Chris Lott

I went to this session with less interest in MERLOT than in seeing other models of faculty and course development. I found Lisa Pirinelli-Dubuc’s part of the presentation rather interesting in that way, seeing that the SUNY Learning Network that she was representing has 4300+ online courses– almost all of which are wholly online– with 100,000 students and 2000 faculty!

Among other things she pointed out the SUNY TLT cooperative which provides online faculty development courses in a 4-course sequence, various 1hr webinars and an annual workshop at their Conference for Instructional Technologies (for example, the 2007 CIT conference). Also mentioned: the Course Redesign Initiative and their Faculty Development Program.

Information to be found in the MERLOT Pedagogy Portal could be quite useful in our own faculty development efforts.

Although we are not particularly into MERLOT, the SUNY TLT also shares planning and production materials to help others who want to put on Faculty Development workshops, and I suspect there will be much there that is broadly accessible.

Phil Moss stepped in for a presenter who could not make it and shared another interesting MERLOT subject area, the Developing and Delivering Online Courses Portal, sponsored by McGraw-Hill.

In this very entertaining session (title: Is Second Life the Second Coming for Higher Ed?) Barry Dahl and Alfred Essa debated the merits of Second Life. Barry– a loud and animated presenter like me– took the con side. Barry’s thesis in short? Second Life is the Second Coming… of Stupid. Alfred– smaller, quieter, and with Zen-like equanimity– took the pro side. Alfred’s thesis? There’s a lot of good stuff happening in SL and Barry doth protest too much.

Alfred began with “4 Dogmas of Information Technology”:

1. Everything in the physicsal world will become a node… aka the Internet of Things is coming
2. 3D interactive worlds will become our primary interface… the blurring of the “real” and “virtual” worlds
3. IT is democratizing innovation
4. Technological change is exponential ala Kurzweil and The Singularity is Near

I agree with these, being a true believer in Kurzweil’s thesis and a future world that will be something in between thos predicted by Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End.

Alfred went on to outline three core strengths of SL: its economy (which provides incentives), its community (which embraces diversity), and the relative ease of development (which allows for individual creation). I’m not wholly sure that we’ve reached a point where I would call SL’s development tools easy, except in comparison to 3D modeling tools outside of SL, but that is a significant change.

As one who studies complex systems Alfred sees tremendous potential for studying them in SL (not to mention SL itself as an example of a complex system).

Barry brought up a number of legitimate criticism, beginning with the “stupid factor”– novelty of flight is short-lived, non-sensical replication of boring real-life environments, poor graphics– and moving on to accessibility, griefers, lack of institutional readiness, and broadband access requirements.

In the final rebuttals Alfred made a strong point about physics and other systems which can be more easily tested and contextually modified in SL than in real life, and the weaker point that as a foreign language learner he could meet with other foreign language learners.

To which Barry– in what should be a law like Godwin’s Law, but built around the invocation of comparisons to Blackboard instead of Nazis– wondered aloud about Linden Labs’ role and identity issues and whether they might not just become another Blackboard like provider.

As a possible hedge against that, Dahl brought up the idea of an education oriented virtual environment, free of the dangers of porn and virtual prostitution, and out of the control of any single, profit-making entity. This is an idea with some merit, but I wonder how different the worries of porn and prostitution really are given how they used to be such a scare tactic when it came to students on the web. And might not the Education Second Life be a bit Creepy?

As I commented during the session, it seemed to me that Barry and Alfred were both right, they were just arguing about different points in time: Barry recognizing problems with current incarnations of SL, Alfred recognizing some strengths now but also how much better it will be in the future. 

The thing that Barry’s proposal for an SL-like environment for education works against is the notion I share with Alfred that SL doesn’t just represent a new environment, but the future environment that, in some shape, will consume and replace the web as we know it. Which makes Barry’s proposal akin to someone 15 years ago, aghast at the porn and other offensive images available on the web, proposing an education Internet or EdWWW that would prohibit those activities and make an environment that was safe for students and their institutions…

[photo by diamond-mind]

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.