Looking Forward –

It is the start of a new year and with that comes a conditioned desire to look forward and attempt to make the coming year better (what ever better means) than the previous year. Most of us do this and I am no exception.

As the days away from work diminished and thoughts of work started to creep back into my consciousness I have found myself mulling the following thoughts regarding work.

1. I have a better understanding of my role and spending more time forming the work instead of implementing the tasks (to varying degrees of success I must admit).  There are a few bits of organizational dynamics to address to make us work more smoothly but those are tweaks that are only apparent because things are working well and generally moving in the same direction.
2. Now that we (user services) has our niche carved and day to day tasks becoming second nature, how do we connect with the community beyond requests for help? If we are better connected with the community it will help us be more intune with their perspective allowing us to make better decisions when implementing what needs to be done.  The question I face is how to accomplish this?  I am going to propose that each of us take a few buildings and commit to walking through them a couple times a month with the sole purpose being trying to connect with users and helping them know that we are people who want to help.  It will be interesting to learn how the group will respond and improve the idea.  (This is one thing I really appreciate about my colleagues – they field my half-baked ideas and make them into plausible practices they feel comfortable implementing.)
3. I will also be doing my own part to reach out to the community.  I would like to meet with a majority of directors on campus to start the conversations of working better together.
4. The last “resolution” is for me to gain a better understanding of how a college’s budget, particularly the portion of which I am responsible is most appropriately used over the course of the year.  Starting to attend the FFC meetings and the Finances portion of the IT Manager’s Series  has given me a good framework of how to use and talk about budgets by connecting to the mission of the institution.

We will see how these play out.  I will be blogging more on these topics and we will see how it goes.  Your input is welcome.

Generalizations of the Digital Natives

I came across this article while traveling(via Mobile Google Reader) and again when I returned to the office (in my mailbox).  As it has to do with generational generalizations (a topic that I have been reading about professionally and personally for a while now)  I thought I would throw down a few ideas to see how they perculate.

In general the article seems to be countering the the Millenial Generation as Digital Wizards argument common from technophiles these days.  The argument made early on seems to make the usual counters providing ‘proof’ that millenials still use the technology of academia (books and libraries).

If you ask me, both sides are wasting time trying to prove their correctness.  The black and white thinking of an 18 -24 year old will do x y and z all the time is as incorrect as thinking that an ‘introvert’ will never say anything in a group setting or a ‘thinker’ is incapable of understanding an emotional agruement from a ‘feeler’.  We need to think about how do tendencies of the life experience of our students inform the tools and processes of our interactions with them.

I think this is a pretty good cross representation of what we could expect to find in any group of our ‘traditional’ college students.

Every class has a handful of people with amazing skills and a large number who can’t deal with computers at all. A few lack mobile phones. Many can’t afford any gizmos and resent assignments that demand digital work. Many use Facebook and MySpace because they are easy and fun, not because they are powerful (which, of course, they are not). And almost none know how to program or even code text with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Only a handful come to college with a sense of how the Internet fundamentally differs from the other major media platforms in daily life.

While this is true I still believe the Millenials are apt to view technology as a layer in their life which translates into them just using the technology instead of understanding how the technology works or global best practices of a particular technology.  I equate this to how I use my car.  I turn the key it runs when it doesn’t the folks at the Ford Garage get a call.

Later in the article the author writes -

Talk of a “digital generation” or people who are “born digital” willfully ignores the vast range of skills, knowledge, and experience of many segments of society.

True enough but there is merit in some generalization or we become overwhelmed as it is chaos.  So the question is how do we organize our understandings of this generation in a way that is useful and true without putting on our blinders to accept the nuiances of individuals within a generation?

Library of Congress Photos on Flickr (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress)

ELI’s 7 Things this month is on flickr in the document I learned that the Library of Congress has partnered with flickr.

Library of Congress Photos on Flickr (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress)

The project sounds interesting what caught my attention was the invitation to participate…

” We invite you to tag and comment on the photos, and we also welcome identifying informationâ??many of these old photos came to us with scanty descriptions! …

What participatory history? I concentrated on Social Studies (history really) as an education major at SUNY Fredonia (go Blue Devils). And loved the courses where we engaged in the primary resources of the time period being studied. Looking at pictures, letters, dress, etc… of the day some how drew me back to the day I could get lost in the mess for hours on end. History is about people and the pilot the LOC is doing with flickr makes history accessible to people. What an interesting mesh of structured Library stuff with user-produced content of Web 2.0 this is a fantastic mash-up of culture if you ask me.

A funny aside is that I was listening to Gardner Campbell’s talk from this year’s ELI where he references the concept of simple tools loosely joined (Jim didn’t you give a talk last year on this? If so, a link would be helpful…) as being a model of teaching and learning technologies. This use of flickr would be an example of that. I wonder how the success of this pilot impacts the need for tools such as Luna. Is a Luna like tool necessary for the back-end and a flickr like tool best used for interaction and engagement?

