Some said it couldn’t be done. Some said the subject didn’t even exist. Some claimed it couldn’t be quantified enough to be useful. But somehow today Jared Stein, Scott Leslie and I managed to put on (I think) a pretty successful workshop on the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) for educators. I facilitated the “beginner” sessions– focusing on the blog as a hub for activities and tools that make up one’s PLE and feed reading for both management/efficiency and as another way to participate in the larger conversation. I took care to continually focus on the Personal in the concept of the PLE, using the blog as a way to make and sustain human connections and as a means to start the cycle of the virtuous circle of intellectual and social capital building.

Outside of some inexcusable logistical and technical issues (how long will it take WCET organizers to realize that robust Internet access is a must for the entire conference venue, not to mention hands-on web-based workshops like ours? Does a breakout room that is three floors and a small maze away from the main room make sense? If laptops are promised isn’t it reasonable to expect that they will be delivered to the room prior to the session starting? Don’t pre-conference participants, who have paid a pretty penny to attend, deserve coffee and juice on the coffee breaks?) things went pretty smoothly. We were blessed with a group that wasn’t highly experienced but was generally pretty clueful, with little time being spent on basic browser operations, negotiating account signups and other things that can stall progress.

[photo by highline5]

My only real regret is that I wasn’t able to sit in on Scott and Jared’s session. My job was easier because I’ve developed a pretty good method for contextualizing blogging and feed reading and network participation… things get significantly hazier when you start talking about data mashups and such.

After the session we had the special interest dinners. Our strand was supposed to have 45 but ended up with only half that. The food was so-so, but the big problem (apparently) was that it was too cold at the outside tables we were given. Guess I am Alaskan through and through– I felt quite comfortable at 67F or so! But, as usual, the real fun was the dinner table conversation with friends I only get to see in person at functions like this. I was reminded very clearly of why Twitter has become so valuable in my working life– it’s the closest thing I have to providing the informal, wide-ranging, social interaction that plays out at conference dinners, hallway conversations, and late nights at a hotel bar. It’s not the same Twittering with @sleslie @jstein @diamond_mind @johnkrutsch @gsoutherndl as hanging out around a frozen table or a booth made for lovin’, but it’s close and I’m thankful for it.

 
[photo by highline5]

Finally, a word about the hotel– I mean “resort.” There’s no question this is a higher-end popular resort and I’m sure that for a certain kind of traveler it is a fine spot for a vacation. But it’s a lousy venue for an educational technology conference. The internet access– hardwired and wireless, in the room, lobby, and conference areas– is consistently poor. Word is that there won’t be *any* wireless in conference areas for the rest of the week, which is completely ridiculous. And education travelers are, most often, on a per-diem that just isn’t adequate for a hotel like this. My per-diem doesn’t cover even a single meal, not to mention the incidentals like constant tipping opportunities. It’s not that I mind the extra cost, but given the fiscal reality, the truth of Bryan Alexander’s law of hotel Internet (the more expensive the hotel the more expensive and poorly performing the internet access will be), and that much of the value of conferences is having a comfortable way to interact with people met during conference activities… I just don’t understand why venues like this are chosen.

Today’s recommended blog: Christopher Sessums.

Although his blog has been rather quiet lately (apparently his microblog is going strong if you need a quick fix), a timely post today reminded me that Christopher Sessums’ blog has been a regular stop of mine for quite a while. The Director of the Office for Distance Education at the University of Florida, Sessums’ blog is well-balanced in two important ways: between substantive, even formalish posts and (quality) link fests, and between enthusiasm for interesting ideas and a healthy amount of skepticism. Sessums is a little bit Edupunk and a little bit, well, something else. You will find Nietzsche and Pete Townsend comfortably inhabiting a single post. He’s keenly interested in participatory media/culture and social software, community of practice theory, and a host of other ideas that are dear to me. He’s not afraid to talk about the PLE. He reads poetry and is familiar with one of my favorite Dick Hugo books, recognizing that many books that aren’t about education or edtech have a lot to teach us. I don’t remember how I discovered Sessums… maybe through a link from Brian Lamb? Whoever it was, thanks. That gift to me is one I can pass on.

George: The Net Gen Nonsense blog fits right in, of course, with your predisposition– perhaps borne of seeing too much extremism ala Prensky– to be against the notion that learners are changing. And you seem to equate the idea, again ala Prensky, with being mostly– or even significantly– biological.

I suspect that we will see, in retrospect, that there are biological and neurological changes occurring due to technological changes, but it’s not really important. The remonstrations about the evidence remind me of scientists concluding that bumblebees can’t fly and philosophers concluding that there is no physical reality. Like Berkeley, I refute you thus, with the students I teach every term… but I will refrain from kicking them as proof!

More importantly, a whole lot of learning is not about biology but about cognition and the mental processes built on top of that biology. The two points with which you conclude your post ("1) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and create information, and 2) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and connect to each other.") are changes in learners, and they are changes that happen as a result of living in a very different and quickly changing technologically mediated environment than others. Fight it all you want, but those learners are different. It has nothing to do with age and the biological origins are at best unclear… but it is immaterial. Anyone who pays attention to their students can see this in the divide they face within their classes between the haves and knows and the have not/know nots. Whatever the label, a host of educators nod in recognition of the characteristics regardless of the question of the origins, which has always been my central point in this debate: I don’t care about the reasons as much as I care about the solutions, and I won’t discount what I see and experience because the research (which hasn’t been an enviable guide when it comes to education so far, but that’s a different discussion) isn’t there or isn’t unclear. A refutation would make a difference, but there’s an obvious reason why there isn’t one, and I don’t mean the philosophical bit about proving a negative.

