WIAOC – You can’t collaborate alone: an invitation

So. On May 24th at 1700 GMT I’ll be doing my Webheads in Action Online Conversion Keynote presentation and you’re all invited. You’re all invited, that is, to be PART of the presentation. The topic (and the digital nomad stage of the webheads), I think, deserves a slightly different presentation style for me… I plan to speak from slides created on the fly by the audience of the presentation. The presentation will go as follows

Introduction
I’ll do a 10 min introduction during which I’ll give a quick introduction to the ideas around ‘community as curriculum’ and what i think that shift means to education and lifelong learning. I’ve tried to do this kind of thing before, and find that if I don’t include this kind of introduction, it makes too much of a separation between the edtechtalk clan that is already familiar with my ramblings and new people I could bore with the same old theories.

The other thing that I want people to do in this part of the presentation is get used to doodling. So slide one will be up and I will be encouraging people to get into drawing and commenting on ‘slide 1’. I’m guessing that this crows will be the kind that will be willing to post interesting stuff that will keep the conversation moving in an interesting direction.

Slide set 1 – Dave’s language
The first couple of slides will address some of the more controversial ideas involved in the presentation. The meaning of community, lifelong learning and curriculum. Right now i’m thinking three straight blank slides with those words as titles, where the audience will be popping in their ideas of what those words mean to them or what they think they might mean in this context.

Slide set 2 – The learner
Once we get a general consensus (or not) I hope to move forward discussing what it means to be a learner inside of this kind of community… How would you find such a community? what are your responsibilities? How do you identify different people and choose to work with them? How do you measure your own learning? How to set goals?

Slide set 3 – The ‘teacher’
I put scare quotes here around the word teacher to signal that this word is a placeholder only. This person might be a community manager, an enthusiast on a particular topic, an institution or someone who has no idea what they are getting into… or a teacher. In this section we will talk about… How to guide conversation. How to exclude things. How being everything can be the same as being nothing. “the lazy professor” stuff that Alec Couros and Dean Shareski talk about. and probably some more stuff about setting up spaces.

Slide set 4 – The community space
In this section I hope we can address some talk about qualities of a space that can promote community and curriculum. What things are important when thinking about space… about the technology and the way that technology gets used. I don’t want to get too bogged down in this discussion (which could easily be a 4 weeks series and not a 10-15 minute section) but the slides themselves (created by the audience) could leave a treasure trove for those following along.

Slide set 5 – Some theory
Yup… didn’t think you’d get out of this without me talking about rhizomes. I’ll spend a few minutes discussing what’s actually different about doing things this way and hopefully get lots of “you’ve got to be kidding” coming up on the slides from the crowd.

Slide set 6 – outroduction
basically thanking the crowd and asking them to sign their names and home city on the last slide for posterity.

What I’m still considering
platform
The easiest thing to do, I guess, would be to just do this in elluminate and them copy out the slides as screen shots and put them into an audio mapped slideshare. (which still doesn’t sound very easy) If anyone has a better idea I’d love to hear it.
number of slides
always a consideration… but I’m worried about slides getting too crowded if this actually works. I guess we can slip into a second slide if the first one on a given topic gets out of control… but i dunno
audience
hoping you guys will come.

Thoughts and feedback welcome. d.

CADE National Conference, Winnipeg, Canada

Applications and Theory of Educational Social Software

Abstract

In this panel discussion we overview the emerging pedagogy and applications of social software for use in distance and blended education contexts. The panel begins (Terry Anderson) with an overview of social software highlighting its capacity to enhance social presence and motivation among learners. Terry will also present data from a pilot comparison study of the use of blogs as compared to threaded discussion to facilitate socially enhance learning. George Siemens (U of M) will then overview the compelling pedagogy known as connectivism, that drives the application of these tools in both formal and non-formal education contexts. He will also discuss the use of social software tools for on-campus learners at the University of Manitoba Finally, Dave Courmier (UPEI) will present the use of webcasts as a tool to build emergent training communities.

Each of the presenters has a distinguished history in innovation and leadership in College, university and training sectors and will share both theoretical and practical experiences The presentations will be followed by opportunity for the audience to participate by relating their experiences, concerns and problems using social software to enhance their educational programming.

Presentation 16:15 May 15th.

JISC – Next Generation Environments Conference – Birmingham UK.

The Next Generation Environments Conference will explore the role of new technologies and next generation environments in higher education. The conference is aimed at senior policy-makers and influencers in the area of learning, teaching and research within higher education institutions.

The Development, Deployment and Take-up of New Technology: Challenges and Inspirations – Dave Cormier, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada

A reflection on the experiences of the implementation of technologies at the University of Prince Edward Island, including the development of Virtual Research Environments, Virtual Learning Environments, the facilitation of Academic Networks and adventures in an Immersive Environment.

Actually… I’ll be in the UK from the 25th to the 6th of May.

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