Any who back to my thoughts on LOC on Flickr.

The level of access that this gives people like me – who with small kids won’t get to DC in the near future and then when I do get there wouldn’t have the time to do more than notice the pictures as I ran past reminding the kids that daddy is almost done and there are chicken nuggets in it for them if I can have just a few more minutes to look at the cool stuff. – a chance to

• look at the pictures and absorb the content
• share reflections using the comments or notes tools
• help organize by adding my tag
• identify the image with place via the map tool
• respond to the image in my blog using flickr’s Blog This tool.
• see the changing collection as new images are posted (God Bless RSS)

For added reference here are a few screen shots from my few minutes on the site.

I took this one to show that Flickr users can embed notes about the picture. I wanted to share this one because note added to the value of the picture by making it a picture of pattern as much as it was a picture of industry or trains.

I wanted to share this one as it allows for humor-

And this note shows correction of the the humor…

I hope that they add more to the map. I really am interested as to where the images were taken from. I think it helps place the image in a better context.

I look forward to watching this grow and change.  I hope that this is brought into the visual literacy workshop.

Email is For Grandparents

I enjoyed Julie Evans’s of Project Tomorrow talk last year on what K-12 students are using for technology in their daily lives. This year’s talk hit the mark again.

E07 Podcast: Tomorrow’s Students: Are We Ready for the New 21st-Century Learners? | EDUCAUSE CONNECT

Connectedness is the growing trend. How do we move toward that? What does that mean? Does thinking about social networking make us “cool like two years ago” as Dimitri Martin, Daily Show Youth Correspondent suggests?

K-12 Students believes their success lies in understanding how to apply technology to answer the questions posed to them. Students view critical thinking and technology usage as one in the same skill.

Two important tools

• Laptop
• Cell Phone

Students want to know how to apply these to overcome problems.

These students will be here before we know it.

Democratization of Presidential Debate or Social Software meets CNN

Last night along with many other Red and Blue blooded Americans I watch CNN’s YouTube debate and the reactions to it including this bit from NPR -  Democratic Candidates Face Off in YouTube Debate. The involvement of the “common” person (or at least those with computer savvy, web cam and highspeed connection) in the political forum.   It is also interesting at the quickness that the candidate’s webmasters tried to take advantage of the cool factor of a YouTube enhanced debate by posting video clips of responses  and coup points made by the candidate as the debate progressed.

So as not to make this it seem that I am a political blogger these are my reactions as they relate to my interests in education and social software.

• I wonder how many Presidential Politics Courses will include a blogging component this fall or are blogs still in the realm of the geeks and merely a side act in the world of politics?
• Will the incorporation of YouTube make this a less scary tool thus making it harder for Copyright suites to be won?
• An interesting step for a traditional media (TV) to incorporate a new media (YouTube) into their product.  It is interesting to note that CNN still filtered the questions and I wonder as James K brings up if in the future will the users of YouTube get to vote on which questions will be asked publicly.
• I wonder if the candidates(or supporters of the candidates) will respond via YouTube to other questions not covered on air.

Does this push social software and online communities to a new level with the average American or is this something whose value is not understood?

Need to Get Back to Blogging or A Forced Post to Return to a Good Habit

In the last month, my role (and the roles of many of my colleagues) has changed.  I am now the Director of User Services, thus there is much to get up to speed on and blogging about educational technology things seems a little unnatural.  (I assume I will return to that topic in the future but we’ll have to wait and see.)

In the meantime, I have felt drawn to blogging as it has been a great avenue for working out things before going live but have not found the right thing (or voice) to write.  For some reason I haven’t felt comfortable  working through the ideas publicly, even though I know that doing so would produce clarity.  Anyways, I’m over that (or forcing myself to be over that) and blogging again as to minimize my stammering in meeting I must now attend.

How all the changes came to be was through a reorganization that redistributed the Office of Educational Technology staff to meet the needs of the new organization.  Two instructional Technologists moved to the library to assist with the library becoming the center for teaching and learning on campus and the other two instructional technologist (me being one of them) joined with the Help Desk Manager, a Senior Technician and a User Support Specialist  to form the User Services Group.  While it is unclear exactly what will become of it I do know that for our group to be successful we need to share our expertise and help educate the college community to become more self-sufficient in their technology use.  Fortunately, this group consists of a great group of professionals with the right skill sets in hardware support, project management, instructional design, needs assessment, and providing front-line technology support not to mention a sincere commitment to excellent customer services.

I know that many of you that follow my posts are much more entrenched in teaching and learning than what I will be in my new position but I hope that you will continue to follow and challenge me to bring good teaching/learning practices to the support structures I will develop with my new colleagues.   If you know of people in user support or help desk management would you mind pointing me towards them, their blog, or them to my blog.