I don’t know how much you teach and how many of those you teach are adolescents, but clearly you see these changes or you wouldn’t so explicitly point out some of the conditions effecting that change in your two concluding points. It’s not as if all of us who teach are likely to be suffering a mass delusion and I think too many people with too many different, varying backgrounds when it comes to experience teaching and knowledge of technology and communication hear the squeaky wheel to be convinced that it’s just an illusion they are bringing to the table.

After an immensely frustrating conversation a few days ago in which various stereotypes were thrown about w/r/t techies, women, leadership and more, this frame from Clint LaLonde’s fabulous intro video for a Brian Lamb keynote (hey, where’s the archive of the presentation?) caught my attention.

One of the more interesting NMC Symposium on Mashups sessions I attended was Brian Lamb’s wholly unexpected multimedia mashup extravaganza Confessions of a  Mashup Un-Artist. Held in Second Life (as you can see in the screenshot above), DJ Goldkey– as Brian is now known– put on a show you really have to listen to or watch. Any textual summary I could make would be useless. Also, Brian has provided some notes about his inspirations and sources in his blog.

What I loved about the whole thing (beyond the fact that it wasn’t another session spent watching slides pass by and beyond the content of the production itself) was the variety of reactions it received. While some just grooved to the sounds, putting their best avatar dance moves to use while peering at the video, others repeatedly asked if they were seeing and hearing what they were supposed to be, while a few were simply befuddled, mystified– even angered– by the whole thing.

I experienced a feeling very similar during this session to one I had during the opening night readings at Northern Voice– an exciting connection with the point, and product, and the why behind our use of these tools. I’m glad Jeffrey Keefer posted his thoughts about the session… not because he is wrong, but because he is in one sense completely right. Those who came to the session with certain expectations borne of a particular set of objectives motivating their attendance at the symposium– such as those expecting practical nuts and bolts of creating a mashup or those wanting to be told how mashups are useful in education or in their classroom– stood a good chance of being disappointed. And while I might not advocate for a whole conference of nothing but such performances (well, I might, but it wouldn’t really be a conference any more, which could be a good thing, and it would answer a generally different set of questions), having activities like this is a Really Good Thing. They remind us of what education is all about– not just the objectives, process and knowledge but also the product and expression.

Facts and instructions are not always– maybe not even usually– the answer. I compare this to the fact that when I’m struggling most with a vexing problem of technology, education and design, I most often turn to a book of poetry or put on some good music. I’d have a hard time coming up with a cogent theory of "application" of Coleridge to how to facilitate a class discussion, but I am keenly aware that for me there is a whole world of richness of expression and thought that ties into the way I live in and approach the world… and most of that world is in the dark, unseen and hard to quantify.

I enjoyed that Brian’s "presentation" was not to elaborate on the composition and details of a mashup and how they might be used, but to give the people attending his session a potentially powerful experience of a mashup for themselves… one whose "content"
centered on the foundational issues of culture, technology and education itself. It strikes me as a bit surprising that so many people there to learn about mashups were uncomfortable and surprised at being confronted by one, reminding me of the classic tensions between theorists and practitioners, and educators and students. Clearly we have a long way to go!

As usual I had far more material gathered together than I could share, which was intentional– I figure if someone is actually interested by something they hear then they can follow up later. If that’s too much for someone then they probably aren’t ready to teach with these tools anyway.

Before I arrived in Atlanta I’d decided that from here on out, if I can get away with it, I’m just going to be presenting my sometimes cantankerous personal position rather than trying to present an ‘objective’ approach because:

• There’s too much out there to survey a significant number of possibilities in any reasonable amount of time
• I want participants to come away with some specific return(s) for the time they’ve entrusted me with
• Anyone who actually listens to me and follows up on my suggestions will quickly learn how to discard the things that don’t fit or work for them.
• And if they don’t follow-up, then they don’t need me and/or are– for whatever reason– not ready to make this jump.

The materials from the session are online, but I can distill them even further. I was surprised at the positive reaction to some guidelines I provided about wikis and was actually able to convey a little of the usefulness of Twitter (thanks in part to the fortuitous presence of Alphabunny).

If only one point sticks, I hope it was/is the last one.

1. Learning emerges from community, which is based on conversation.
2. Online community demands from its participants skills that come from the triad of information fluency: content, critical thinking, and participation/presentation.
3. Blogs are the place to start because they are the most portable, can fill-in for more specialized apps in a pinch, and help put in place valuable general practices… but you can’t approach them half-heartedly. You have to get all connected to all, make use of syndication and aggregation of content and comments, and push practice.
4. Teach your students how to contribute– passivity leads to failure because there will be no positive network effects.
5. Wikis work in particular ways that most educators don’t understand because they mistake presentation-based activities for collaborative ones, and they’ve learned how wikis work by outliers like Wikipedia.
6. Synchronous chat and backchannel activities can, as counterintuitive as it seems, lead to higher comprehension and enhanced participation.
7. Twitter is not just a useful tool for participating in a fun conversation of peers, but a direct test of whether one has really made the transition to “information like water.”
8. Student resistance to technology is mostly a mask that obscures the real reason for resistance: students aren’t used to being challenged. Participating and being a social learner is a rich experience that demands activity… something a lot of students are unused to.
9. If you don’t “walk the walk” and use these tools yourself to create and participate in your own personal learning network, then don’t bother trying to use them in your classroom.