Well… the wireless stuff sorted itself out, due, I believe, to heroic efforts of the tech staff at the university of manitoba. Turns out it was one of those situations where a series of very odd things happened and a couple of very smart geeks got us back online… thanks dudes.
I had a great time yesteday. Chats with some tres cool people.
We talked about the differences between networks and communities. We also discussed U of Ms plan to create a Learning Technology Network across the country. More meetings on this today, I’m hoping to make UPEI a key member of that group, but we’ll see how that goes.
First presentation – (skipped it to meet with george siemens)
We had a very interesting chat about networks and communities. I’ve been asking lots of smart folks lately a simple question. What’s the difference between a network (in the ‘lots of nodes’ kinda way) and a community that people contribute to. This is something I plan to write on at length soon, but, george did make the comparison between people you meet formally, and are polite with, and people that end up being true lifelong friends. There’s a hypermediation there… a breaking through simple politeness. This metaphor suggests that looking for ‘one’ definition of community may be the wrong path. Must think more about this.
Second presentation – Brian Kerr, new view of blended learning.
A quite detailed review on the literature about blended learning… which seems to lead to the phrase ‘blended learning’ being synonymous with the word ‘learning’. A nice chart of the possibilities for learning in an university however, which i will try to get my hands on. I was also left with the sense that many of the people in “the literature” might not have an exactly perfect grasp on both the philosophical and technical side of “the technology”. It is a problem… too many people think that technology is transparent… it most certainly isn’t.
Third Presentation – Jeremy Kemp Second Life and Sloodle
A very honest view at the possibilities and limitations of second life and plugging in open source products into it. The sloodle software seems like a promising proof of concept… he compared second life to the web in 1994. I couldn’t agree more. We are really at the pacman stage right now. I really hope that the linden dudes release that code open source so that the community can start building… maybe get us to bard’s tale!
Fourth Presentation – George Siemens and Peter Tittenburger Virtual Learning Commons at U of M.
A very frank discussion about the pros and cons of a VLC. They were very successful with the services that actually supported student success. They were less successful with the social software side of the equation. Much discussion ensued regarding facebook and whether we should be playing in that domain. A nice comparison was made by Terry Anderson, i paraphrase ‘think of facebook like a campus bar… professors can go there and are welcomed.’ corrolary to this is that they usually don’t then stay until 2am and get wrecked with their students… same for facebook i suppose. Another key conversation here is the key role of the library in supporting this kind of initiative. Their writing infrastructure is particularly compelling. I may be stealing some of it guys! They also have a password protected writing process manager that looks interesting 🙂
off to breakfast. my first blogged conference… this is kinda fun 🙂
Very to sorry have missed Peter’s and George’s presentation. Just a point of clarification – the writing section was developed by the Learning Assistance Centre in partnership with Carol Stroud in distance education. And like you, we like the interface.
thanks for the clarification…
I was a little careless with my usage of the word ‘they’. In this case… i meant someone at the university… which i now remember they mentioned during the presentation and I forgot to record 🙂
Ahhhh, those darn pronouns.