Old Post New Value

So today as I was reviewing where in the process of learning Web 2.0 I should be at, I  realized that we will be turning our attention next to RSS.  As I agree with Jeff VanDrimmelen that RSS is as cool as sliced bread, I have posted on RSS previously in preparations for a workshop I went through some old posts on RSS and found that some will have value for the Learning 2.0 project.   One such post is my explanation of RSS post. Not that the post is any more insightful or better written than the one included on the plcmclearing2.0 blog.   But it is my thoughts wrapped around quotes from other posts with links to articles that produced much thought at the time of the post.

The two things that are powerful to me because of this post are:

1.  The ease of reusing ‘old’ content to capture new thoughts or share with colleagues by adding/reassigning a category to a post.

2. The value of reviewing your thoughts and amending/appending them as topics regain my attention. This is of particular import when blogging as you capture your thoughts as snap shots in time in a very public setting.  By reflecting on and responding to old posts one is able to communicate new and hopefully deeper understanding over time as a tapestry of expertise instead of unrelated strands of thought.

From Blogosphere to Main Stream

Apparently there is exactly a three month difference between cutting edge and mainstream. On Februrary 7th I learned of this video whose author and his current project is discussed in an article on May 7th at The Chronicle.

Reasons, I find this interesting…

I am sure I am not the only person, blogger, who thought “that is so three months ago.” An interesting commentary on the speed of information transformation compared to traditional media. But on reading the article carefully, something that I don’t do often enough when reading from a web page, I realized that the article talks of a new project. It will be interesting to follow.

A reminder of the need for information fluency, so readers can assess validity and reliability of web2.0 messages.

A reminder of the need to structure text based content on the web to be easily skimmable.

The talking of Web2.0 as mainstream, even though it is most likely years from being ubiquitous, sparked a mind blowing line of thought: What’s next? I got to that question because if we are talking about/ using an innovative technology in the mainstream then I feel fairly same in assuming that the inventors/innovators are on to the next be thing. So what is next? Currently we are in Web 2.0 which is characterized by author/audience members that “read” and respond to web based content. If we say that web 2.0 is an out growth of web 1.0 which really just reflected habits and trends of personal computer use then what is next? Computing 3.0? If it is real-time multi-point collaborative creation going to be the mode of operation?

Not sure where to go with this but if I’m right you heard it here first.

An honorable dilemma at The Fish Wrapper

A very interesting dilemma for sure is explained over at The Fish Wrapper. On a much smaller scale I felt a similar clash/disconnect between my preferred writing format blog/html and the universally accepted format of paper in completing my annual performance review this year.

I formed my ideas for what I would submit using my blog and quite naturally(or absent-mindedly) included links to many of the completed projects. As I moved from blog entry(ies) to a more print friendly media I came to a rather annoying realization that a flat piece of paper is not nearly as communicative as my entries. Not to mention the loss of context when the summary post was read without the supporting posts written throughout the year.

After reading this post I wonder if our students have similar reactions when moving between courses that are rich in Web 2.0 tools/practices and ones that require more traditional approach?
Would it make sense for the university archivists and historians to have a dedicated web server that could store such works publicly but not provide write access thus having a true archive of the work as it was conceived and orginially shared. As Martha says “I am not a librarian”, archivist, etc.. but that on the surface that makes sense to me.

I think I will bring this up at our RefIT group (a weekly meeting of Reference Librarians and Instructional Technologists) to see what ideas come from it. Hopefully our Learning Web 2.0 project will also benefit from this example as it is a concrete example of how Web 2.0 and user created content impacts both of our worlds.
This is a problem that more will face as the educational trend seems to be one that includes more user created content. Particularly in mediums that do not seem to be easily ’shelfable’ as is paper, video tape or dvd, photograph, or work of art.

Creating a University in Second Life…

Finally got to read Jeff’s post Second Life Speaks – Imagine the POTENTIAL! at EduTechie.com.   In the post are a few imagine with me segment of how Second Life could be added into a course/learning experience.

It sparked an idea – what about an  art museum that a faculty member/student could populate with images from the campus digital assets management program (we use Luna) but that is another idea/day and requires resources not at my disposal. 

Towards the end of the post there is mention of the UNC island(that is being built).  As I was curious, I  jump on SL and teleported to the island.

This is what I found.

A campus in development.  The features emulating the ‘real’ campus.  Does this make it easier for students/staff to merge the real and virtual worlds?

At the center of the current campus there is a map and welcome billboard. The welcome statement conveys this space as one of community, creativity, and idea exchange.

On closer inspection of the map it looks like the map for visitors from the UNC web site.   I find that funny.  Not sure why as using this real world artifact makes sense.   Perhaps the funniness of it comes from my discomfort with intersections of my real life and my experiences in a virtual world.

The buildings are still in progress.  This one has a blue print with photos of the real world image.  I assume to assist in the development.

The history of the University spans over 200 years (the first building’s cornerstone was laid in 1793).  I wonder will the second life campus be a corner stone of the next 200 years or just an interesting experiment?