspects of their lives. Consequently, stories of sharing in education will be part of teaching and learning lore for decades to come. Teachers will continue to be givers, but everyone involved in education or training, no matter the role or capacity, will be sharers as well as sharing receivers.
There are no shortages of sharing opportunities today, nor will there be in ten, twenty, or a hundred years from now. With each passing generation, sharing will become increasingly synonymous with education, because sharing, like giving, is at the forefront of what it means to be human. Each person walking this planet will be expected to share his or her ideas, talents, expertise, wisdom, products, computing power, bandwidth, scientific discoveries, and educational materials with others using various forms of online technologies. Such is life in the twenty-first century and beyond.
As in Bill Clinton’s documentation of how giving can change the world, through sharing, anyone can make a small dent in solving educational problems and implementing progressive educational reforms. What will you share and where might your journeys in this exciting arena lead? I hope you find time to share your results.
Please let me know what transpires. I look forward to hearing about your innovative sharing pursuits.
Curtis J. Bonk |
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